Barbara's Grants Success Story

I think of myself as a social justice activist who powers the cause through grant writing, currently working with a faith-based nonprofit with deep roots in our community. Before taking Maryn’s grants training I was confident in my own skills but had new responsibilities bringing a team through the job of writing more complex grants together. I needed a solid approach that was broken out more understandably than my own gestalt of “It’s simple, just write! Here’s the due date.”

I was feeling our organization’s internal forces pull me away from being mission-centered. I was very apprehensive that our team was designing programs on the fly that would fit changing funding criteria.

Now, after working with Maryn, I’m excited that I can put my heart back into the writing. I feel more equipped with rationales for doing what I believe is right—like staying true to what our organization is really about and not building a written façade to fit a funder’s criteria.

I especially learned a lot in the budgeting session. Maryn was very encouraging about the issue of infrastructure costs and gave lots of practical help to nail down estimates for the impact volunteers have on the program budget.

I was able to grapple with the fear of approaching foundation folks and understanding their perspective better. Maryn did a great job of clearing my misconceptions about how funders review grants and select the projects they want to fund.

When I signed up to work with Maryn I expected a fairly standard and staid presentation of the elements of writing a grant application. I thought I was going in just for a review, to sharpen the organization I have in my head about my approach to grant-writing in order to bring members of my team up to speed to their new grant responsibilities.

What I actually got was an engaging and fresh take on both the art and science of grant-writing. I learned a overarching structure for the entire process that was broken into understandable sections—and it made me energized as a creative person crafting to a specific audience about something I’m passionate about. Maryn got me back in the game in thinking about the funder’s ideas of investment and partnership.

My team understands how to write from the perspective of community need and funder investment rather than just singing the praises of what we’ve been doing for the past 40+ years as an organization. They are more confident in tracking program elements directly to budget. I am certainly more confident talking to funders and engaging them in our early program design and planning instead of doing it all ourselves and hoping they validate our work with funding.

“ … an engaging and fresh take on both the art and science of grant-writing …”