Deborah's Proposal Writing Blog

March 31, 2008

Government Grants Notification Service

When I wrote earlier about the FedBizOpps notification service for contracts, I should have mentioned that the Grants.gov website has a similar service for government grants. To sign up, go to the Grants.gov site and click on Grant Email Alerts on the right side of the page. You can then sign up to receive one or more of the following types of emails:

• Updates to the website.
• All grant notices.
• Grant notices that you select based on specific criteria.
• Grant notices by funding opportunity number.

These notifications are great timesavers because you don't have to keep going to the Grants.gov or FedBizOpps website to find or track the bid opportunities you are interested in. Instead, they come right to your mailbox.

Posted by Deborah at 4:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 27, 2008

FedBizOpps Notification Service

If you do business with the federal government or if you want to get into government contracting, you probably know about FedBizOpps or the Federal Business Opportunities website. FedBizOpps is where most, but not all, government agencies post procurement notices for goods and services valued at over $25,000.

At the website, you can look up procurement notices by specific agencies or you can search for them by key words or other criteria. If you find a procurement notice that interests you, you can sign up to receive e-mail notification when, for instance, a full solicitation is released or when an amendment is issued for that particular product or service. When I'm working on a proposal for a client, I always look it up on FedBizOpps and sign up for it so that I'm notified when an amendment comes out.

You can also sign up to be notified of all solicitations or synopses issued by a particular agency. For example, since I am interested in USAID contracts, I get an e-mail nearly every day that lists all new USAID synopses and solicitations that have been posted by that agency.

To sign up for the FedBizOppos notification service, go to the website and click on Vendor Notification Services on the right-hand side, under "Related Links."  You'll then be taken to a page where you can select from the following options:

1. Register to receive all notices by solicitation number.
2. Register to receive all notices from selected agencies and product service classifications.
3. Register to receive all procurement notifices.
4. Register to receive a report of all vendor notification registrations.

One of the problems with this notification service is that there is no option to receive notifications by key words. So, if I am interested only in USAID contracts that relate to HIV/AIDS, I can't tell FedBizOpps to just send me notices that have something to do with that topic. Instead, I receive all notices about USAID contracts, whether or not they pertain to HIV/AIDS.

One way to get around this problem is to sign up with a private bid notification service. That will be the topic of my next post.

Posted by Deborah at 5:38 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 26, 2008

Woke Up This Morning

clipped from www.proposalwriter.com Wasting time preparing a bid that you can't win or aren't prepared to take on can be costly and demoralizing. My Bid/No-Bid Decision-Making Guide helps you think critically about whether you should bid or pass on an RFP/RFA. The Guide takes you step-by-step through the decision process, advising you of the critical information you need to assess and the key issues you should consider. The accompanying Bid/No-Bid Evaluation Form provides an easy way to summarize your key findings and to use these findings to make an informed decision.

Posted by Deborah at 6:19 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 25, 2008

Final Checks

Your proposal is done and it's ready for production, assembly and delivery to the client. But wait. If you're the proposal manager, there's still work to be done. You need to do two final checks.

1. Before the proposal is printed and assembled, you need to check it against the RFP/RFA. If you've done a compliance matrix, you need to make sure that everything on the matrix is filled in. If you're not using a compliance matrix, then you need to go through your RFP/RFA once again to make sure you have addressed everything that's asked for, particularly (but not limited to ) Sections L and M -- the instructions and the evaluation criteria. You may think that by now, you know your RFP/RFA by heart and don't need to do this final check, but you would be wrong. In many cases, you'll find things in it that you don't remember ever seeing before. By leaving some time for this final check, you'll hopefully have time to correct any deficiencies in your proposal before it's submitted.



2. The second final check comes after the proposal has been printed but before it's bound. Printers are notorious for misbehaving when you are stretched for time and have an important document to get out. So you need to go through the printed copies. Are all of the pages there and numbered correctly? Are there any pages that are upside down?  Are there pages that are badly smudged from the printer? Are there pages that are too faint because the printer is running out of ink or low on toner?  Did you forget to insert a page that was printed separately?  And so on. If you neglect this check, you'll probably find these errors later -- after you've submitted your proposal. Not a good thing.  

 Final checks -- they're a pain but they're important. Add them to your proposal checklist.

Posted by Deborah at 5:10 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 24, 2008

Site Update and New Feature

clipped from foundationcenter.org "The subject of this short course is proposal writing. But the proposal does not stand alone. It must be part of a process of planning and of research on, outreach to, and cultivation of potential foundation and corporate donors."

Posted by Deborah at 6:53 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 21, 2008

How Long Does it Take...

for a relatively small government contract to be awarded?  The answer is:  it can take a verrry long time.

One of my clients sent me an e-mail yesterday. The client is a law firm that does some very specialized work for the government. I've assisted them with their proposals on a number of occasions. The last time I worked with them was last March and April, on a proposal that was due in April 2007. Hadn't heard a word from them since, which is not unusual. Clients don't always inform me about the outcomes of their bids.

Anyway, out of the blue comes the e-mail. It says that my client has finally been contacted by the government agency and that they were notified that all of the proposals submitted by bidders contained some kind of fatal error. So the government will now be giving all all bidders an opportunity to submit corrected or revised proposals.

I don't know what this fatal error is, but if all of the bidders made this same error, it would seem to me that the government screwed something up. And to allow a year to go by before leting everyone know -- well, that is pretty outrageous.

I've just finished with recompete #2. So I agreed to help my law firm client with their revised proposal. Somehow I'll have to fit it in between working on recompete #3. And oh joy, the  manual has now landed back on my desk again for more changes, additions, etc. This will supposedly be the final, final version. We'll see. 

Just when I thought I could take a little break.

Posted by Deborah at 6:40 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

March 20, 2008

Mystery Solved!

The other day, I wrote about some of the top websites that refer people to my site. One of those sites is the US House of Representatives, which has been sending people to my Guestbook page for quite some time. Well, yesterday I decided to try to find out where on the House site the link to my own site is listed.

It took me only a few seconds to find it using Google. I searched for "US House of Representatives government grants" and the first site listed on the search results was this one: Federal Funds Express - a site I'd never seen before. But apparently a lot of other people have.

Federal Funds Express may be a good place to start looking for government grants and other sources of funds, but it's not really an in-depth resource. However, there are some good links on the site (including mine, of course), which in turn can lead to other good resources. Links are listed under the following categories:

• How to get and manage grants
• Federal charitable and corporate sources of grants
• Resources to help small businesses
• State and local government funding, data resources and disaster assistance
• Educational resources for students, schools and colleges
• Property, surplus, donated and unclaimed
• Family issues: health, housing and consumer protection

The website hasn't been updated since October 2007, but you may still find some good sources of information there. I checked a few of the links, but didn't have time to check them all.

I'm thinking about sending an e-mail to the Webmaster asking him or her to direct people to a page on my site other than my guestbook. But maybe it would be best to leave it as is. 

Posted by Deborah at 4:30 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 18, 2008

Let It Be

If you're managing a large proposal or a proposal to which many people are contributing, there is a point at which substantive changes and minor edits to the text must stop so that your document can go to production. It is the Proposal Manager's responsibility to manage this process and to call a halt at the appropriate time; otherwise it will go on as long as possible with little time left for the other things that must be done to get the proposal out on time.

If the Proposal Manager keeps sending drafts out for review, comment and changes to all of the people who participated in writing the proposal, he/she can expect a never-ending stream of comments and changes. Everyone will want to do something to the document --

Oh wait, I forgot to mention this and that.

I need to edit this section so that it reads better.

I want to convert this text into a table, but it will take me a few hours.

I think that Mary should have addressed such and such in the section she wrote, so I will add it in.

And so on... 

In the final stages of putting the proposal together, the Proposal Manager should limit the number of reviewers. That way, she or he will be able to control and manage comments and changes.

And then, when time is most limited, the Proposal Manager will just have to leave things alone and let it be. In most cases, it will be just fine. 

Posted by Deborah at 5:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 14, 2008

Unbelievable But True

A few days ago I received an  e-mail from a woman who said she was a professional grant writer. She wrote that she was very upset because the website that she had developed last year was not showing up in Google searches and she wasn't getting any new work. She said a lot of very nice things about my site and asked if I could take a look at her website and give her some feedback about it. She has been paying a monthly fee to an SEO company to submit her site to search engines and increase her ranking, but it wasn't working.

Well, I'm no website development expert, but I've learned a few things along the way in the 10 or so years since I've had my site. I thought maybe I could help. So I went to her website. I'm not sure what I expected, but to my surprise it was nicely done -- well laid-out, attractive and well-written.  There were maybe 5-6 pages about her and the various aspects of her grant writing services.

I didn't have a lot of time to spend on this, so I was clicking through her site kind of quickly and scanning what she had written. It looked pretty good to me, although I noticed that there were a few things that were lacking. Then I go to her FAQ page and...BOOM! -- staring me in the face are five of the questions and answers that I have on my own site. She had taken them verbatim and just plopped them into her page along with a bunch of other questions and answers. I just could not believe my eyes.

I sent her an e-mail right then. I told her that I thought it was pretty strange that she would ask advice from someone whose work she had plagiarized, and I asked her to remove the material immediately. A day later I hadn't gotten any response and my questions and answers were still on her site. So I had to send her the nasty threatening letter (sigh). That pretty much did the trick. A few hours later she wrote back and said that she had removed my material. All she said was "it has been removed."  No apology, no excuses, nothing.

I had a hunch that maybe I wasn't the only one whose stuff she had stolen. So I put an unusual phrase from her site into Google and sure enough, up popped another grantwriting site. She had taken nearly two whole pages of material from this other site and used them on her site. At first I thought I should maybe contact the other site and tell them. But then I decided not to. I don't want to get in the middle of someone else's plagiarism problems.

I couldn't resist e-mailing her once again to tell her that I knew she had plagiarized extensively from this other site and that eventually they would find out about it. Then, since she had asked for some advice, I gave some to her: don't steal other people's stuff.

Is this unbelievable or what? Either she was playing some kind of sick joke or she had totally forgotten that she had plagiarized my material. My money is on the latter, but I guess I'll never know.  

Posted by Deborah at 4:14 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

March 12, 2008

Advice and Feedback

I don't have to do much writing on my current assignment -- the Staffing Plan that I've talked about the past couple of days is my major contribution to the proposal in terms of new writing.  Since this is a re-compete, my client has first-hand knowledge of the project and the ability and resources to write most of the sections.

So my role is primarily to provide advice and suggestions to the client, as well as feedback on their written sections. I will likely also be involved in some re-writing and editing as the proposal moves toward its final stages.

So what does this advice and feedback involve?  Well, much of it has focused on interpreting the RFP, which contains a good deal of unclear information about what should be addressed in the proposal and where it should go. So I offer suggestions to my client about what the content of the various sections and ways that the information might be presented. "What should we say here?" or "What do they mean by this?" are questions that my client has been asking.

As drafts of proposal sections are completed, my client sends them to me. I review them and check them against the RFP requirements to see if they have addressed what the RFP has asked for. I also provide comments on the drafts using 'track changes' in Word. Some of my comments relate to RFP requirements; others relate to the content -- whether more detail or more specific information is needed, whether there are gaps or internal inconsistencies, etc.

I like this role a lot because I can advise people what to do without actually having to do the work myself. It's a welcome break from the intensity of writing. 

Posted by Deborah at 4:56 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 11, 2008

Key Personnel Blurbs

That's what I'm working on now as part of the Staffing Plan that I'm writing for my client's recompete proposal. I always find it kind of amusing when I have to do this, because writing blurbs is the first thing that I was assigned to do when I was learning to write proposals about a billion years ago. Although they are boring to prepare, good key personnel blurbs are critical if you want to have a winning proposal. 

I've talked about blurbs in an earlier post and also provided an example of one. For this particular proposal, I have to prepare blurbs for several key people. Each blurb is about one page long but may eventually need to be shortened to 3/4 of a page due to space constraints. When writing each blurb, I keep a hard copy of the person's resume on my desk and go through it several times. My objective is to identify the types of work and activities that the candidate has performed that are similar to the work that will need to be done for the proposed project and that meet the evaluation criteria set forth in the RFP/RFA. I then try to summarize, paraphrase and emphasize each key person's qualifications, skills and experience with the aim of pursuading the proposal reviewers that this individual is indeed the best-qualified person to perform the work. 

Some people's resumes don't contain enough information for a good blurb. In those cases, you or someone else on the proposal team may need to interview the candidate to gather more specific information. Most likely, the resume may need to be re-written as well.  

Writing blurbs may seem like an easy task, but it's not. It's time-consuming and it's often difficult to make someone sound like they are the most wonderful person in the world. But that's what a blurb is all about.

Posted by Deborah at 4:05 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 7, 2008

Staffing Plans

For the proposal I'm working on now, one of my assignments is to prepare the staffing plan. For this particular proposal, it will be about 10 pages.

Staffing plans are nearly always required for a proposal but can be called different things by different agencies. Sometimes they are called Staffing and Management Plans or Management and Staffing Plans, and sometimes they are just referred to as Key Personnel Plans. Many times, they are combined with Management Plans.

Staffing plans are developed to convey information on at least two things:

1. How you are going to staff your proposed project, i.e., what are the positions/titles that will be needed to perform the project; and
2. Who are the personnel who will fill these positions -- their names, qualifications, backgounds, etc. In most cases, this is where you write up glowing blurbs about your key personnel and other proposed staff if required. Resumes of these personnel may also be included in the staffing plan itself or in an appendix to the proposal.

Some staffing plans also require that you provide other information. My RFA wants to know:

• The rationale for the proposed staffing -- why are we proposing to staff the project in this particular way.
• What will be the role and responsibilities of each key person -- position descriptions
• If we are proposing to use outside consultants and if so, how and why.
• The specific skills that each proposed staff member will bring to the project -- a skills matrix.

Ten pages doesn't seem like much, but it's amazing how long it takes to write those pages.

Posted by Deborah at 4:43 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

March 6, 2008

Referrals From Great Sites

Every once in a while I take a look at the Google Analytics reports for my website. These reports provide detailed statistics about the number and type of visitors to a site, where they came from, what pages they visited, etc. The reports contain a lot of data and take a while to review, which is why I only look at them occasionally.

But one of the reports I do like to look at is the Referring Sites Report, which indicates which sites referred people to my site via a link. And if you are interested in grants (both government and non-government grants), grantwriting, or grant research, you'll want to take a look at some of the websites that send the most visitors to Proposalwriter.com . Among my top 10 referring sites are:

• The Grants Information Collection at the University of Wisconsin. This fabulous site has a wealth of information on grants, funding, and other related topics. I'm delighted to say that they link to my site on four different pages. They have consistently been my #1 referral site.
• My #2 referral site is The Foundation Center, which sends visitors to my site via links on 3 of their many pages. If you want grant-related information from the nation's leading authority on non-profits, The Foundation Center's site is one of the first places you should investigate.
• The third site that sends the most visitors to my site is the US House of Representatives. Somewhere among its many pages there has been a link to my site for several years. Except I don't know where it is, and oddly enough the link is to my Guestbook. I've never taken the time to try to figure out how people get to my site from this site.
• #9 on the list is the University of Michigan's Proposal Writing Help Page, which of course contains info and links on proposal writing.

In addition to Google Analytics, I use Google Webmaster Tools to find out how many other sites have links to mine. At present, Webmaster Tools shows that there are over 4,100 external links from other sites to the various pages on my site. But this number seems to include quite a few dupicates, so it's hard to tell what the real number is.   

Nevertheless, I'm pretty satisfied.

Posted by Deborah at 4:07 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack