Grant Writing - Getting to the Money

The philosopher says that there are three types of people, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened, and those who make things happen; when you are dealing with the "what" aspect of your grant (let's use project as synonymous to grant, as they are in fact practically the same) you are dealing with people. No matter how well you abstract the fact of the project, what is a result of whom? Companies aren't formed in a vacuum and you must know who is at the helm, who founded, who designed, who runs the company that you are writing the grant for, or requesting funding from.

When you are writing the grant for a company, it is important to be able to clearly explain who designed the company, what its processes are, relative to that person or persons, and the amount of consequential influence they render. These are the facts of the importance, but it goes deeper than this surface material. Individuals who are in charge are of a certain arena, they travel in certain circles and have friends that are a part of the money and influence set. These are the people that you will be dealing with, they are called the company, but behind the corporate name is the corporate entity- never forget that singular fact.

The sector that a company does business in is also a prime factor in determining what they are. Technology companies have a distinct way of existing and interacting within their sectors which involve technological devices. Oil extraction companies deal with searching, drilling and transporting and converting petroleum, while they aren't a technological company, they cross that sector at the point of use. It is entirely possible to deal with a company who has no separate sector being cross invested in many. These diverse units should be considered for their prime function, and addressed appropriately.

As you establish what the company is about, you begin to establish what the company will do with you and what you can do for them. In obtaining fund money it is vital to know what they want, what you want, and if there is common ground that can be mutually beneficial to you both. If this element is missed then you won't have a point of connection to them, nor they to you.

This information goes into the database, it becomes part of what you use to target your approaches, and you target them for funds, donations and cooperative ventures. The salient issue is that you wouldn't address an oil company executive in the same manner that you would address a technology company executive, they likely speak different languages even though the words sound the same, they mean entirely different things.

As you begin using ACCESS or some similar database you will recognize certain elements coming into use repeatedly. The name, address, state, zip code, phone contact and e-mail contact columns are pretty much standard. One of the best features of Access and other good databases is that they may have templates which already have this information in them. What you want to be sure gets into the database may be columns that you would carry information in that won't report. Remember that reports can carry any column information that you designate (we will go into this in more detail when we get to the reports article) but won't carry and print out information you exclude. Under this process you can, therefore, designate what column information you will allow. This gives you enormous flexibility to put information in a column under such diverse headings as: Likes/Dislikes, or, Colorful Characteristics; just about any column information which will help you remember what this client is about. No two clients are the same, but as you gain in clients, you will also come to realize that this means you must use the database to increasingly segregate your data about them.