Budgeting in human services organisations brings about many challenges. Human services agencies must be creative in managing their budget due to the increased demands on the agency and the needs of the clients and stakeholders.
There are many legal, contractual, and other requirements under the concept of financial management, as such agency administrators need to be creative to obtain funding.
Applying for grants in both the private and public sectors is one access to funding resources. Most grants will require that you present a proposed budget for use of the funds. Thus, grants and budgeting often go hand in hand.
For this Discussion, think about grant writing and the elements needed to write a successful grant. Then, review sample grants at https://grantspace.org/resources/sample-documents/. Identify one grant to discuss.
Post the following:
Describe the key elements to grant writing.
Provide a brief description of the grant proposal you selected and explain the strengths of the proposal and any areas where it could be improved.
Explain how you would improve on the grant proposal to convince the funder that funding this program would have a positive and measurable effect on the community.
Support your post with specific references to the resources. Be sure to provide full APA citations for your references.
Read a selection of your colleagues’ posts.
Respond to at least two colleagues in one of the following ways:
Compare and contrast the key elements of grant writing identified in your and your colleague’s post.
Provide a constructive critique of your colleague’s ideas for demonstrating a positive and measurable effect to a funder.
Provide recommendations to find funding sources for this proposal.
Colleague 1: Djelika
Describe the key elements to grant writing
Grant writing is a different writing style from peer-reviewed audiences’ writing style (Ruffalo, 2017). When reading closely this week’s selected readings, I can characterise grant writing as a style that must involve some diverse information to promote present and future needs in an agency.
When a person is writing a grant has to have different abilities which are being able to speak to the progress of the recent programming and having the ability to provide strategies on how to address the future needs as well.
There also needs to be encouraged in the grant description how it would continue to increase the accomplishment of recent services provided in the agency. Demonstration motivation in grant writing can be helpful to individuals and can lead to the beginning of an inquiry process.
The writing of a grant should always include any needs that relate to the gap of service or other unnecessary needs or needs a further investigation and can be assisted with evidence validating the gap of the service (Ruffalo, 2017).
Being able to select individuals who can write a grant can become another issue in the motivation of a grant writing process. The selected individuals would need to comprehend the need for ambition, passion to cooperate with others, and must dedicate completely to the project (Ruffalo, 2017).
Another important thing is that the grant writers need to know what grants are available for the agency and populations they served. Those can be included in the grant writing process by the agency setting up goals statements.
The importance of goal statements is assisting with formulating the grant and helping stakeholders understand the purpose of the grant. There is also a need to be exploration related to the stakeholders, and they must be vetted in the procedure so that ideas can be provided to them.
Another issue when writing a grant is by understanding the money that needs to fund the idea. A justification of the fees must be broken down in the proposal accounting for all the requested money.
Provide a brief description of the grant proposal you selected and explain the strengths of the proposal and any areas where it could be improved.
The grant proposal that I selected was the proposal of Georgia to the Atlanta Women Foundation “The Proposal from Planned Parenthood”. This grant proposed a plan to improve awareness and permit HPV vaccines.
The grant was targeted at low-income families and would include the girls and their mothers who will be able to join the program of YMCA and also provide education on cervical cancer.
The YMCA of Greater Atlanta seems to be a stakeholder in the grant. The funding would provide training for staff members to be able to select groups of mothers and daughters. The funding also would help planned parenthood give free vaccination after completing the cervical cancer education program.
The funding would also help with purchasing the items needed to educate the program. The amount on the grant is different from the amount on the letter, the grant is 25,000 and the letter says 26,050.
Explain how you would improve on the grant proposal to convince the funder that funding this program would have a positive and measurable effect on the community.
There is any improvement on this grant. However, the grant may need to be asking for more funding so the larger population could be able to get more access to the program. The grant is really useful and it seems to be awarded 25,000 to run a captain program. In my perspective, the grant required all the guidelines.
The grant also provided the demographics of the population targeted. The grant also provided the plans for how the program was going to be executed. The grant provided planned parenthood history and other accomplishment programs given by the agency. The grant also reviewed the staff that would be running the program.
The grant described expenses and provided information on expenses that would go to each stakeholder. There also was an agenda for the implantation of the program. The grant provided an objective for a program and how its outcomes would be evaluated. And over again this grant was a great review.
I would only recommend more funding for the program to help more numbers of individuals. I would also track the progress of the program to come out with the conclusion if the program would need to be extended when reading the propofol which I didn’t see it.
References
Northouse, P. G. (2021). Introduction to Leadership: Concepts and Practice 5th ed. Washington: Sage.
Ruffalo, D. N. (2017). Grant writing: Moving from generating ideas to applying to grants that matter. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 236–244.
Colleague 2: LaKeisha
Discussion 1: Funding Through Grants
Key Elements to Grant Writing
According to Grant writing: Moving from generating ideas to applying to grants that matter (Nelson & Ruffalo, 2017), there are four key elements when going through the grant writing process; and those four elements are: the motivations behind writing the grant, the area of interest, selections for partnerships, and the actions or steps to move the grant proposal forward.
There must be an apparent reason or purpose for writing the grant. Therefore, a grant proposal should include a thorough project description of resources, plan of action, and projected outcomes. When writing the grant proposal, another key element is to secure funding for the grant.
Description of the Grant Proposal and Strengths Associated
The grant proposal that I chose is an Atlanta, Georgia, request support for a meal delivery program for low-income people with HIV/AIDS and their families (Candid, n.d.).
The proposal is from Project Open Hand Atlanta to The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta. The program’s success that Project Open Hand proposed is connected to nutrition resulting in positive health outcomes for their clients (Candid, n.d.).
The strength associated with this grant proposal is that the write-up received excellent reviews. The reviewer mentioned the writing style as easy to read and understand; furthermore, the grant proposal utilised a table to demonstrate how their employees and board members exhibit the population served by the program (Candid, n.d.). Having staff and board members that can relate and empathise with the clients is a plus.
Improvement of the Grant Proposal
This grant proposal was well thought out and very well put together. The proposed grant funds benefit the health and well-being of those individuals and their families in need is an excellent description of the projected outcome. I would not change anything about this grant proposal. This program would have a positive and measurable effect on the community.
References
Candid. (n.d.). Sample Documents. https://grantspace.org/resources/sample-documents/
Nelson, D. & Ruffalo, L. (2017, October 24). Grant writing: Moving from generating ideas to applying to grants that matter. The International Journal of Psychiatry in Medicine, 52(3), 236-244. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/009121741…