Blog Posts, Articles & Announcements

Category: Applying for Grants

For those of you missionaries who are avid readers of literature, I have a test question for you:  what is the length of the longest sentence in published literature?

Answer:  13, 995 words!  It is in The Rotter’s Club, a 2001 novel by British writer Jonathan Coe.  If you haven’t heard of Mr. Coe, you might recognize 2nd place for longest sentence:  4, 391 words by the famous Irish novelist James Joyce, in Ulysses.

Now for those of you missionaries who are avid readers but who also need to write successful grant applications, forget about those crazy-long sentences in The Rotter’s Club and Ulysses!  In our work as grant writers, the motto is “less is more.”

Category: Applying for Grants

I am in the middle of an experience that causes me to risk your seeing me and MPS as a broken record. What do I mean?

This past summer I have worked with missionaries in Zambia and Mexico to submit applications to a US foundation. The proposals are compelling, reasonable and promise high impact for the foundation. For one of these, however, we forgot to include an important requirement of the application: “Endorsement of the Local Ordinary (bishop).”

All that work and it may fail because of just one detail, but an important one for this foundation.

Category: Applying for Grants

I had a meeting recently at a large funding organization that makes grants by committees that are dedicated to various parts of the world, such as an Africa Committee, a Latin America Committee, et cetera.

At one point in our meeting, one of the committee directors, without any prompting from me, simply stated that “I wish more applications would give me a feeling for the needs and challenges they confront in their ministry, I want to understand what it is really like where they are working.”

The funder’s desire, for us to “give them a feeling” concerns how we describe the SETTING of our Project Application.   It is quite understandable for each of you to take this for granted, because it is something that you live each day, BUT do not underestimate the need, even for sophisticated funders such as I was meeting with, for an informative description of the setting in which you work.

Category: Applying for Grants
  1. Thou shalt never miss an application deadline because it will cause automatic disqualification of your application
  2.  Thou shalt not apply for a project that the foundation does not fund because this would be wasting your time (and theirs)
  3.  Honor the foundation and learn as much as you can about them from their website before beginning an application
  4.  Thou shalt not ask for more money than the foundation guidelines suggest
  5.  Honor the community the project supports by including their “local contribution” in the grant application

Category: Applying for Grants

BEING OF TWO MINDS

“If only the foundation knew how valuable this work we are doing is OR how much of a different even a small grant would make for our work!”

I have heard this or similar statements many times by missionaries and they always make an impression on me- BECAUSE THEY ARE ABSOLUTELY TRUE!

I would advise all grant writers to try and make the same impression with each foundation, but to be of two minds:

With one mind, be factual and detail oriented, providing all the information and documentation that the foundation asks for, by no later than the foundation requires, hopefully earlier.

Category: Applying for Grants

Many years ago, I was a Jesuit novice, for the Midwest Province in the United States.   One of the stories shared me and my fellow novices was about St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, and the lengths he would go to in trying to bring a person to the Christian faith.

In this story, he particularly hoped to reach out to a “notorious sinner” who lived where Ignatius happened to be at that point in his life. Ignatius heard that he always traveled to town via a bridge over a small river. As it was then wintertime, that was how the saint felt he could “reach” this person: BY STANDING IN THE RIVER’S ICY WATER, WAITING FOR THE MAN TO CROSS THE BRIDGE. I think it was hoped that the fire of the Holy Spirit would melt the sinner’s cold heart, and perhaps warm Ignatius’ cold legs!

Category: Applying for Grants

Dear sister and brother missionaries,

I want to share with you an important insight that affects all of us.

Last week I had lunch with a man who had recently retired from being the president of a foundation for a large pharmaceutical company.   The company foundation made grants to assist medical needs all around the world, and the retired president was a kindly man who I could tell wanted to help as many as possible.

I remarked to him that it must be difficult for him to say reject applicants, because there are so many worthwhile projects around the world.