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Ten Habits of Great Grant Writers

Practical Tips from My Three Decades in the Field

Danielle Boyce

You do not need charisma or connections to get your mission funded. You need habits. Drawing on three decades in the field, and years spent reviewing grant applications from the other side of the table, Danielle Boyce turns grant writing into ten learnable habits, illustrated with candid case studies and paired with a free companion toolkit.

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About

About

About the Book

Great grant writers are not defined by charisma or connections.

They are defined by their habits.

After more than thirty years inside grant funded work, as a grant writer, principal investigator, graduate instructor, and grant reviewer, Dr. Danielle Boyce has seen the same challenges appear again and again:

  • passionate founders who cannot translate their mission into fundable programs
  • organizations chasing dollars into projects that pull them off mission
  • talented teams disqualified by fine print nobody read
  • people who believe fundraising is meant for someone else


This book was written to change that.


Ten habits, illustrated with candid case studies from nonprofits, advocacy groups, and research teams, including what the author has seen from the reviewer's side of the table. Plus a clear-eyed chapter on AI in grant writing, and a free companion toolkit of templates, checklists, and worksheets.

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About the Author

Danielle Boyce

Dr. Danielle Boyce is Director, Data Science and Biomedical Informatics and Principal Investigator, Real World Evidence at the ALS Therapy Development Institute. She is an experienced data engineer and analyst with graduate degrees in public health and public administration. She also serves as a faculty member at Johns Hopkins University, Biomedical Informatics and Data Science Section and holds affiliations with the University of Calgary and Emory University. In addition, she is a technical consultant for Data for the Common Good at the University of Chicago.

As the parent of a child with a rare disease, Dr. Boyce has served on several patient and caregiver advisory panels for the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, as well as academic institutions, pharmaceutical companies, and nonprofit organizations. Her work focuses on helping researchers, clinicians, and patient communities use real world data to better understand disease and accelerate research.

She lives in upstate New York with her husband, Jim, and their four children. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering in her community, visiting museums, baking, and doing arts and crafts with her children.

The Leanpub Podcast

Episode 331

An Interview with Danielle Boyce

Contents

Table of Contents

Preface: Why I Write Grants

Why I Wrote This Book

Who Should Read This Book

How to Use This Book

Tools Change. Habits Are Forever.

The Elephant in the Room: What About Artificial Intelligence?

  1. The Blender Problem
  2. It Knows the Forms, Not the Changes
  3. What It Is Genuinely Great At
  4. What Stays Yours
  5. Privacy
  6. A Timestamp

The Ten Habits of Great Grant Writers

Chapter 1: Know Who You Are and What You Want to Do

  1. Passion Is Not a Program
  2. Break Your Work Into Buckets
  3. It Is Not Bragging
  4. Know What You Are Not
  5. The Organizations That Grow
  6. Case Study: The Shelter That Could Not Name Its Programs

Chapter 2: Chase Fit, Not Dollars

  1. Desperation Does the Math Wrong
  2. You Must Use the Money for What You Promised
  3. The Wrong Money Can Rebrand You
  4. The Keyword Trap
  5. A Fit Checklist
  6. Case Study: The $20,000 Culinary Grant

Chapter 3: Know Your Community, Your Field, and Your Numbers

  1. Know Your Numbers, at the Right Resolution
  2. Know Your Own Community’s Numbers Too
  3. Know Your Field, Including the Fields Next Door
  4. It Is Not Luck
  5. Case Study: The Enrollment Number That Came From Nowhere

Chapter 4: Serve Real Needs and Fill Real Gaps

  1. Question One: Do They Actually Want This?
  2. Question Two: Does This Fill a Real Gap?
  3. The True Gap Test
  4. Beware the Sophisticated Solution
  5. Case Study: The Algorithm Nobody Asked For

Chapter 5: Read the Funding Announcement. All of It. Yourself.

  1. A Note on Names
  2. What You Are Hunting For
  3. Last Year’s Announcement Is Not This Year’s
  4. Learn the Mechanics Before You Need Them
  5. Do Everything Optional
  6. Case Study: The Announcement Everyone Was Excited About

Chapter 6: Stay Prepared

  1. Be a Casual Student of Funding Announcements
  2. Keep Your Biosketch Alive
  3. The Capacity Folder
  4. Your Public Face
  5. Your Paper Trail
  6. Track Your Other Support
  7. Exercise: Study the Prepared
  8. Case Study: What the Funder Sees Before You Say a Word

Chapter 7: Think in Numbers: Goals, Metrics, and Realistic Timelines

  1. The Only Question Evaluation Asks
  2. Think Like the Funder
  3. Attach a Number and a Time
  4. The Grant Period Is the Container
  5. Think in Modules
  6. Outlive the Money
  7. Case Study: The Shelter, Part Two

Chapter 8: Manage the Project and Respect Your Collaborators

  1. Hour One: The Plan
  2. Make It Easy to Help You
  3. Start With Whatever Depends on Someone Else
  4. Letters of Support, Done Right
  5. Case Study: The Request That Arrived on a Thursday
  6. A Consultant’s Field Notes

Chapter 9: Never Bring a Funder Into Your Drama

  1. The Drama Is Often Legitimate
  2. The View From the Funder’s Chair
  3. The Name Recognition Trap
  4. Let the Facts Speak
  5. Build the Coalition Before You Need It
  6. The Bias You Never See
  7. Case Study: The Twenty Year Feud

Chapter 10: Do It the Old Fashioned Way, and Keep Showing Up

  1. Shoe Leather
  2. Go to Other People’s Events
  3. Funders Are People You Can Know
  4. Ask the Ones a Few Steps Ahead
  5. Connect the Work to Humans
  6. Knowing Which Way to Do It
  7. Recommended Reading
  8. Case Study: The Grant That Was Won Three Years Early

Key Takeaways

  1. The Ten Habits
  2. What Does it Really Mean to be a Grant Writer?
  3. The Responsibility
  4. Grant Writing Is HARD
  5. A Twisty Path
  6. The Only Tools You Need
  7. The Founder, One Last Time

Grant Writer’s Toolkit

  1. Customizable Tools That Build Confidence

Appendix: A Grant Writer’s Glossary

References and Recommended Resources

  1. Books
  2. Data and Lookup Tools
  3. Funding Research and Learning

Acknowledgements

About the Author

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