Grant Writing: Avoiding Rejection

Grant Writing: Avoiding Rejection udemy course

This course will train you in how to avoid failure when writing and submitting grant applications

This course is designed from a completely fresh and unique perspective. Because your grant application likely has between a 50-97% chance of being rejected, this course is specifically designed to ensure you have the skills to make sure that your application sits in the percentage that it is funded!

This course has been built from the ground up to help you to avoid both the common and less common mistakes in grant writing. It will completely change the way in which you approach each element of your grant funding application.

By ensuring you have a full understanding of how and why proposals are reject, you will approach the different sections of your grant application in a different way, allowinf you to mitigate flaws and errors and write proposals that are convincing and flawless. Importantly it gives you best practice for how to write each section of your grant, including your case for support, your justification of resources, and your plans for evaluation.

Most importantly, it will teach you how to craft your proposal to ensure it is highly competitive, so that the funder will find it extremely hard to find a reason to reject it.

A unique aspect of this course is you will learn about how to write an effective grant application from an instructor (Professor James Smith) who actually Chairs a number of funding panels and who is actually responsible for making grant funding decisions

Your instructor, Professor James Smith, PhD, is an established and popular instructor on the Udemy platform. Feedback that he has received from Udemy students includes;

"Very easy to understand and the instructor spoke slowly enough that I could let the information sink in" - KW

"Very informative and thorough. Getting ready to take the next course. The assignments with the instructor's example following were very helpful" - KR

"Very helpful information from a well-qualified Professor. Concisely presented in a format that facilitates easy notetaking" - BDP

This course is ideal for you if;

• You want to learn how to write successful grants, rather than applications that are rejected.

• You are an academic or Lecturer or Assistant Professor who wants to secure grant funding

• You are grant writing for a 501.C3, a non-profit or a small/medium sized enterprise

• You want to craft a grant proposal that is difficult for the funder to reject

• You are undertaking fundraising and want to target your effort effectively and professionally

In this course you will develop an advanced understanding of how to approach and write a professional grant application that lacks any serious faults.

This course is split into four modules. Module 1 is called Issues with the Application Process and it covers how the decisions you make at the application stage can influence how the funder makes decisions on your project. The funder will assess your application against a number of criteria including eligibility, complete information and adherence to grant guidelines. The reviewers that are appointed by the funder will assess elements such as attention detail and the feasibility and timeline of a project. These are all areas where the funder will be assessing your ability to comply with the requirements that they have set out, and these are the most common areas where a grant is rejected at a very early stage in the review process.

In Module 2, we will actually deal with the specific elements of your proposal that are highly scrutinised during the grant application process. These specific elements of your proposal are tested and assessed for weaknesses and issues and we will cover how the reviewers will use the information that you provide to make a recommendation. This module covers elements like a weak case for support, poor objectives, budgetary issues, lack of external partnerships and critical errors in the approach or methodology. We will also cover poor communication of outcomes and ensuring full alignment to what the funder wants. If you have already completed a grant application and unfortunately received a rejection decision then you will recognise and appreciate that these issues cover some of the most common reasons for why reviewers will support rejection an application.

In Module 3, we cover the main issues that are raised in terms of the application team i.e. you and your colleagues or collaborators who are writing and submitting the application. We will cover issues like your track record, how you can impart your own views in the application without it appearing biased, how you can align your grant applications to your expertise and why its important not to stack applicants on your grant proposal. All of these areas fall under issues with the applicants and since the applicants are assessed with an equal weighting to the project or proposal itself, it’s important for the application team to be properly justified and defined.

In the final module (Module 4), we cover about conceptual issues in your grant. The grant concept is what you are trying to sell to the funder. The concept is something that is new, something that can actually demonstrate impact or real world change, something that is good value for money and something that can actually be achieved. In this module we cover the common issues in all of these areas so that when you write and review your application, you’ll be able to identify how or what the reviewers will see as negative points.

In summary, this course contains accessible and comprehensive classes which will train you not only to craft an effective application, but will give you a full understanding of where grant writing mistakes and faults can occur, why funders will reject an application because of these mistakes and most importantly, how you can avoid them.