On the heels of last week is the continuation of the Fels grant. I said that I wrote the post grant report in three drafts and that Brenna was satisfied. When Deb went over it she realized that I may have missed something. The report had specific guidelines and questions that needed to be addressed, which I had. What I had tried to do in the beginning was write a report containing all the answers they required, but what happened was I had a jumbled report of various answers and some were missing. So I went through and basically made it into a checklist. I copied and pasted the question and below it had the answer. It took a couple of more drafts but I got through it and it looks much stronger. On Friday Deb had me go through, put everything that was required together and put it all in an envelope to drive it over the the Samuel L. Fels office to personally deliver it. I looked through the narrative and Deb barely changed a thing I wrote, so I was still able to write a complete report from scratch. And I learned something very important, it doesn't have to look like a term paper or an article, it just has to be thorough and well written.
I'm beginning to like grant writing, I feel I could be good at it and I find a real satisfaction in this kind of work.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Monday, January 25, 2010
Time to play catch up
Sorry I haven't posted in awhile, but I'm back.
The Holidays were an interesting time for us. I had been working on the Puffin Grant for about a week. But I got sick and couldn't get in the day before the deadline. Deb said all was good, her and Brenna were able to take care of it. I read over their final narrative and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of the stuff I came up with still in it. Gives me hope that I'm doing a good job and that they'll want to keep me around.
That following week was the deadline for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant. That was a biggie. Not just in terms of funding but in the size of the grant paperwork as well. I spent a great deal of time helping them put it all in order. I did do a lot of writing with it as well. I took what we had from last year and updated it. They only want the last three fiscal years in the narrative so it was a process of eliminating the old and writing about the new. We had to put together a list of all relevant staff and board members, with bios, so I went through and updated that list, adding myself as well writing up bios for three new staff members who had never written bios before. I also found the checklist, made copies and got everything in order to be mailed off. I found the publicity shots and copied them to the disk. But the next day when I wasn't there Deb discovered that we needed a Powerpoint presentation made, which she did. That's good because I don't know anything about Powerpoint, but I wish I could have been there so I could have learned something about it.
This past week was pretty slow. No deadlines looming so it was time for housekeeping. Deb had me go through the Excel spreadsheet for 2009-2010 grants and make sure all relevant data was in. Such as; have we applied for this grant yet, what's the deadline, how much are we asking for, have we been approved, what are the post grant deadlines, etc. This was a two-day process. First I went through the computer files to see what had been submitted, etc. Then I had to go through the paper files to catch anything that I missed the first time through. Tedious but I really did learn my way through their filing system and about a lot of the grants they regularly apply for since I had to go to a lot of websites to get info.
Finally on Friday I took the initiative and created a new file. We had a Word document for our running stats. But it had been hastily thrown together. I made up a new Excel file so that we could more easily track certain stats throughout the various seasons in a more organized way. After that was finished Brenna had me write the post grant report on the Fels grant we received last year. This is the most exciting thing I've done so far because it was the first narrative I wrote from scratch. Usually before I cut and pasted from previous grants and did some editing. But this one was all from scratch. I only had to do three drafts before Brenna was satisfied and sent it off. And she was pretty much happy with the first draft, just a few edits here and there made it work. Now a post grant report is not as important as the actual grant request, but it is important because without a good one we may not qualify again. I definitely saved it for my final portfolio.
So far I am loving my internship. I'm meeting great people, like Bruce Graham a nationally recognized Philadelphia playwright. And Joe Canuso, the Artistic Director for Theatre Exile read my short play "GlenGary Glenn Braveheart" and loved it. He's also said he'd be more than happy to read my masters thesis and give his feedback.
So far, very good.
The Holidays were an interesting time for us. I had been working on the Puffin Grant for about a week. But I got sick and couldn't get in the day before the deadline. Deb said all was good, her and Brenna were able to take care of it. I read over their final narrative and was pleasantly surprised to see a lot of the stuff I came up with still in it. Gives me hope that I'm doing a good job and that they'll want to keep me around.
That following week was the deadline for the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts Grant. That was a biggie. Not just in terms of funding but in the size of the grant paperwork as well. I spent a great deal of time helping them put it all in order. I did do a lot of writing with it as well. I took what we had from last year and updated it. They only want the last three fiscal years in the narrative so it was a process of eliminating the old and writing about the new. We had to put together a list of all relevant staff and board members, with bios, so I went through and updated that list, adding myself as well writing up bios for three new staff members who had never written bios before. I also found the checklist, made copies and got everything in order to be mailed off. I found the publicity shots and copied them to the disk. But the next day when I wasn't there Deb discovered that we needed a Powerpoint presentation made, which she did. That's good because I don't know anything about Powerpoint, but I wish I could have been there so I could have learned something about it.
This past week was pretty slow. No deadlines looming so it was time for housekeeping. Deb had me go through the Excel spreadsheet for 2009-2010 grants and make sure all relevant data was in. Such as; have we applied for this grant yet, what's the deadline, how much are we asking for, have we been approved, what are the post grant deadlines, etc. This was a two-day process. First I went through the computer files to see what had been submitted, etc. Then I had to go through the paper files to catch anything that I missed the first time through. Tedious but I really did learn my way through their filing system and about a lot of the grants they regularly apply for since I had to go to a lot of websites to get info.
Finally on Friday I took the initiative and created a new file. We had a Word document for our running stats. But it had been hastily thrown together. I made up a new Excel file so that we could more easily track certain stats throughout the various seasons in a more organized way. After that was finished Brenna had me write the post grant report on the Fels grant we received last year. This is the most exciting thing I've done so far because it was the first narrative I wrote from scratch. Usually before I cut and pasted from previous grants and did some editing. But this one was all from scratch. I only had to do three drafts before Brenna was satisfied and sent it off. And she was pretty much happy with the first draft, just a few edits here and there made it work. Now a post grant report is not as important as the actual grant request, but it is important because without a good one we may not qualify again. I definitely saved it for my final portfolio.
So far I am loving my internship. I'm meeting great people, like Bruce Graham a nationally recognized Philadelphia playwright. And Joe Canuso, the Artistic Director for Theatre Exile read my short play "GlenGary Glenn Braveheart" and loved it. He's also said he'd be more than happy to read my masters thesis and give his feedback.
So far, very good.
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