New Year's Resolution — Getting Ahead of the Federal Grants Curve

Right after hitting the gym and ditching those donuts, the next item on any list of New Year's resolutions should be creating a plan to prepare for upcoming federal grant opportunities — before they are announced.

A key element of any federal relations plan, especially while there is a moratorium on Congressional earmarks, is the development of a robust grants strategy to help drive policy and funding objectives.

How can your organization win in this complex and hyper-competitive environment?

By creating a proactive strategy.

Many organizations respond to grant notices as they are released, leaving little time to prepare strong responses that resonate with the key agency decision-makers. This approach usually results in disappointment.

It doesn't need to be this way. Our research, using our proprietary database of previous solicitations, shows that a large percentage of federal grant programs repeat on an annual basis. While always contingent on appropriations and internal agency policy decisions, knowing which programs to expect in the future can give you a leg up on the competition. What is required is the foresight and knowledge base to build a yearly grant calendar. This calendar allows your organization to plan a project and build your application before the federal agency has released its solicitation.

Building a grants calendar in four steps:

1. Identify your objectives and map the federal departments and agencies that are likely to intersect with your work — This investigatory step can take time, since many departments on their face have nothing to do with your mission but may contain small agencies or bureaus that speak to your issue. Federal government camouflage can be a boon to grant seekers.
2. Locate previous solicitations — What programs fund similar objectives? How much funding is available annually? What size are the average awards? What types of organizations do they fund? When can you expect the next solicitation and when will it be due?
3. Understand that what the federal government wants to fund might not be an exact fit for what you do — Know where modifications in pursuit of funding are possible, and where they are not.
4. Create a long-range plan for each target opportunity and stick to it — Analyze previously successful applicants to determine what is needed and when work will need to begin to be ready in advance of submittal deadlines.

Successful grant proposals worth tens of millions of dollars are not hastily thrown together, but rather the result of diligent long-range planning begun well before the release of a Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA). Over the past few years, in an attempt to break down agency silos, the Obama Administration has placed a growing emphasis on complex programs which knit together funding and objectives from several federal agencies to package funding for a single project. Strong applications require substantial local partnerships that are not always easy to forge and certainly cannot be developed in the 30-60 days that an RFP typically allows.

Having a grants calendar allows for the lead time to establish the strong partnerships and effective project design necessary to compete and win.

Luckily, unlike learning to play the guitar, giving up sweets or hitting the gym every day, a grants calendar is a resolution that is easy to stick to the whole year long.