To effectively propose and perform a Federal grant, your organization needs to be ready in several key areas.
Project definition
Compliance
Policy and procedures
Team
Capture Plan
Training
Let’s talk about each of these areas.
Some of the preparation you performed in readiness provided resources for you such as a winning team and capture plan. There are other resources you need to prepare to win a Federal grant. These resources include:
Collateral,
Plans and agreements, and
Outside services
To find the right grant opportunities, you need to thoroughly evaluate potential funding sources. It would be easy to go to one source where grants are listed and find those you want to apply for to get grant funding. Well, there is the grants.gov website where all Federal grants are listed. However, you should not wait until an opportunity is listed in grants.gov. If you wait until a grant funding announcement is released to the public, then you have significantly reduced your chances of winning grant funding.
This section will cover three topics:
Funding Sources
Funding Lifecycle
Determining Fit
To prepare to win you should understand some fundamentals of grant funding. Based on your project, you should research which Federal agencies have grant funding for your project. Then become familiar with their funding lifecycle such as program plans, budget requests, potential for future or additional allocations for grant funding and their funding cycles. Some agencies release notices of funding opportunities at the beginning of the Federal fiscal year in October. But some have defined period for funding aligned under a program.
Once you are familiar with an awarding agencies program and funding guidelines you can start to determine if your project and organization are a fit, if you have a strong position to win, can mitigate risk, and successfully propose and implement the grant. Some organizations use resources submitting proposals that are not a good fit. It’s like a team sport, plan to win and use your resources wisely.
You want a Federal awarding agency to see you as a viable partner to achieve their goals. To do this, you should represent your company using as many of the methods I'll share with you in this section.