Category: GAP Journals (Page 1 of 3)

Team 451 and Team Blue Ocean presented today. First, Team 451 discussed how their project went and how they worked as a team. Like last time, a major focus on communication and collaboration. This team showed specific examples of how they communicated and the sources they found during research. It was interesting to see how another group used similar methods of communication while also being completely different. It was also interesting to see how much research they really put into their programs. It made me think of how my group just put research into the proposal without having a separate source list. In hindsight, having a list of all the sources we used would have been pretty helpful. Team 451 also discussed their future plans and how this class would fit in with their careers. Two of the three members had careers the directly correlated with what their project was about, but one member said that it wouldn’t apply to her career as much. Yet, the skills she gained would help set her apart from other applicants. I think most other groups have put a lot of stock into how grant writing is a specific skill that will benefit them in the future, but most of us aren’t looking at the smaller skills we’ve gained along the way, like team communication and research. Team Blue Ocean only had two members, and it seemed like it benefitted them a lot. One member said that two people seemed to communicate better than three, almost as though three people would be “too many cooks in the kitchen”. It made me interested in how this project would have turned out for my group if it were only two people. I think the biggest theme of all of the presentations focused on collaboration. It really made me think of how much I try to rely on myself, especially when it comes to projects like this. I think that working in a team will be something that I need to work on in the future, though I believe that this class was a great start to improving on my weaknesses.

To Future Grantseekers:

• Read everything. Yes, this includes the textbook. It will be your friend
• Do your work on time. It will save you a lot of stress, especially when you have to edit everything all of the time.
• Please actually write the journals. Sometimes the sections you write will, and I’m not exaggerating, be trash. Journals are easy points.
• Talk to your group. Don’t be afraid to speak up and say that something isn’t working. Be open to new ideas!
• Jesse works really hard, so give him a hand once in a while (especially with math)
• Talk during peer reviews. It not only helps your classmates, but it helps you too.
• Don’t be too hard on yourself. Grant writing is hard, so don’t be too upset if you don’t get it right the first time around.
• Research Research Research
• Have fun!

There are a lot of themes and ideas that are emerging from the panel discussions so far. YRFCA, MEIRS, and Empowered Women have been the only groups to present so far. My group, YRFCA, talked a lot about how we worked as a team, primarily about our communication skills. I found that the other two groups spoke a lot about how well they worked together. While my group focused on how we communicated within the project, Empowered Women talked about how they communicated through similar interests. They said that they were able to bond over that shared desire to educate others about the lack of sexual education in American school systems. MEIRS talked about how they communicated through their differences, specifically in their schedule differences. The idea of communication and bonding between group members seems to be a major idea. Honestly, this makes a lot of sense, as writing grants really is a group effort. You have to be comfortable enough with a team in order to effectively write a proposal. I think the next two presentations will also have a major focus on communication. A minor theme was also difficulties that teams faced throughout the project. My team focused a lot on the budget aspect, but while other teams didn’t focus on the budget as much, they each had unique struggles. For MEIRS, they struggled with finding time to go over sections together. Empowered Women struggled with finding a way to communicate their message to the audience in a way that would make everyone comfortable with the subject material. It’s interesting to see how each team struggled, as well as how they overcame their struggles. I think that for the most part, each team essentially went through the same difficulties and were able communicate effectively.

This chapter was about creating a budget and how to write a budget proposal. I’m not great with budgets, so this chapter really highlighted some important aspects that I need to focus on. One main aspect was about organizing liability insurance, staff costs, income/expenses, and pretty much all financial transactions the organization has with others. The goal of this is to essentially write a money-oriented story of your organization. This allows investors to see where your programs align within your budget as well as if you under/overspend. The second main point is that the budget isn’t just a formality. Investors regularly check to make sure that organizations are sticking to their budget, especially when they know that their money is involved. A third point in this chapter that I found interesting was about the wiggle room that organizations have while crafting their budgets. A miscellaneous section allows an organization to put extra money aside in case of emergencies or if they undershot the expenses of their program. Donated goods and volunteer time are also included within the budget. As these goods and volunteers are unpaid, they don’t have a value within the budget, but funders want to see it nonetheless. It’s important to remember that everything, no matter how small, goes into the budget. If the organization needs an eraser for .99 cents, it goes into the budget. The biggest takeaway from this chapter is to really flesh out the budget. Everything is important and you can’t skimp on details when it comes to finances. Funders will find out if you missed any details, so it’s best to just be thorough and include everything that your organization does/needs.

Team A:

• While it’s great to repeat the name of your program, I feel like it’s a bit of overkill to repeat “Sexualized Stigmas” for each quantitative bullet. For me, it really pulls the reader out of what you’re saying.
• I like how your beginning blurb tells the reader how many goals and objectives there are, as well as the timeframe. This allows you to not have to repeat any of that information within the list.
• For your last bulletpoint, I’d consider adding just a little clarity to what information you’re sending out in the pamphlets. Are the pamphlets a one-time thing, or are you sending them out monthly?
• Your qualitative section has a great opening! A little bit of fluff is great to pull at investors’ heart strings
• For #1 of your qualitative section, I’d clarify what “regularly” means. Is it weekly? Monthly? I like the idea that you’re not only focusing on outside perspectives, but you want to stress that your volunteers and staff have input.
• #2 seems a little vague. How will you connect to them? Email? Phone calls? What will be discussed besides how they are feeling?
• #3 could be fleshed out a little more. Just observing how students react might not be the best way. Maybe give them an ungraded quiz to see how much they are retaining as well as a little check-in to see how they’re doing might be a good idea.
• Overall, you guys did a good job! I think you just need to clarify a few things and change the sexualized stigmas repetition, and then you’ll be golden!

Team E:

• Your beginning statement of why your workshops need to be evaluated individually sounds great! It doesn’t go too much into detail, but it gives enough for the investor to follow.
• Overall, your bullet points seem a little flat. What I mean is that you give us a lot of your goals, which is great, but how are you going to evaluate the success of each point?
• For the first point, I think a good way to evaluate the program’s success would be to set each participant on a budget and do weekly/monthly check in’s to see if they stay on budget, taking into account emergencies, etc. Obviously, finances are private for most people, so if you can find a way to check in with each participant without invading their privacy, I think it could be a good way to evaluate the success of the financial literacy workshop.
• The cultural adjustment workshop also needs a way to evaluate success. Maybe you could have an “interview” with each participant when they reach the recovery stage and adjustment stage to see how they’re feeling. After the participants go through the program, you could send a survey out about a month after and ask how they felt the program prepared them.
• Job Acquisition is an easy thing to evaluate, so putting a blurb about connecting with participants and asking them how their job is going/if they needed a new job, etc., would be good.
• I think that your paragraph after the bullet points should be moved before the list. It gives the reader some information and may answer some of their questions they have while reading your list.
• Your qualitative section is really great! I think there’s some room for wordsmithing, but other than that you did a great job.

I think there are a few different ways to evaluate the successfulness of our program. Community feedback will be essential, as part of our project focuses on spreading awareness about environmental issues. We will also need some way to measure the population growth/decline of invasive species, so scientific data and “data expeditions” will be necessary.

1. The purpose of the organization’s evaluation is to measure how successful our program was. It also serves to help the organization improve in the future by adjusting goals of new programs to be more cohesive or realistic based on previous evaluations. Specifically for our organization, we may find that our evaluation indicates that we didn’t reach our community involvement goal. This could signal to us that we need to lower our involvement goals or find new ways to reach the community.
2. As stated above, the findings will be used to improve upon programs/proposals in the future. Whether the evaluation is positive or negative, there are always sections of an organization’s program that can be improved upon.
3. After the evaluation, the organization will know what aspects of their programs work and what aspects don’t work. They will also have a better understanding of their strengths and weaknesses, which could lead to action on the part of individuals within the organization. In terms of our organization, we could discover how the community is involved in different seasons or how we may need more financial assistance to continue running our programs.
4. Our organization can do many things after the evaluation, such as rework aspects of our program. Maybe we find that not many people want to read pamphlets based on low subscription rates, so we could shift our focus to updating our website to include a broader range of information. The evaluation, for our organization, can really highlight what community members actually care about, which could help us highlight these aspects in future grant proposals.
5. The lives of the people and community served will improve after an evaluation because, as stated in number 4, our organization will get a better sense of what people respond to and care about. Upon seeing a community’s priorities, our organization can shift our goals to better suit the people and environment we serve. This will also raise support for our organization from the community, as they will see that our organization recognizes their wants and needs.
6. Whether our organization uses the funds correctly is something that would be seen after the evaluation, but if we find that funds were mismanaged, our organization will have an opportunity to address how it can improved upon in the future. We would also have a better idea of what aspects of our programs require the most amount of money and which aspects may need less money.
7. Going along with number 6, our organization won’t exactly know the answer of this question until after the evaluation component. Obviously, if we have thousands of dollars left over, then our budget was clearly inaccurate and we may need a financial advisor to be on board. At the same time, we could be searching for pennies on the street to fund our programs by the end of our program’s life, which means that our organization would have a better idea of what kind of grants to go for.

We have a lot to revise in each of our proposal components. Many of the critiques regarding our components focused on clarity and sentence structure. Some specific comments we’ve gotten in the past have been the following:

• Clarifying how invasive plants fit into YRFCA’s mission
• Fleshing out plans and means of evaluation
• Rethink community outreach through pamphlets (free vs. paid, etc.)
• Improve upon the general reasons as to why investors should care about our project.
• Rework many sentences to make them clear and concise.
• Regarding our goals and objectives, we need to find a better way to measure community involvement
• Statement of Need: Overall, there needs to be a greater focus on climate change rather than biodiversity
• Project Description: There are many sections that overlap and are restated, so consolidating similarities in each paragraph is a must.
• Organizational Background: We did pretty well with this one, though there are parts (like the list of names) that seem unnecessary.

Step 9 focuses on writing the background of the organization. The three main parts of this section that I found interesting were the purpose of the background statement, what the background statement contains, and using the background information to restate the need for your organization. According to the book, the purpose of the background statement serves as an organization’s “credentials”. Funders need to know that the organization is capable and help the problems it sets out to solve. Along with this, the purpose of the background information is to expand upon the mission, values, and other distinguishing characteristics of the organization. The second point I found interesting was what the background statement contains. Along with the history of the organization, the background component should include the community or problem that the organization is serving as well as descriptions of programs or services that are provided by the organization. This section, in particular, adds credibility to the organization and helps funders build trust with them. The last point is about restating the importance of one’s organization. You need to restate the communities and purpose of your organization by discussing previous funding and awards the organization has won over the years. Talking about one’s success also build credibility for the organization, allowing for funders to truly understand and respect the mission.

Consider the 2 samples of Evaluation Components in a grant proposal, in the link and in our reader on p. 63. Besides the length differences, how would you describe the differences? Is one seemingly missing information? Is there too much in the other? Explain in detail: 250 words.

Each sample focused on the overall components of writing evaluations. These components included quantitative vs qualitative evaluation, internal vs. external evaluation methods, and a general overview of what the evaluation section should contain. I felt that the online article put an emphasis on methods, but lacked information regarding why an organization would focus on internal or external evaluation or even quantitative/qualitative methods. The reading on page 63 however included an in-depth description about each method and why one would use them. The section in the book felt more fleshed out than the online article. It gave a lot of information including the motivations behind each component. While the book section was a lot more thorough, the checklist on the article as well as the section regarding the integration of the evaluation within other parts of your grant proposal were helpful to me. I agree with Bethany’s statement that if I were to read only the book, I would miss out on information about integrating evaluations within the other sections of the grant proposal.

Step 5 focuses on developing strategies, which serve to answer the question: “How will an organization actually accomplish the work for which it seeks funding?” (51). The strategy section should discuss activities that need to be carried out to meet objectives, along with their start and end dates. It should also address the person/role that will be responsible for carrying out these duties and why the project is being completed in the way the organization proposed. Like the rest of the proposal, strategies should be realistic and not overpromise. The book specifically states that it is a good idea to include a timeline for each strategy. This chapter also included some tips that I found helpful, especially the tip about building activities/strategies on top of one another and the reiteration of being concise with funders about your strategy and nonprofit, as they may not be aware of everything. The last point that I found helpful was actually worksheet 5.1A. I think it helps nonprofits organize the activities, responsibilities, resources, and dates in a reasonable way. Personally, I tend to think about what resources a group may need and I realize that a resources category is often forgotten. Step 5’s main message is to be realistic and concise and to not leave out details while drafting. It’s important to make a clear and holistic strategy proposal that doesn’t overpromise or leave out important details, like responsibilities and resources.