Many folks believe that once they’ve logged in with their SAM username and password per the instructions in step 6 they are all set, but they’ve only created the account, they haven’t fully registered with SAM.  Failure to see SAM registration through in its entirety will result in your organization not being able to submit federal grants.

So what else do you need to do?

Every grant manager I know earnestly wants to ensure that everyone who applies to their program is clear on the requirements and has all the tools to present their project for consideration. More compliant applications means more projects in the pool and potentially better projects receiving awards at the end of the process.

Today, most grantseekers are familiar with the Federal Electronic Grants Clearinghouse, better known by its URL, Grants.gov. You may not know that when it was launched, the portal represented nearly ten years of work by federal officials, often volunteers working with no budget and extremely limited support.

Across the U.S., private foundations are experiencing an ever-increasing demand for grant funding.  Unfortunately, for many of these agencies, the supply of funding has diminished in recent years. Among hundreds or even thousands of unsolicited grant proposals, few new applicants are able to close the deal by receiving an award. Despite this bleak reality, there are several steps your organization can take to strengthen your approach to foundation funding and increase your likelihood of being among the elite organizations awarded with grant support.

While each grant proposal will have its own set of specific guidelines and required supporting documents, grant writers can save a lot of time (and probably spare some headaches) by maintaining a "Frequently Used" file of the most commonly-requested supporting documents and materials. Depending on the type of programs to which your organization typically applies for funding, your list may vary from the one below.  However, determining which documents to file and keeping the files up to date can smooth out the proposal development process for several different grants and, if you find yourself pinched for time, can mean the difference between a high-quality, successful submission and an unsatisfactory or incomplete proposal.

The decision to submit a grant application frequently stems from a combination of an organization's needs, broader goals, and the opening of a suitable grant program.  However, once pen hits paper, these broader ideas must be fully examined and expressed in terms of specific goals that can be carried out and evaluated for success.  One critical element of almost any grant program that can sometimes prove to be a sticking point is the identification of the proposed project's targeted population—in other words, who will benefit from the grant project.  Your target population will likely be initially determined by your organization's current patients, students, community members, or other groups currently served, and by the parameters set out in the grant guidance. However, it is important to dig deeper and iron out specific details related to the target recipients of the project's services. By treating this facet of the application as an opportunity to demonstrate your project's readiness and anticipated effectiveness, you can strengthen your proposal's competitiveness and gain a favorable review from the granting agency.  While developing specific details about your project's implementation can be difficult in the beginning stages of conception, it is well worth the extra effort.

With the U.S. Government's increasing focus on streamlining resources and engaging in whole-community and regional approaches to education, law enforcement, and healthcare, collaboration is a critical component of several federal grant programs.  Many organizations are already engaged in valuable and mutually beneficial collaborative projects that fit seamlessly within the guidelines of the grant to which they're applying for funding.  However, sometimes a grant's requirements might lead you down a new path of collaboration.  While there are obvious benefits to working with other organizations to accomplish a project—additional personnel and support, additional resources, broader project impact—there can also be pitfalls that result from miscommunication, different organizational objectives, and the failure of one or more partners to fulfill their responsibilities, all of which can threaten the success of the project.  There are several steps you can take in the beginning to ensure that your collaborative efforts will be more likely to result in a successful project period, increasing your likelihood of building on a successful partnership and receiving future grant awards for continued impact in your community.

At least once a day someone will ask me to provide them some tips and strategies to improve their grantseeking efforts. As simple as the request sounds, it actually is a very difficult one to address. Volume is not the issue, as there are reams of information that can be provided to organizations seeking to maximize the potential of grant funding. Unfortunately, this may be an instance where the right answers are being provided but the wrong question has been asked. In other words, the problem is that when folks are seeking information at such a high and unspecified level, they usually don' t know where to start. When organizations are just getting their feet wet with grants, information overload may have the reverse effect of intimidating involved staff members to the point where they become discouraged with grant funding mechanisms and throw in the towel. This article is intended for those organizations that may be asking the wrong question and really want some feedback on where to begin.

The start of the new year means big business for gyms and fitness clubs as overstuffed holiday revelers seek to atone for their overindulgence by resolving to get in shape and lose those extra pounds. Whether or not this year's flock will stick with their goals remains to be seen, but the beginning of the year is also a great time to think about getting your grant-seeking program in shape. Whether you have yet to embark on a quest for grant funding or are a weather-beaten veteran of the process, take this opportunity to rethink your strategies, or develop an entirely new one, and make 2012 your most successful grants year yet.

The underlying power of the internet has always been the connection of ideas and people without regard to temporal, physical, social, or other common restraints. Through this communicative ease provided by the internet, crowd-sourcing is becoming a prominent feature in many aspects of our lives. Crowd-sourcing is essentially the enabling of a mass collaboration of individuals to contribute to a task normally reserved for one individual or a set number of individuals. The most prominent example to date is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia open to contributions and edits from anyone who chooses to participate.