"TWENTY-ONE WAYS
NOT TO GET A GRANT"

A humorous look at grant writing by Gray MacArthur, New York State Council on the Arts*

1.  Sloppiness and omissions. Cut and paste. Done last night. Written in crayon.

2.  Unreal spending project-like 400% of last year’s.

3.  Masking individual ego trips.

4.  No outside earned income. Doesn’t anyone else care?

5.  Too much of "What’s in it for foreign languages" and too little of "What’s in it for the community, the field."

6.  Ignorance that somebody else is already doing it.

7.  No justification of why the applicant should be the one to do it. No track record.

8.  No evidence of necessary administrative and fiscally accountable structure to manage it. Professionalism.

9.  The assertion of a presumably self-evident community need.

10. No evidence of local government contract of support or of broad representation.

11. Strange expenditure items labeled "contingency" or "miscellaneous."

12. Clear evidence of not having read the last contract or the present whole application, including instructions and definitions.

13. No indication that the board, the accountant, and the attorney have been consulted.

14. Suspicion that the fancy project has been invented for the invention’s sake, for its fanciness--a sort of grants-manship overkill.

15. Suspicion that the amount requested came first, and then the budget, and perhaps even the whole project.
 

Eight surefire ways to
get the grant you want!

From "Find the Funds for Your Great Ideas" by Dennis Norris from Instructor, January/February 1997.

1.  Be creative! Stress ideas, not needs!

2.  Collaborate with your school community.

3.  Be open to other members' viewpoints.

4.  Find the right funder.

5.  Write clearly and professionally.

6.  Select outside editors for your work.

7.  Move all deadlines back ten days.

8.  Take pride in your project -- inform others.

16. The undercurrent that the state owes the applicant and the project a living--that any honest and intelligent self-expression should be funded.

17. Inverted racism: We are Italian, Jewish, Black, or Polish; you must fund us because we’re disenfranchised -- no matter the value of the project.

18. The inclusion of attacks on other foreign language associations in the same community: "They’re awful. Fund us, not them."

19. Political pressure--enough said; sex appeal--enough said.

20. No explanation for last year’s surplus. Yes, it happens.

21. Endless phone calls, endless defensiveness, endless inquiries, endless supplements, endless pressure--all under the guise of enthusiasm.

* Disclaimer: From the archives of the New York State Council on the Arts. The opinions expressed here are not the product of the current administration of the Council.