Seva Grantwriting, LLC

News Blog

December 28, 2015

US Department of Labor WIOA Extended

The Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA) was extended by Congress on December 18, 2015. This is the "jobs bill" that provides for industry sector partnerships, worker training, and a focus on career pathways. It provides for $3.3 billion in funding for the 2016 fiscal year, closely comparable to the $3.1 billion in funding for the 2015 fiscal year that ends June 30, 2015. This means that competitive jobs program grants will again be offered, and New Jersey organizations can compete for these funds. For more details, see H.R.2029, The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2016, or Public Law 114-113, at www.congress.gov.

December, 2015

John Vadnais reviewed the following book on Amazon.com: Grant Proposal Makeover: Tranform Your Request from No to Yes by Cheryl A. Clarke and Susan P. Fox , John Wiley and Sons, 2007:

Astute and, to a grant writer, hilarious. It shows the mistakes we sometimes make such as broad generalizations, way too many statistics (you have got to read pp.69-76, "Taming of the Statistician"), and other errors, in the context of full proposal sections. It provides copious feedback from grantors as to the merits of different grant proposal approaches. I have used another book by Cheryl A. Clarke in teaching grant writing, and this one is good for the more experienced class. As with all good books in this genre, it suggests a good way to organize a grant proposal (pp.21-22) and emphasizes the importance of the Problem Statement.