Читать книгу Grant Writing For Dummies - Stan Hutton, Beverly A. Browning - Страница 67

Washington, D.C., is a funding epicenter for U.S. government grantmaking agencies. Congress creates legislation and then votes to allocate funding to hundreds of grantmaking programs annually. This funding then trickles down to your state capital. (Note that there are plentiful opportunities for nonprofits and units of local government to apply directly to a federal funding agency for a grant, providing they are eligible grant applicants.)

Federal dollars trickle down in three forms:

 Formula: This money is paid based on a preset head-count (enrollments and population) formula.

 Entitlement: State agencies get these monies because federal legislation entitles them to receive it every fiscal year.An entitlement grant is one in which funds are provided to specific grantees on the basis of a formula, prescribed in legislation or regulation, rather than on the basis of an individual project. The formula is usually based on such factors as population, enrollment, per-capita income, or a specific need. Entitlement grants often result in pass-through grants to municipalities and nonprofits.

 Competitive grant or cooperative agreement awards: The state, municipality, nonprofit, or other grant applicant with the best grant application wins this money.

Some states and U.S. territories post all their federal pass-through funding and re-granting opportunities on one website. (Re-granting and pass-through refers to grants made from the monies a state or territory has received from the federal government.) In addition, some states and territories develop their own grant programs funded entirely through state dollars. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a state or territory that does so, check out their website for a mailing list. You may be able to sign up for email grant notice alerts from their Capitol-based agencies.

However, most states or territories don’t post these announcements where they are easy to find, so you have to be a really great Internet detective to find the monies in your state or territory (not to mention in Washington, D.C.). You need to surf a bit each day to catch all the new postings for grantfunding opportunities. When I’m searching for state grants in Washington state, I use Google and type in “grants, state of Washington agencies”. The results are a list of state agencies in Washington state that have grantfunding opportunities posted on their websites.

Most state and territory grants usually award less money and require just as much paperwork as federal grants. But the odds of winning a grant are better at the state level than at the federal level. It’s a no-brainer: The main reason you face better odds is that fewer grant applicants are competing for the state-level monies.

The next sections reveal how to find grant monies available at the state and local government levels.