Best Practices in Grant Writing at Small Colleges

Important Excerpts

Excerpt #1

(from pages 206-207)

Recommendations for Grant Writers at Small Colleges

In addition to imitating the top three overall grant winners (respondents U, OO, and R), the three most important actions to best enable small-college grant writers include the following:

1. Require beginning grant writers to attend systematic training (whether external or internal) to ensure high-quality, well-written, and persuasive proposals,
2. Implement quality control such as assisting faculty with proposals and requiring all proposals to be reviewed by the chief grant writer, start internal permission systems to prevent embarrassments and to enable proposal tracking, and operate an active Institutional Review Board to avoid ethical and liability nightmares, and
3. Require the grant writer to actively visit and call grantors both on his/her own and along with higher-ranking advancement officials (particularly the vice president for advancement), other high-ranking administrators (particularly the president), and professors.

Excerpt #2

(from page 183)

What were the defining characteristics of these top three winners, respondents U, OO, and R? The most important features of them were that all three submitted many proposals, and none of them were listed in Table 46 or Table 47 as having high percentage success rates for administration-directed or faculty-written proposals. Additionally, as Question #9A pointed out, all three of them personally cultivated grantors. Thus, active writing and submitting combined with personal cultivation matter most, not high percentage success rates which could easily come with few submittals.

Excerpt #3

(from pages 204-205)

Research Question #6: What are the crucial attributes for any successful grant writing program at a small college?

Over two-thirds of the grant writers had and appreciated involvement in contacts with prospective donors. This was a surprise to the researcher and went against the perception of grant writers being introverts. Most notably the top three overall grant winners (respondents U, OO, and R) all cultivated. This seemed to be a strong confirmation of grant expert Susan Golden's (2001) emphasis on cultivating first.

Of those writers who did cultivate, about half said cultivation increased their success rate or gave them insights that increased their success. Most of the others tacitly implied increased success. Stewarding grantors, however, required not just effort but skill and segmentation.

While cultivating was important, a skillful writer who submitted many proposals was more crucial. As noted in chapter five, the top three personally emphasized the following crucial attributes:

• Sufficient, experienced, knowledgeable grant writer,
• Support from and ties to faculty, trustees, president, and academic and advancement administrators and personnel,
• Opportunities for professional development (conferences),
• Research tools, and
• Understanding that a successful grant writing program brings prestige, external support of restricted funding for projects, and enhancement for initiatives that may take longer if waiting to fund it through operating funds.

Of the top three, respondents U and R did help faculty write proposals, but Respondent OO did not. These top three fit within the 12 respondents who were all in the top five grant winners at one time or another from 2001 through 2005. Besides Respondent OO, only Respondent T did not help faculty. So 10 (83.33%) out the 12 members of the top five from 2001 through 2005 thought it crucial to assist faculty with proposals. Only two (respondents U and N) of these 10 who helped faculty worked for academic administrators instead of advancement.