I probably say it a dozen times in my workshops:  Writing funding proposals is a competitive sport.

And just like in sports, there’s no charity.  There’s no forgiveness of mistakes. There’s no dismissing poor performance as a fluke. There’s no fooling.  Blue smoke and mirrors just don’t work.  Sorry.

It’s serious competition and the result is winner take all.

Most proposals, especially high dollar federal proposals, are scored by independent panels of peer reviewers.  What this means is that experts in the field who have been trained to score proposals are in charge of your fate.  This refers to high level national competitions but much less so to state and local funding.  Foundations run the gamut. Depending on their size, interests, and investment plan, foundations may use a formal point process or put more store in relationships, reputation, and their program officers’ gut about certain projects.

For those of you who write proposals that will be formally scored, here are three tips gleaned from many years in the federal grantwriting business:

 1.  Read the proposal guidelines very carefully.  You’re looking for two things here.  First,  how the points are distributed, e.g. how many for the problem statement, how many for the program design and so on, will tell you what’s important to the funding source.  You need to score high in all sections.  But the point distributions tells you where to focus your planning and preparation efforts. 

Second, what are the specific criteria on which the point allocation will be made?  Proposal guidelines can be tricky, providing information about the required elements in one place and the evaluation criteria in another.  And they don’t always match.  Your job as the proposal writer is to create an integrated list of criteria.  In other words, you are going to respond well to everything.

2. Understand that each proposal section is scored separately.  This means that the problem statement, program design, organizational description are scored independently of each other.  Sure, it’s possible to cross-reference information from one section to another (a good strategy to save space in a document), but you must make sure that each section pretty much stands alone and fully addresses the point criteria.

3.  Look under the rock.  Proposal reviewers, especially federal reviewers, hide their detailed review under a big rock.  What is the big rock?  It’s applicants’ fear of criticism.  Review comments are available upon request.  So, if a panel of three peer reviewers scored your proposal, you can receive all of their scores and comments.  This is the road map for the next proposal.  It will tell you where you were weak and why.  Your competition is combing through those review comments looking for ways to improve next time.  The fools – the ones with their programs’ pockets turned inside out, complaining about the unfairness of funding sources – will write the same failing proposal next time or, if they’re really special, find new ways to fail.

Think about proposal writing like a football team prepares for a game and then reviews a loss.  They watch film.  They play as hard as they possibly can. They watch more film. They analyze their strengths and weaknesses.  They win.  (Yes, sports fans, I know I’m oversimplifying here but you get my point.)

That’s what winning proposal writers do.  I learned this the hard way so I know it’s true.  Good luck!

Strictly from hunger.  Ever hear this phrase?  You have to be of a certain vintage to have heard it in everyday conversation.  What does it mean?  That something is busted. Nowhere. Just seriously lacking.  Unbeknownst to me, though, until I googled the term this morning, Strictly from Hunger was also the title of an apparently very famous “psychedelic” album made by the Portland, Oregon, group Hunger in 1969. That’s their picture. 

After my husband and I simultaneously used this term to describe something this morning, he dared me to blog about it.  “So what would the actual topic be?” I asked.  “I don’t know.  Just use it as the title and start.”

So here I go — hopefully, there will be enough examples of things that are strictly from hunger that you, too, can use this colorful term in your everyday discourse.

Things that are STRICTLY FROM HUNGER:

1. Using a ballpoint point on easel paper while leading a group discussion.

2. Related to #1 – having crummy, used up markers.

3. Not having coffee at meetings.

4. Running out of copies.

5. LCD projectors with no remote.

6. Occasions where you have to show a great PowerPoint on the equivalent of a white sheet hung up with tacks.

7. Conference luncheons with no dessert.

8. Office Depot pens.

9. Knock-off Play-Doh.  Seriously, if you’re a hotshot meeting facilitator, you know the value of real Play-Doh. Don’t be fooled into buying the cheap stuff at the Dollar Store because it’s…….STRICTLY FROM HUNGER!

10.Running out of food at a community event.  This is STRICTLY FROM HUNGER because it shows failure to plan, over-concern about cost, and unwillingness to deal with leftovers.  Plus, depending on the crowd, it can be very risky.

There. See? Now the next time you see something that’s strictly from hunger, you’ll know what to call it.

This morning, my local baseball expert explained to me the logic of Brewers manager Ron Roenicke sticking with the rotation in the 6th game of the National League Championship Series despite Shaun Marcum’s grim performance in Game 2.  “If he (Roenicke) picks somebody else to pitch, Marcum might never recover,” said my expert.  He went on to explain how the Brewers had sacrificed a lot to get Marcum and that passing him over in favor of someone else could essentially damage the goods long term, which in baseball parlance, means next year. 

Read more about Shaun Marcum in ESPN’s article, “Shaun Marcum will try to save season.”  (His or ours?)

http://espn.go.com/mlb/playoffs/2011/story/_/id/7107384/marcum-season-hands

Like 99% of the human race, I tend to think about immediate strategy.  What makes sense this very minute – how to get out of the current pickle – how to win a grant or position a project.  All in the here and now.

Sometimes, I think I’ve changed the rotation because of my lack of faith in someone’s ability.  And it wasn’t always a fair assessment.   I may not have had Ron Roenicke’s wisdom to look at the long game, look at the repercussions of expressing lack of faith in someone, worry about the damage that would do to someone’s capabilities down the road, assess the cost long term to the whole enterprise.

They say baseball is a microcosm of life.  I’d say that in this instance, that’s really true.

You live and learn.

Let’s face it.  Most people could live without having an advisory committee for their new project.  But maybe the funding source has made it a requirement.  Or maybe the organization always sets up an advisory committee for a major project.  Either way, you’re stuck with putting an advisory committee together and making it work or, let’s be real, making sure it doesn’t bollux up the project or cause you endless grief.

It’s tricky.  I’ve set up advisory committees and been on them.  Here are five things I’ve learned that might help you.

1.  Create a job description for the Advisory Committee that clearly spells out its role as a group and the expectations for individual members.  This is harder than it sounds because people don’t generally want to be on committees that have no power and project administrators are usually reluctant to hand over much responsibility to outsiders.  Find the balance between making the group meaningful and protecting the integrity of your project.

2.  Invite people to serve on the Advisory Committee in a way that makes them feel special. That’s right, a mass email invite will not cut it.  The best strategy is a phone call to talk through the project and the Advisory Committee role, followed by a formal letter (remember letters?) from your executive director.  When I worked at the County, we made sure any Advisory Committee invitation would come from the County Executive.   This made the invitation seem more like an appointment by the CE, elevating its importance.

3.  Start off with a clear idea of what you want the Advisory Committee to do.  Develop a list of particulars.  There is nothing worse than a large group of people flailing around like 5th graders on a science project whining, “What are we supposed to do?”  Avoid that with a good, short work list.

4.  Designate the leadership in advance.  “Who wants to be chairperson?” is a dangerous (and nutty) question you want to avoid.  You know your project and what it needs by way of leadership.  Figure this out ahead of time.  Identify two people to serve as co-chairs, get their buy-in and start the Advisory Committee process with them already installed.  Don’t worry that people will ask you how they were chosen.  Everyone’s too polite to ask.  Thank goodness.

5.  Have robust, satisfying meetings.  Busy, important people are attracted to well-run, content-driven meetings that produce decisions that influence programs and systems.  Conversely, they disappear quickly if meetings are full of endless talking by staff and few opportunities to advise.  Unfortunately, not a lot of project directors pay much attention to the structure and content of meetings; as a result, attendance rapidly devolves in terms of numbers and the level of staff attending (you started with the CEO and now the girl who picks up her dry cleaning is attending).

A good Advisory Committee can be major value added to your project.  But not if you approach it as a throwaway feature of your project.  Your project will be stronger and more sustainable if you have a solid Advisory Committee behind it.  It’s worth the investment!

So much of stamina has to do with not thinking about what you’re afraid of and never looking up to see how far you have to go.  Letting fear in your head generates the kind of panic you can feel in your chest and arms.  Seeing the finish line far in the horizon – or worse not being able to see it at all – drains the confidence right out of you like a plug pulled on a very fast drain.  I say this like I’m a marathon runner or something.

I’m not. 

This picture is of me getting out of the water after a half-mile swim for the Danskin Triathlon in Pleasant Prairie about four years ago. Aside from childbirth, this is about as physical a feat I’ve ever attempted.  And I did it – swam across the lake in about 20 minutes, all the while fighting off my panic about being in deep water, in the weeds, with other women splashing and flailing about, people in kayaks telling me I was off course, and the other side looking like Tinker Bell’s light hovering several miles away.

Diana Nyad – long distance swimmer – talked about how she just focuses on the here and now, breaking a long distance into small chunks and keeping her head full of songs and ideas totally unrelated to the fact that she’s in an ocean with gigantic creatures and currents and chop, not to mention the Portuguese Man o’ Wars that eventually did her in on this last swim.

What I didn’t understand when I was swimming across the lake I have understood for a long time when it comes to work.

Almost since the beginning of my career, I’ve had enormous projects due in short amounts of time.  I have felt the physical panic that comes from looking up to see the finish line pages and pages away.  I’ve been defeated before I started thinking about all the dangers, the mistakes, and the risks.  I’ve frozen in place looking at a blank computer screen, cursor flashing, the outline of a federal proposal in the wee-est possible print on my desk, the points for each section stoking my fear and paralysis.  Sounds bad?  Yeah, I’ve had some bad ones.  But I learned from them.  One step at a time, that’s the trick.

When Diana Nyad described her strategy for swimming 103 miles from Cuba to Key West, it was actually kind of familiar.  But not in a sports way – in a work way.  On a big project, I always break the work into chunks, constantly work a list, keep focused on the task at hand, and don’t think about the sharks and other evils lurking – like bad data, lackadaisical colleagues, and indecipherable proposal requirements. I also make sure I’ve got the best equipment (no computer failures for me), solid connections to great resource people (a carefully tended Rolodex – metaphorically speaking), and a strong personal support system (husband who cooks).

Chunk, chunk, chunk.  Stroke, stroke, stroke.  Don’t look up until it’s time to walk on shore.

It works.  It really does.

Or another title could be, “Nothing Changes If Nothing Changes.”  Although I resisted it for years, I have finally become convinced of the wisdom of women and minority-owned businesses seeking designation as DBE’s (Disadvantaged Business Enterprise).  My business, Wilberg Community Planning LLC, has been a DBE for several years.  Initially, I’ll be honest with you, I sought DBE status because a local government official said to me, “It would be a lot less hassle to hire you if you were a DBE.”

DBE Decision.  So I went after the designation really as part of a customer service strategy.  This particular government official was a good and steady client who had to negotiate and finagle my contracts through the bureaucracy every time.  Not in my interest to be a high maintenance consultant, so I filed the paperwork.  This isn’t a simple deal, either.  Obtaining DBE status means #1 – you actually have to have a business that’s real and #2 – you have to be able to prove it with things like profit and loss statements, balance sheets, and lists of clients. 

DBE certification also requires sending the certification agency your personal income tax returns.  And then there’s the signatures and the notary and all that stuff.  They don’t let just anyone be a DBE and they don’t make it particularly easy.  Primary reason is that it’s too tempting for majority companies to set up paper DBE firms and game the system.

The Ethics of It.  At first, I was really bothered by the ethics of seeking DBE.  The primary reason was that I didn’t think I was really disadvantaged.  I thought other people/companies were more disadvantaged and deserved the designation but me, being a white woman, not so much.  This was during a period when I really had come to believe that my education and experience erased sexism, bought me a membership in the Good Ol’ Boys Club, and leveled my little playing field.  Hence, no need for DBE.  Right.

Now my thinking has changed.  The playing field — the big playing field — the one where the pros play – won’t get leveled without a major structural adjustment. Here’s my view — male/majority companies have had decades of implicit preference.  If we wait for the normal course of progress to balance things out, it’ll be the next Ice Age.

So What?  So I understand the complaints of students at UW-Madison who are torqued about UW-Madison’s efforts to admit more minority students.  And maybe it isn’t fair that they have to pay the price for decades of majority preference.  But we just can’t wait patiently for things to get better.  We have to make them better.  Last spring, only 3.0% of UW-Madison’s students were African American, another 3.6% were Hispanic. Not good enough.

“Group says UW-Madison admissions favor minorities,” JSOnline, September 13, 2011.  http://www.jsonline.com/news/wisconsin/129773483.html

Constructive criticism is what you get when your husband tells you, “Yes, those jeans do make you look fat.”  This is separated from regular criticism which is severe eye-rolling and/or covering of one’s eyes.  It’s ok to get mad at the latter but constructive criticism?  Mature people take it in the kind spirit in which it is intended.  Or do they?

As one author noted, “Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamppost how it feels about dogs.”

One experience that I and many of my peers share is having people review drafts of funding proposals.  Over the years, this has been a painful or productive process, depending on the proposal, how decent a draft I’ve given people, and whether they (the reviewers) know what they’re doing.

I’ve learned some things about the proposal draft review process which I happily put to use this past weekend on a proposal for a very important community project.  Here are my tips for not only surviving, but benefiting from, a proposal draft review.

1.  Start the proposal development process with the group in a face to face meeting.

2.  Review the proposal requirements, paying special attention to significant policy/program decisions.

3.  Get agreement on the major issues at the beginning – don’t let things ride.

4. Share two drafts.  An early draft with a lot of holes forces discussion about critical issues — this draft should be reviewed in a group meeting.  The second draft is the ‘close to finished’ draft – unless there are big issues, getting individuals’ feedback is sufficient.

5. Tell your reviewers when you will be sending the draft out and stick to that schedule — even if you are not entirely happy with your progress. 

6.  Ask people to send their feedback/comments to you directly.  One thing you don’t want in the late stages of a major proposal is outside kibbutzing – where some people in the group are talking to each other but not registering their issues with the proposal developer. 

7.  Take all the comments in before making changes.  Get a sense of where your reviewers are – are they all focusing on the same 3 issues or are they finding things all over the place to change?

8.  Schedule your review so there is actually time to influence the final product.  Asking someone to review a proposal that’s due tomorrow is a transparent attempt to avoid having to change anything.  I say you need to have a close to final draft at least a week in advance of the due date.  Inconsequential stuff can be missing but 90% should be available to solid review/critique.

9.  Alert the group when the concerns of a reviewer are such that the future implementation of the project could be impaired should it be funded as proposed.  This is tricky because you don’t want to disrupt the proposal process but you have to insure core agreement on the design.

10. Advocate only for the competitiveness of the proposal and do that sparingly.  Sometimes ‘regular’ people don’t understand what needs to be done to land major federal money.  However, they still know what will fly in their world.  A good proposal developer strives for balance here.  That’s hard — because it also means the you cannot be defensive or argumentative.  When you’ve spent days and weeks on a proposal, it’s hard not to defend every word.  But that’s a mistake and we all know it.

I used to be very reluctant to have people review my work.  Last minute scenes with supervisors and colleagues ripping the draft from hands were common.  Figuring if I gave them no time to critique I could avoid criticism, I completely missed the boat on the whole purpose of external review.  I had to learn it the hard way — it’s not about me.  It’s about getting the money to make something important happen.  So I have to suffer a little…..

Growing up, my family owned a dime store – just like this one – and we all worked in it.  I started working when I was 12.  Before that I would go to the store, get a bag of dimes from my Dad and ride the mechanical horse parked near the front window.  So I guess that was kind of a job — being the object of envy for all the little kids begging their moms to let them ride the horse.  I’d also do other key jobs – like feeding the little 29 cent turtles or cleaning the parakeet cages.  Never mind that the turtles were probably loaded with salmonella – nobody cared about that.  It was important to keep little Janice busy.

So when I turned 12, my Dad officially hired me.  A dollar an hour – Saturday – 10:00 to 10:00 (yes, you read that right) and Sunday 10:00 to 6:00.  If it was summer, I worked close to 40 hours a week.  I stocked shelves, took inventory, cleaned the stockroom, waited on customers, cut fabric, cut windowshades (which is possibly one of the worst tasks on earth), netted goldfish and put them in little bags, and still fed the turtles and cleaned the bird cages.  I also weighed out candy using the little metal weights and scale, loading my pockets with chocolate stars and M & M’s.  I was a sweeper, a bagger, and the person who rolled the awning up and down.  I did it all except….I never ran the cash register.  Not good enough at making change — ‘you just count up to what they give you.’ Sure.

I made a million mistakes.  “I didn’t hire you to hold up the counter,” my Dad would say when he caught me leaning against the pots and pans.  “If you see we’re running low on thread, fill it up.  Don’t just leave it.” And, my favorite, “Of course, you can do it.  I wouldn’t tell you to if you couldn’t.” 

None of my friends worked but I didn’t care.  I liked being in the family business.  I liked working with my Dad even though I was pretty scared of him.  I like the big crowds at holidays.  I liked yakking about how K-Mart was killing us.  I liked making things look good.  I liked being tired. When we left the store after a very long, 12-hour day, I looked up at that sign and thought, wow, we run a really nice store. 

Notice the we there.

I learned everything I know about work from working at the store:  Keep busy.  Don’t complain.  Smile at the customers.  Don’t wait to be asked.  Help out even it it’s not your job. Wear good shoes.  And stay til they turn the lights out.  Also, think about how things are going.  What’s selling?  What do we need to be thinking about?  What about K-Mart?  How do we outsmart them? 

My own kids had to deal with work permits and interviews and bosses who looked at them cross-eyed.  They didn’t have a family business to come up in. Most kids don’t.  They didn’t have that cocoon of the family enterprise, the  boss doling out of tasks right for their age and turning a blind eye to their stupidity. They missed the sense of importance to the family’s economic life that I had growing up.  That was a priceless gift I got from my family and our little dime store.  You’re a kid.  You don’t know how to do much.  That’s ok.  You matter.  We’ll figure out how to make something of you. 

It worked.

I’m a consultant.  So a lot of what I do and say comes from the comfort of the sidelines.  I watch things.  I analyze.  I suggest.  But I’m rarely in the line of fire.

The past several months I’ve watched a friend (and a client by the way) stand squarely in the line of fire.  I’m talking about John Chianelli, until yesterday, the administrator of Milwaukee County’s Behavioral Health Division.  I’ve worked with John for many years - in the Continuum of Care (Milwaukee’s homeless coalition, on the reform of GAMP (General Assistance Medical Program – now known as BadgerCare Core), and in facilitating strategic planning sessions for the leadership team at BHD and assisting in the effort to integrate the AODA and mental health treatment systems into a more coherent, welcoming system for everyone.

I’m proud of the work I’ve done and proud of my association with John Chianelli.  He’s a gifted public administrator – talented, committed, energetic.  This recent situation is a tragedy all round.

Anyway, despite my great respect for John and the work BHD has done to reform itself, I am really troubled by how they’ve handled this crisis.  They stonewalled.  Something very bad happened on their watch and they battoned down the hatches and went mum. 

BHD runs a public psychiatric hospital.  This is a challenging job with a lot of potential for error – especially when resources are scarce.  It’s not as if the public might not understand that a mistake happened.  Mistakes happen in this hard world.  But maybe on the advice of lawyers, maybe on their own counsel, BHD slammed the door shut.  No one called a press conference.  No one came out with the facts of the story.  No one said they were sorry.

This last element is the sticking point for me.  When little Christopher Thomas was killed at the hands of his kinship caretaker, the Bureau of Milwaukee Child Welfare dummied up, looked at us (the public) stonefaced as if they had nothing to explain and nothing to apologize for.  I’m not afraid to admit it – Christopher Thomas’ death made me weep.  It also moved me to become a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) to stick up for a kid in foster care.  But back to BHD.

What I wanted to hear from Milwaukee County was an apology along with an acknowledgement that something went terribly wrong and needed to be fixed. 

BP figured this out too late — taking the advice of their lawyers until the entire world condemned their rotten behavior in the Gulf before and after the spill.  Same with Toyota.  Stonewall.  Denial.  Silence.  And then the avalanche of criticism and hatred.  The New York Times’ recent article, “In Case of Emergency:  What Not to Do,” lays it all out.  When there’s a catastrophe, disclose it immediately.  Come clean.  Be clear on what will be done to avoid a recurrence.  Own up.

http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/23/in-case-of-emergency-what-not-to-do/

It’s not just strategy — gee, if BHD had done the Tylenol thing, it would all be ok — it’s also about public accountability and transparency.  And being and feeling sorry when something bad happens.  And meaning it.  I wish BHD administrators had done that — so they could enlist the public in their efforts to reform the mental health system instead of fueling the years’ old fires of suspicion and conflict.  Sad thing.  But bigger sad than just a couple of people — sad for all of us as a town.