Grants: Avoiding Common Mistakes to Increase Chances of Success - Essay Sample

Introduction

Whenever one is applying for a grant, several mistakes may occur, which may prevent the success of the implementation. These mistakes include:

Is your time best spent reading someone else’s essay? Get a 100% original essay FROM A CERTIFIED WRITER!

Order now

• Not following instructions. Many grant applicants make their applications in a rush forgetting to follow some of the instructions given. The federal government and other agencies receive grant applications in thousands, and the first step of sorting them is by typing aside those incomplete applications. Though it is easy to follow all instructions, many applicants assume some of the requirements. For instance, if the funder asks for a three-year budget, and the applicant gives a budget for just one year, the applicant will have missed the whole application in totality.
• The other common mistake made by applicants is failing to center their applications to the areas of interest of the funder. Every funding organization has areas on investment in which they offer grants. When the applicant makes an application outside those interests, chances of their applications going through are very slim. The applicant should, therefore, research about the funding organization to know whether they consider his area of use.
• Not asking for money. In a bid to have it simple, many applicants process their applications without specifying the amount they are applying for and the budget to support the application amount. No matter how good the application is, if one doesn't specify the amount they are seeking, the funder cannot determine for them but would instead reject the request.
• Requesting the wrong amount. The amount one asks should be supported by the project's budget. When one asks for funding of either too high than the budget or too low, it leads to rejection. On the same note, one should research for the amount the funders are fond of giving for similar applications to ensure that they apply within the funder's budget. Else the application won't go through.
• Submitting a rudimentary budget. The amount any grant proposal seeks to get should be equal to the amount of work the planned budget would be able to execute. Hence the program officer in charge of receiving the proposals will be in a position to detect any fraud in the written grant and therefore decide whether or not the award will be accepted. As a result, the submission of a crude budget will be declined because there is no clear information on what the budget is going to accomplish.
• Failing to ask for a grant. It will hinder any chances of ever getting a donation in the way that the reviewers of the proposal will not be in a position to offer any award to nothing that does not seek a gift. In terms of that, they will not be able to discern if the proposal will transform lives, whether it will make losses or maybe if the study carried out will reflect materially.
• Focusing the request on your needs as opposed to that of the community you are serving. The given type of proposal is biased in that one particular person wants to benefit from the grant in as opposed to the community being served. It would not be eligible in the sense that a donation is to help give back to the society, such as providing excellent healthcare and good security and not to solve the needs of the one writing the proposal.

Based on these requirements for a good proposal, we would improve our grant proposal request in several areas. To begin with, we will carry out extensive research to identify the budgetary allocation limits of funding agencies to ensure we create an application within the lender's limits for similar projects. We will also improve our application to ensure that we follow all the laid guidelines for the funding agency, such as generating a three-year budgetary appropriation.

Post-Award Phase

The post-award phase starts at the point of granting the award. The period begins with plans for the implementation of the program, reporting the outcome and testing and auditing the program to measure the outcome. After requested grant has been awarded and disbursed; a grant manager officer is appointed at the funding agency to oversee the implementation and reporting compliance by the awardees' agency. Representatives are selected from the funding agency to manage the full cycle of the application and may conduct on-site visits from time to time to assess the progress and audit the program and through this, there is the assurance of budget allocation for the project.

After projects implementation, financial reports, and other reports relating to the program are passed to the funding agency, which ensures that the requirements laid out in the funding approval terms are being met. Upon completion of the project, the awardee submits the final financial report to the funding agency that reviews them and brings the award cycle to a closer or renewal upon further grant request.

On the side of the applicant, the grant is implemented as per the budget and funding requirements. The applicant also reports on the progress of the program both for the program and financial standing regularly. The awardee also carries audits to the project to ensure that there are embezzlements and mismanagement of funds. The applicant is also obliged to respond to all queries regarding the progress of the project and financial standings to the funding agency for scrutiny and accountability.

Upon the epilogue of the project, the awardee is obliged to submit a financial and program report to the funding agency. OMB Uniform Grants Guidance 200.343 requires that the applicant submit all financial statements and other required reports to the funding agency within 90 days upon closure of the project (Sims, 2016). The funding agency reviews the submitted reports to ensure that the amount granted was spent prudently as laid out in their requirements and that it indeed benefited the community it was intended to help.

To ensure that the amount granted is spent prudently and that there are no frauds, I would put in place a robust quality control and reporting system that will go in line to ensure that the project guidelines are followed to the latter and that no amount of money is fraudulently used.

Information Technology Systems

For seamless project and financial management, an Enterprise Resource Planning system will be applied. An ERP system is a highly integrated management system, which combines human resource, project control, and financial management systems into one intelligent system, that allows for control of the whole project from one desk. The system will be applied to our organization due to its excellent reporting functionality that allows for the measuring of results and outcomes of the project. Among the reports, the system will generate a daily report showing the number of clients served by our organization, and finances spent in these programs. The system will also generate monthly reports showing the impact the program has made in the society targeted and whether the organization is still adhering to its budgetary plan. An ERP also comes in with business intelligence functionality. By having digital activities in a stand-alone system, an ERP system will help in planning as one can compare outputs from different departments and automatically generate targets and adjusts budgets based on need assessment of each department.

Continuous Quality Improvement

Increasing stress and decreased financing on non-profit organizations call for the implementation of performance policies through enhancement techniques to guarantee continuity (Al-Tabbaa, Gadd & Ankrah, 2013). Governments are also exerting pressure to funders requiring them to ensure that their economic assistance recipients can perform services efficiently (Al-Tabbaa et al., 2013). To achieve this, a Continuous Quality Improvement system (CQI) will serve as an essential management strategy for our organization to create the competitive capacity to deal with internal environment instability and uncertainty (Oprime, Glauco & Marcio, 2012). CQI is a gradual, constant improvement that takes place through incremental change (Fryer & Ogden, 2014). For continuity of non-profit making organizations, and for meeting their programs, they need to apply a continuous quality improvement strategy to help them mitigate future threats and for their survival even during economic recession periods and times of natural disaster (Chakravorty & Hales, 2017).

The evolving climate is making it hard for daily activities for our organizations. To meet these difficulties requires ongoing changes in the process of structure, management, and organization. As our organization provides healthcare facilities, we are competing with a more inflated industry with less financing accessibility as the U.S. Federal Government continues to decrease medical financing (Gupta, Brigman & Sahi, 2015). We will, therefore, apply a theory of constraints to improve our performance and enhance customer satisfaction with limited resources that we will get.

A committee on CQI will be made which will carry regular assessments and quality management audits to ensure that they are aligned with our targets, goals, and budgetary allocation. When this committee identifies defects, an immediate measure will be taken to prevent more damage, as root cause analysis is done to unearth the root cause of the error. Then a resolution will be made by the management as advised by the committee to rectify and improve the performance. Business Continuity Program (BIP) will be put in place from the beginning of the project to ensure that the program continues even during financial constraints or technological failures. To achieve these outcomes, our quality loop will be a spiral of steps we apply to ensure we deliver quality in our services. The loop will involve identifying customer's need, developing programs to address those needs, and then assessing the product with the requirements to ensure that we fulfill those needs with the outcomes generated.

Stakeholder's Feedback

As our program involves bringing together several stakeholders, their feedback will be of great help to the success of our operations. The primary stakeholder in our project is our financiers. They help our organization with the finances needed for running the project. Their feedback will form part of our Continuous Quality Improvement program to ensure that we are working our targets and the funders' expectations in the program. We will also be working together with security officers in the community to ensure the security of human traffic victims. We will rely upon their reports and insights to know where to put more concerns on and how the project is progressing in returning hope to these victims.

By incorporating these feedbacks to our CQI, every stakeholder will be served as a customer of the process and products in the process. As customer satisfaction is our core agenda, everyone in the lifecycle of the project from a team member to a client and board members will be served as customers in the process, and each one's satisfaction will be our primary goal. The project will, therefore, have a guaranteed success as each customer in the process cycle will be satisfied.

References

Al-Tabbaa, O., Gadd, K., & Ankrah, S. (2013). Excellence Models in Nonprofit Context: Strategies for Continuous Improvement. The International Journal of Quality &Reliability Management, 30, 590-612. Doi: 10.1108/0265671131131552

Chakravorty, S. S., & Hales, D. N. (2017). Sustainability of Process Improvements: AnApplication of the Experiential Learning Model (ELM). International Journal ofProduction Research, 55, 4931-4947. doi:10.1080/00207543.2016.1277278

Fryer, K. J., & Ogden, S. M. (2014). Mo...