Grant Writing and Teaching
Grant funding is critical to moving your museum, archives, or cultural organization ahead.
Grants fund so much of our work in archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations. Are you new to grants or want to dust off your grant knowledge? Do you want to learn what makes a competitive grant project idea? Or, perhaps you want to take your grant writing skills to the next level? Yes? Perfect! We have services, resources, and courses that will help you get in the game.
Historical collections cost money.
Grant funding is critical to secure the staffing, supplies, and expertise needed to preserve and present historical artifacts. But grant writing can be time consuming and challenging, and how do you even begin to find the right grant opportunity to fund your project?
In the first year of Rachael's career, she realized pretty quickly that funding for archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations was required to get the job done. She became a grant acquisition expert to get the resources we need to fund our collections and get back to doing the jobs we love.
Don’t let your project be a casualty of this year’s budget. If you need funding to care for and promote your collection we can help. Our team will help you identify grant worthy projects and teach you how to apply for them.
If you're ready to partner on a project, please send an email to: [email protected].
We're on a mission.
Sometimes you just don't have the time or the know-how to apply for grants effectively. We only accept 2-3 grant clients a year so that we can focus intensively on your grant strategy, project creation, and successful application. From small local grants, to private foundations, to large federal grants--we've applied to them all and won. If you know your organization needs to get into grants, but you can't afford to do it yourself, then it's time to work with an expert who can save you time and money. This is an investment in your organization, to build a ramp up to grant award readiness.
If you're ready to partner on a project, please send an email to: [email protected].
Services Offered
We offer grant acquisition and management services to clients who need an expert on their team for any of the following activities: strategy, writing, reviewing, and managing. In 2019, Rachael hit a personal record of raising more than $752,000 across three clients, with only 33% of the total award amount coming from grant awards over $100,000.
Strategy
We only accept 2 or 3 grant clients a year regardless if they are applying at the local, state, regional, or national grant level. Each client requires a unique grant strategy that meets them where they are. Client past award history, current organization capacity, and grant vision help to determine which grant opportunities the client will most likely to be successful with. Our job is to evaluate these factors, work with staff and stakeholders to craft a grant acquisition strategy, and deliver a report that: 1. Outlines priority grant projects (as revealed and created over the course of our work); and 2. Craft a list of grant opportunities the clients should apply for based on the client’s competitiveness for the opportunity.
Writing
For clients who don’t have the time or ability to construct grant projects and write grant applications, we can provide those services. Most clients that we write for have already gone through the strategy work with us. We will not engage in writing a client’s grant that we determine to not be a good fit for the client, as that means the client’s chances of success are not high due to an ill-fitting grant.
Reviewing
For clients who have capacity to write their own grants but would like to increase their competitive edge, we offer reviewing services. We will evaluate the grant opportunity being applied to, we will review the application against the grant’s criteria markers, and we will provide written feedback with verbal (live) troubleshooting suggestions. As Rachael has both written and served on grant review panels, her experience and insight help clients gain a competitive edge and confidence in the application process. Given how much time and energy go into applying, this review service is one way to ensure the time and energy investment is worth it, i.e. successful.
Managing
For many clients it can be difficult to find a staff person who has the time or experience in managing a grant project. As someone who has successfully completed countless grant projects, Rachael can serve as the grant manager to ensure milestones are met, reporting is done properly, and the project completes successfully. This can be especially helpful for large grants with intricate reporting requirements.
Watch Our Expertise in Action
Check out our webinars to see our expertise in action. We have an entire playlist dedicated to collections care and management. Click the top right corner to see the full playlist.
A Survivor's Guide to Museum Grant Writing
This book is for anyone who wants to delve into the grant acquisition process and confidently apply for grant funding. It takes a pragmatic approach to such topics as seeing each grant application as an opportunity, learning and moving on from inevitable failures, using grant acquisition to provide valuable financial sustenance to the museum without negatively impacting staff, and applying a systematic, common sense approach that builds the necessary skills to survive the grant writing process and thrive within it.
GET YOUR FREE ECOPYGet into Grants Program, Workshops, and Trainings
Sometimes online courses is just not your thing. We've delivered workshops across the country and can tailor content specific to your organization. Workshops and trainings can be delivered in-person or virtually via Zoom. Please view the workshop and training options in more detail below and schedule a consult call with us to discuss your needs.
Get into Grants Program
Most organizations skip important steps in the grant process and as a result they fail to secure funding. The Get Into Grants! program will increase your chances of getting a grant with a proven, step by step process to set you up for project funding success. And bonus — once you learn the process, you can use it again and again for all your future grant work! This program is structured to get your organization up and running quickly with a 2-day onsite intensive to develop your organization’s grant acquisition strategy, followed by a report compilation of grant opportunity matches based on your *new* and fully formed competitive grant project ideas. This program takes approximately 6-weeks to complete.
Online Courses
We now offer a suite of on-demand courses via the Kajabi course platform. Each course is created based on Rachael's more than 10-years experience in the field with materials that she has toured with nationally providing workshops in-person. The courses come with video instruction, guided exercises, and an assortment of supportive documents based off her popular in-person workshops. We now offer a suite of on-demand courses via the Kajabi course platform. The courses come with video instruction, guided exercises, and an assortment of supportive documents based off my popular in-person workshops. Rachael's teaching style is to present the strategy, give examples, and offer insight into each of the subject areas covered. Going through these courses is an opportunity to get to know her and her teaching style before engaging her in the grant acquisition services she offers. Scroll on for more information on each course.
Workshop: Going from Zero to Winning with Grants
This workshop offers a sandbox for constructing competitive grant project ideas, reveals proposal pitfalls, and provides a template for creating a winning grant proposal. The workshop is a mix of lecture, guided instruction with handouts, brainstorming, group discussion, group exercises, and independent exercises. Participants will receive a Get into Grants packet of materials to use during the workshop and take home with them.
Learning Objectives:
- Participants will learn how to tease out potential grant project ideas by working their daily needs into a creative, and attractive grant project.
- Participants will sandbox their grant project ideas to determine the project structure, timeline, measurables, and other necessary project facets.
- Participants will dive into the purpose of universal proposal sections and learn to avoid proposal pitfalls.
- Participants will have take home exercises and a grant template they can feel confident in.
Workshop: Get into Grants
Get into Grants is a free mini-course that provides an overview of grants specific to archives, museums, and cultural heritage organizations. Whether you're new to grants or just need a refresher, this mini-course can quickly get up to speed with grant fundamentals specific to our field. Get into Grants includes the following topics: income streams, funder and grant types, where to find grants, how to choose the right grant opportunity to apply for, common application elements to prepare for, tips to succeed, and proposal pitfalls to avoid. The course comes with video instruction, a copy of the slide deck, and an assortment of tip sheets, checklists, and templates to support your ongoing grant work. Rachael's teaching style is to present the strategy, give examples, and offer insight into each of the subjects covered. Going through this course is an opportunity to get to know her and her teaching style before committing to a future paid course, or engaging her in the grant acquisition services she offers.
Are You New to Grants?
Get into Grants is a free mini course that provides an overview of the grant landscape for the cultural heritage field. The course lessons will guide you through the initial work of finding grant opportunities, teach you how to choose the right grant to apply for, and prepare you for what to expect in the grant application. Whether you're brand new, or just need a refresher, this course is a great way to quickly get up to speed and get into grants!
GET THE FREE COURSENot quite ready to get to work? No problem!
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