So, the blog has been a little quiet for a couple of months. I’ve been doing a lot of presentations about the Recovery Act around the Northeast. So, in lieu of an article, this blog is a list of links of my favorite sources of information about the Recovery Act. I’ll be offering a webinar on the Recovery Act on June 16th – the details will be posted in a few days.
General
Council on Foundation Stimulus Reports
http://www.councilofnonprofits.org/stimulus
State Councils of NonProfits
http://www.nycon.org/ – they are also offering some free webinars on distinct topics within the stimulus
Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – Stimulus Watch Series of Reports
http://www.cbpp.org/
For a detailed list of spending see
http://www.propublica.org/special/the-stimulus-plan-a-detailed-list-of-spending#stim_education
and http://online.wsj.com/public/resources/documents/STIMULUS_FINAL_0217.html
Some great links are included in this article
http://www.idealist.org/if/i/en/h/blog/how-your-nonprofit-can-access-stimulus-funding
State Information
Council of State Governments: http://www.staterecovery.org
This includes overview of how each state is managing the stimulus and articles from the media. You can also view progress by subject area i.e. all energy initiatives by state.
This page gives a list of deadlines that states need to adhere to http://www.staterecovery.org/key-deadlines
The foundation center has a nice site of best resources by state http://maps.foundationcenter.org/economic_crisis/stimulus/shell.php?state=new_york
The National Conference of State Legislatures also has an excellent site with information about ARRA and it’s implementation.
http://www.ncsl.org/statefed/2009economicstimulus.htm
Many elected officials have created excellent handbooks, for example
Senator Gillibrand in NY
Congresswoman Castor in FL
Read More→
So, the stimulus bill has been passed and signed. And for many of us that may well mean a lot of opportunity for our organizations to win grants to help more clients and….. a lot work getting grant applications out of the door in short order.
I’ve been looking for information about the bill and what it means for us and have found the following resources to be helpful.
THE BASICS
At this site you can read the full bill. OMB has issued a 62 page initial guidance document.
This site helps you to track where Recovery Act funds are going. It also includes an expected timeline and a pretty helpful FAQ page
The best summary that I’ve seen is the National Association of Counties summary of all programs that impact counties
This is a pretty neat site that allows people with local knowledge of ‘shovel ready’ to provide information and for others to rate them. Projects are then given a positive or negative vote ratio. One that pops out at the top of the list is a $17.5 billion project to create 1648 jobs in Puerto Rico, which as one commentator pointed out is $10 million per job. http://www.stimuluswatch.org/
I was recently working on a proposal for a federal agency that I’ve submitted to a couple of times. The Request for Proposal included three documents that were around 80 pages in total. After reading them carefully, I had several questions about things that weren’t addressed. For example, it did not specify how long the narrative should be. Now, how often does that happen? Since I’m not overly familiar with the agency, I thought “Clearly, I’ve missed it somewhere in the 80 pages.” So, I re-read it looking for the answers and couldn’t find them. The RFP didn’t list a program officer to contact with questions.
A few days later, my client forwarded me some emails from other people who were working on the application. Lo and behold, they had the same questions. Aha, so it wasn’t just me. Thoughtful folks around the country were scratching their hands. I decided to take action.
I picked up the phone and five calls and half an hour later found myself talking to the program officer who had actually written the RFP. It turned out that she was a charming, kind and very helpful lady. I pointed out to her the little inconsistencies that I’d found and questions that I had. It sounded as though she might be new at the position and just hadn’t realized that there were some things that she assumed we could do on the grants.gov forms that we couldn’t do. After 15 minutes on the phone, I had a) cleared up all my questions, b) had a nice conversation with someone who genuinely wanted to help me, c) realized that my questions were well-founded and I hadn’t missed anything – the information hadn’t been there because she hadn’t realized it was needed.
So, I learned to be a little gentler on myself. We are so used to program officers telling us that people call them all the time with questions about things that are clearly written in the RFP that when something doesn’t make sense I’ve started to assume it’s because I’ve missed something. I also assume that the person or people who created the RFP’s are experienced and thoroughly knowledgeable about the process they’re administering.
So, from now on I’m challenging those assumptions. If I’ve read something a couple of times and it still doesn’t make sense I’m going to entertain the thought that, gasp, a human being on the other side of the equation may have made a mistake. From now on, I’m going to be more apt pick up the phone or send an email. Yes, there may be times that I truly have missed something and run the risk of looking bad. But it’s a risk worth taking in the name of efficiency and in order to resolve something in 15 minutes rather sweating over it for hours.
Last week, my children and I were among the throngs in the Mall celebrating the swearing in of our new President. I was standing near the Washington Memorial and so couldn’t actually see or hear the ceremonies. Instead we watched them on one of the Jumpotrons – now they are a great invention.
When I saw the dignitaries come center stage, it to occurred to me that they were just a few people on the TV screens and that these few people represented all of us standing shoulder to shoulder on the Mall. I saw that we elected them to represent us and their job was to represent our concerns. Now, I’ve heard politicians and heads of government say hundreds of times that they are representatives but this was the first time that I really understood it. When I mentioned this to a friend, she said “Yes, and standing on the Mall you represented the millions of us watching TV at home or in movie theaters.”
So, what’s all this got to do with grant writing? Well, every time we write a grant proposal our responsibility is to represent our community with our words. The people reviewing the proposal will often know nothing about you, your organization, or the community you serve. It is our job to represent it accurately to the reader and create a heart-to-heart connection.
What is Representation?
Before we talk about ways of doing that, let’s look at the word Re-Present for a moment. The online Merriam-Webster dictionary has 12, yes 12, definitions for the word including:
1: to bring clearly before the mind
3: to portray or exhibit in art
8 a: to give one’s impression and judgment of : state in a manner intended to affect action or judgment
b: to point out in protest or remonstrance
10 a: to form an image or representation of in the mind
b (1): to apprehend (an object) by means of an idea
(2): to recall in memory
For me, it means a chance to recreate something in the present moment – to re-present it, right now.
So, how do we do that? It usually means getting personal and getting detailed. When I write my goal is for the reader to really know what it is like to live in the community described. Sounds simple doesn’t it. But often we take a lot for granted and leave the reader to make their own conclusions. So, let’s look at two specific things that you can do to truly represent your community in a grant proposal.
Getting Detailed
I was once discussing a proposal with two women from Texas and Florida. It included cross-country skiing as a program element. One of the women said that she didn’t think it was such a good idea because the participants wouldn’t be able to do that very often. Living in the chilly climes, I explained that there was a good chance that there was snow cover from Thanksgiving to April and that the participants were probably able to ski for nearly 6 months of the year. It was obvious to the writer and to me, but not so for our friends in the sunny climes.
Action 1: I recommend making a quick list of everything that you know or take for granted that affects the programmatic decisions that you make. Then take a look at the list and see which ones a person from the other side of the country would not know. Make sure you cover these in your proposal.
Thinking beyond 501(c)3’s.
The current economic turmoil is creating lots of questions about restructuring the way that we all do business. For some time I’ve been looking at the way that we fund social ventures and wondering if there are different more efficient and more effective options. I’m not alone. There are a many great minds thinking along the same track and some interesting ideas are sprouting up.
Introducing a 501(c)3 and LLC hybrid
One of the most exciting to me is a new legal option – the L3C. The L3C is based on the LLC structure and offers an option for a low profit company that is socially beneficial. In its essence it is a hybrid between a 501 (c)3 and an LLC.
The L3C is the brainchild of Robert Lang, CEO of the Mary Elizabeth & Gordon B. Mannweiler Foundation and was passed into law in Vermont in June 2008. Since it is legal in one state, L3C’s can now be formed in every state in the union for less than a few hundred dollars.
What’s new here?
L3C’s offer a legal structure for low-profit entities that can receive loans and gifts from the private sector as well loans from foundations in the form of Program Related Investments (PRI’s more about these later). It means that a museum and museum shop could be housed under the same legal structure, for example. It could open up avenues for investing in low-profit sustainable agriculture or housing ventures and a myriad other options. I see that this really opens up the options for organizations that are dedicated to the social good.
