For the grant writing project, my group handled the Caterpillar grant. After Brandon "hacked into" the system and got the form for us, I went through and answered as many of the questions as I could, since it was very fill-in-the-blank (The most I could write for a paragraph response was 2,000 characters, or about 300 words). We decided to focus on NICE’s Youth Education Program for the request.
For the most part, I simply repurposed information already given in the sample grants from NICE. Since all we knew about the specifics and logistics of this program was what NICE had said in these sample grants, that was really the only logical thing to do. I was happy to hear Cindy tell us that that was acceptable in this situation. I cut the info back and edited it right off the bat to make it as short and concise as possible. The only response that I had to build from scratch was to answer the question of how the program aligned with Caterpillar’s mission, but the connection was so obvious that that didn’t take much time at all.
I filled out as much of the financial and board-of-directors information as I could using NICE’s website, their 2014 Audit, and the sample grants. Since NICE was all tied up with their own matters (and some personal matters, it appears), it was not be possible to fill in any more information than what was provided for us in these places. After I had compiled as much of the requested information as I possibly could, I added comments to the document to let NICE know what else was required, and also to alert them to any calculations I had made, or places where my info might not have been 100% accurate.
The rest of the group edited the text and compiled it into one document. We applied the paramedic method to it wherever possible. I checked over the entire document one more time to ensure that everything was in order, and then posted it to Blackboard for review. Following the peer and professor review of the rough draft (most everything was positive), I revised the grant, offered it up for a final check-over from the rest of the group, and emailed the final in. It was a very straightforward process, which is my favorite kind of process.
In fact, the straightforwardness of grant writing was a big surprise to me. Somehow, the whole idea of “writing a grant” sounded like something incredibly professional, very highbrow. But this was not the case at all; all we (and all the other groups, for that matter) had to do was fill out the equivalent of an essay test. Of course, that does not mean that I think grants are a walk in the park; as Cindy mentioned, there are a lot of ways to slip up. But I never would have imagined that the process of actually writing one would be so directional.
Word Count: 497
Final Grant