In defence of grantwriters

Wearing one of my other hats, I have also been a grantmaker. I once sat on the board of the Aussie Farmers Foundation, and I was formerly the executive officer of the Alcoa Foundation in Australia.

I have designed and taken part in processes which have administered millions of dollars. I occasionally help out my good friends at SmartyGrants reviewing new processes and tools. I know all about what grantmakers do, and why they must do it the way they do.

But I also understand why many grant applicants need the other Kylie, the grantwriter. Think of me – wearing my grantwriting hat – as an intermediary.

Consider me a helpful agent tasked with breaching the gap between a fabulous program or organisation needing funding, and your fabulous foundation or department with the needed funding.

A translation service for applicants

I am the good fairy who translates the needs of the grant applicant into a language and format you understand.

And I use the word "translate" deliberately.

Grantmakers, you have your own language, policy you must adhere to, a grantmaking strategy. There is a whole micro-world within your organisation with its own culture. You're all over it because you live and breathe it every day in the workplace. You know the buzzwords, the buttons that must be pushed. You are absolutely across the difference between an outcome and an output because that is your job.

The grant applicant's job, by comparison, is caring for the dying, saving an endangered species, providing childcare, ministering to the drug afflicted, fighting for a cause. Grantwriting is not their core role. Writing anything may be outside their job description. They may be able to articulate what they do and why it is so important, but it will more often than not be overly emotive or written with their own internal jargon which is indecipherable to people outside their sector. It may be spoken from the heart, but without corresponding data, poorly written, and poorly conceived.

Is this because they don't care about getting funding? Is it a reflection of haphazard and unprofessional internal processes? Is it because they are slapdash and disrespectful to the grantmaking process? Because they didn't bother to read and re-read your carefully constructed guidelines written in your internal language by you to meet your internal needs? Maybe. But most of the time it is because they are time-poor, and grantwriting is – once again – not their core role.

Applicants are regularly punished for not understanding your language and your needs. They are also punished for not using proper grammar, for poor spelling, for badly constructed sentences. And don't tell me you look beyond this, because 90% of us don't – we can't help but judge the way people write, the way they speak, the way they present.

Grant applicants dearly want you to understand what it is they are doing and why it is so important that you support it, but they lack the skills to articulate it in the way that you want it.

And that's where a grantwriter can be an immense help to both the applicant organisation and the grantmaker.

We can act as translators. We have the time, the skill and the passion to sit and dissect your guidelines, your needs and your wants, and also the time and skill and passion to sit and listen to the applicant and their needs and wants. And we have the time, the skill and the passion to bridge that gap, to make sure the intent of the applicant has the right impact on you. We are translators and we put everyone on the same page.

Yes, there are bad operators out there

I know there are dodgy grantwriters who charge a bomb and add very little value. A couple of years ago I helped an organisation apply for a major government grant. They showed me a previous grant application they had written; they had also paid to have it reviewed and edited by a professional grantwriter. They were astonished and personally hurt that they had not got a look-in for that application. They blamed politics and personalities.

But I know exactly why they didn't get a look in. I am not exaggerating when I say the application, which had been professionally reviewed, was an abomination. I would have been ashamed to have submitted it. But they didn't know any different, because a "professional" had assisted them. I couldn't tell them that it was a horrible piece of work, because the person who had drafted it was so proud of it. So I lied and said we needed to do a complete rewrite so the funder didn't think we were just recycling.

So I know there are bad operators out there, in the same way that there are bad funders.