Keep it Real. Keep it Pithy.
I’m Sharmila; mom, immigrant, proud Sri Lankan, and experienced grant writer with a critical eye for how social dynamics and systems play out in our world.
This is a space for sharing reflections, advice, and resources about the nitty gritty of impactful grant writing and grant consulting — insights and stories from lessons learned, life lived, and mistakes made.
Blog content is created and curated for nonprofits, grant consultants, and aspiring grant writers.
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Ten Tips for New Grant Consultants
Aspiring and new grant consultants - here are ten “keeping it real” tips, tricks, and lessons learned, just for you!
Are you thinking of becoming a grant consultant?
Here’s something I learned early on: great writing alone doesn’t win grants — especially if your process with the client falls apart.
As I began this journey 15+ years ago, I quickly learned that finding alignment with clients, managing expectations, and navigating wildly different work styles were just as important as crafting a compelling proposal.
Aspiring and new grant consultants—here are ten “keeping it real” tips and tricks based on lessons learned, just for you!
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New to Grant Consulting? 10 Client-Focused Tips for Building A Successful Collaboration
1. Partner with organizations whose work and approach aligns with your values. Writing about causes and programs you aren’t totally on board with (or don’t understand) is painful – and not in the good sense of growing pains.
2. As an outsider you need the inside-scoop. You will need an in-house point person who is ready to dedicate time to answer your questions, so that you can learn not only about the organization’s work, but also truly grasp what makes them tick.
3. Take time to understand the organization’s unique value and voice. It will show up in your writing.
4. Make sure your clients know that you are not a magician; ROI and ‘results’ are not guaranteed. High grant award success rates are often a combination of solid relationships with funders combined with on-point grant writing (and many other factors).
5. Nonprofits new to grants development may not know that many grant cycles are painfully long. Integrate this reality into funding targets and project planning.
6. Make sure your writing process is collaborative – strategize together with your client on your pitch and your main points of emphasis; you don’t want to hand in a draft and hear “that’s not the direction we wanted to go in” or “we want to fund a different program.”
7. While staff buy-in is key, too many cooks (or in this case writers and editors) do spoil the soup.
8. Keep yourself and the rest of your team of writers and contributors organized and accountable to their task timeline. This may feel like herding cats, at times.
9. Most importantly, plan to submit with plenty of time before the deadline. Waiting for the last minute is almost guaranteed to trigger Murphy’s Law (if anything can go wrong it will) – it’s true. Portals crashing, internet failing. It’s happened to me.
10. *Pro-Tip: Only work with clients who agree to use track changes for edits. I’m semi-serious about this one folks. For me, it’s a hard pass on working with folks who only want to give verbal feedback.
Grant Consultants: What consulting tips and tricks have worked for you? Please comment below.