For federal grants, the Program Plan is typically the section of the proposal that matters most and may be worth 20-40% of the grant evaluation criteria. Not all federal government agencies refer to this section as the “Program Plan”, but it may also be known as the “Project Design”, “Program Implementation”, “Soundness of Approach”, and “Response”.  In writing your program plan, you will be asked to detail your strategies and methods for each project objective. The purpose of the Strategy…

What’s different about my workshops called The Art and Science of Grant Writing is that I use stories to help people understand how to write winning proposals. As I walk them through each key component from the mission statement, history of organization, accomplishments, goals, objectives, and evaluation WE TELL STORIES. By the time my workshops are done there is a sense of community and common bond we all share in our philanthropic worlds. My training style is simple, real…

New funding opportunities for rural health care through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and Health Care Reform Act offer exciting opportunities for rural health care service providers. The Affordable Health Care Act will grant more than $11 billion over the next five years for new and expanded community health centers including approximately $1.5 billion for construction and renovation.

In addition, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid will allocate $27 billion for…

The Sustainability Plan is intended to assure your prospective funder that the program or solution to a community problem you propose will continue long after their grant funding ends. No one wants to provide funding to an organization which does not have a plan to continue the program without grant funding. An example sustainably plan (along with the question posed by the Health Resource Service Administration) that I recently wrote for a federal application follows:

How…