For organizations engaged in projects designed to benefit communities, distilling the overall impact of that project into a list of concrete and measurable objectives can prove challenging. Unlike profitable businesses, nonprofit organizations and public entities are not necessarily wired to produce a clean-cut demonstration of return on investment for their projects. However, with grant dollars dwindling while community needs continue to increase, funders are looking for increasingly empirical data to demonstrate that their money is being well spent. In the examples below, a few average (or worse) project objectives are diagnosed and treated with a good dose of specificity. While these examples are purely fictional, the methods used to improve them can be used for a variety of grant applications.

In today's competitive grants market, there are a variety of sure-fire ways to get your grant proposal tossed into the rejection pile.

Show me the money! As far as a grant funder is considered, it is probably more appropriate to say “show me how you are going to spend the money”. For the applicant, it is the piece of the proposal that is likely to keep you up at night. After all, the reason you are seeking grant funding the first place is because you are most likely facing a funding deficit for an important project. It is only natural that you may be preoccupied with budgetary needs while you are still developing the project and the accompanying proposal narrative.

Despite the persistently slow economy and ongoing budget cuts at every level, the U.S. Federal Government awarded nearly $600 billion in grants in 2011, which represents a 20% increase over the approximately $500 billion in grants awarded in 2009. On average, only about three to five percent of grant proposals submitted to the federal government are awarded funding. With more budget cuts on the horizon, the already tough competition for federal grant dollars is poised to become even more fierce. That means that now more than ever, only the 'best of the best' proposals will get funded. The loss of just a single scoring point can make the difference between success and failure. I regularly work as a peer reviewer for a number of federal funding agencies so I see firsthand what sets winning grant proposals apart from the others. I would like to share with you several common pitfalls that I frequently run across that ruin an otherwise solid proposal's chances of getting funded.

Many people submit their grant application and anticipate the end of the process: notification from the funder on whether funding is approved. Of course, those who win awards understand that the notice is not the end, but a transition to a new phase in post award administration and project deployment. Unfortunately, many who are denied funding simply accept the fate of their application as the end of the road. Being notified that an application has been denied funding may be a depressing setback, but is should never be viewed as the end of the grantseeking process. Some of the most successful organizations at pulling down grants don’t win every time they submit an application. Successful organizations are denied funding and ask themselves: How do we pick up the pieces and move forward?

Anyone who's been involved with the grants process knows its one thing to find the right grant and another thing to actually submit an application. Once you go through the trials and tribulations of putting the application together, you have may have looked over the application hundreds of times, or you may not have had much time to look it over at all. In this economic state, organizations are downsizing and people are being asked to take on more and more tasks. This can hurt the quality of an application when the submitter doesn't have enough time to properly proofread the application before it is time to submit.

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.

With what seems like a never-ending saga of budget cuts, organizations across the country continue to seek out alternative sources of funding such as grants from different government sources or private foundations. Many of these requests, perhaps unsurprisingly, tend to be for basic operating expenses, salaries, or equipment such as new computers or technology. Even as more organizations line up to compete for grants for basic purposes, funders are actually seeking much more comprehensive projects beyond these kinds of requests.

Grant funding, like any other competition, inevitably results in winners and losers - and unfortunately, the latter tend to outnumber the former. Take for instance, the Investing in Innovation program available from the U.S. Department of Education. This year's competition brought out over 500 applicants for just under $150 million in total funding. It is likely fewer than 30 of these applications will receive funding - making it just as unlikely to receive grant funding as it is to get into Harvard.