What I know about getting grants

I’ve written various writing -life-advice things in the past and there is certainly no shortage of them in the world but a) I have learned new things since I last wrote about some of these topics, b) there is always value in learning more about most of these topics, hence me still learning so many years into my career, so perhaps others would like to do so as well, and c) I enjoy writing these posts, they are good way for me to process (although I suppose if the value were only c), I would not have to send them to anyone).

I thought I would do a sporadic series of these writing-advicey things, starting at the beginning of the creation process, skip the topics that do not interest me or the ones that I have already said my piece on, and move through the ones that where I have new insights. Thus we will be skipping ideation, about which I have recently written and have not developed any new thoughts—if you want my September 2023 thoughts they are here.

On to grant-applications, not that this step would necessarily come next. Some people don’t do grants at all and some would do them right at the jump of an idea (because of the thinking that you’ll do all the above stuff while the app is being processed and potentially rejected many times) but right in that, huh, this could work period is a great place to start.

I haven’t written anything about grants in years—this post is 15 years old almost to the day and I actually still agree with most of it. But I have learned more in the intervening decade and a half! Things that have happened to educate me on grants recently:

• in addition to individual creator grants, which I was already quite familiar with, I wrote some operating grants, as well as project grants for an organization. I also discovered the wild world of business innovation grants, professional development grants, and other sundry adventure grants (note, there are no actual “adventure grants” that I’m aware of, that’s a catchall term I made up—but perhaps food for thought if any funders are reading this)

• I sat two granting panels, something I’ve wanted to do for years, and it was WONDERFUL. I learned a tonne but it was also extremely fun. It’s a great privilege to live in a country where there’s public funding for the arts and I’ve been lucky to see the process up close and I feel great about it. I’m sure there’s problems (there’s definitely problems) but grants are also a wonderful thing for artists and for people who will enjoy the art they create as a result of the grant.

• I attended a bunch of webinars, info-sessions, and whatever else I happened upon regarding grants. Most of the granting agencies offer them occasionally (often around major deadlines), as well as creator orgs—my own job offered one recently with a former Ontario Creates staffer that was particularly useful, if I do say so. Some of these can be a bit beginner band (“read the instructions read the instructions read the instructions,” sometimes I think the granting officer is actually going to cry) but there’s always a couple points I hadn’t thought of.

Oh man, I feel like I’ve already been typing so long and I haven’t gotten to the advice part…yikes. ANYWAY, here are some things I learned. These are a little bit subjective based in part on the panels I was on—every panel is very different, I’m sure.

• read the instructions, and read’em WELL IN ADVANCE! I already said it above but it’s true—a lot of grant applications are WEIRD, the questions are hard, and quite often a question or two changes from year to year. You might think you know the application, know the project, so a few days—or a few hours??—will be sufficient but all it takes is one completely baffling question to completely throw the process off. Sometimes you just need some time to marinate, write, revise, show someone, revise again. Sometimes you really need to call a granting officer and ask for clarification. Either way, you may need time (you may not—in that case, no harm in submitting early!) It depends on the grant—an individual creator grant that I’ve done before I start about two weeks ahead; when I did my first core funding, I started about four months in advance and IT WASN’T REALLY ENOUGH. People put deadlines in their calendars but I strongly recommend putting the date the applications go live in as well, just to see what you are dealing with and make a vague work-back schedule. The weirdest and weakest applications I reviewed on the panels seemed quite obviously to be from people who waited until the last minute and then opened the application and were like, WTAF?

• don’t assume you know “what funders want.” Funding agencies want you to follow the instructions, full stop—if you don’t, your application will probably get pulled out and not even be reviewed. In terms of actual content, however, funding decisions are usually made by peer panels, not people from the agencies at all, which means just other creatives. They may not be from your discipline (or they might be) but they know what it feels like to create something, care about artists and want deserving ones to get funding. They have no agenda, or maybe they do have an agenda but whatever it is is unknowable and varies among the panelists and from panel to panel. Even if you see that last time this grant went out a lot of acrostic poets, it’s gonna be a different panel next time so there’s no point trying to cater to that previous panel—it could go all limericks this time. And definitely don’t write your proposal in “grant-speak”—I don’t know where the rumour got started that “the granters” like an arcane academic-esque lingo. Possibly from people who have held academic grants but, even though I once held a SSHRC, I’m not entirely sure even that’s true. Say what you want to do in the words you need to explain it. If some of them are technical, so be it; if none are, also fine. Don’t borrow trouble.

• beware pitch speak. When you write a book proposal or query to a publisher, you need to have comp titles, some idea of who the readership is, and an idea of how the book would be placed in the market. These are not things you need for a grant application, and indeed, they can seem somewhat odd there, especially if they take up space that you needed for things like “this is the book I’m going to write.” I mean, this stuff might be relevant for reasons, but explain what those reasons are.

• don’t make the whole proposal about the thing the book is about. This one is a fine balance and there can be disagreement among reasonable people—and among panelists—on what the correct balance is. If you were going to write a creative biography of Picasso, your proposal would be somewhat about how Picasso is an important artist, but I’d argue it should be mainly about what your book would be like—otherwise it’s really a proposal for Picasso, no? Don’t propose an important topic, propose a good book.Again, some people are fine with more topic content than I am.

• make sure your proposal and work sample match. This is a weird one but it was very odd how often this was a miss. Someone would propose a complex epic fantasy with loads of adventure but the sample would just people two people chatting in a bar on Queen West. Sometimes this would be explained—it’s the frame story before they go through the portal! It’s the prologue from another time period! Which is better than saying you are writing a collection of wild formal invention and then submitting 12 sonnets without comment. But it still didn’t really give the panel of the sense of “is this a cool project? And can this writer write the type of book they are setting out to write?” I think people sometimes miss the point of grant applications: proposal is “here is what I want to do,” and work sample is “here is how it could look if I do it.” It’s up to the panel to decide if the proposal is an exciting idea, and if the sample is a good execution, but that’s the idea.

The very best advice I ever got about grants is actually from my parents, who are academics. They said “Writing grant proposals is part of the job.” Some you get, and then doing the proposed work is part of the job, but also just the proposing and the necessary disappointment of sometimes not getting them. Sometimes I’m not in a position to use grants for long periods and I go years without applying, but when I do I try to be workmanlike, do as good a job as I’m capable of, and just get’er done, even if it’s boring or I don’t like the questions or I don’t think I’ll be successful. Then I move on. Hope this post helps, sorry it’s so long.

<3

RR