Healthy Nevada group attends grant training

Several members of the Healthy Nevada funding team have returned from a week-long training session at the Grantsmanship Center in St. Louis, where they learned many of the basics and finer points of grant proposal writing and grant funding.

Cerner Inc.'s development and funding consultant John Gulick, On My Own's Stacy Wilson, Michelle Branham, principal of the Nevada R-5 program at Heartland and Karen Marquardt of the Nevada Multi-Sport group spent March 18-22 in the Gateway City courtesy of Cerner, which paid for the training, lodging, transportation and provided a per deim for each participant.

Cerner has partnered with the city of Nevada on the Healthy Nevada Initiative, whose purpose is to transform Nevada into a model of how different agencies, businesses and public bodies can come came together to increase the health of the community.

The purpose of the trip was to enable local individuals and groups to better identify useful funding sources and be prepared to present the most advantageous information to those sources when applying for grants for the Healthy Nevada Project or any other funding needs in their organization or the community.

The group took actual grant projects they were working on to the training. Since they knew they would be working on actual grants, group members did a lot of the work beforehand.

"We were the most prepared," he said of the 26 people who attended the training.

As the groups developed drafts of their grants, they were critiqued by the other groups, which led to a lot of good feedback. Branham had a proposal in progress before she went to the training and Gulick said the insights provided by others in the class let her revamp her proposal and make it much stronger.

Gulick said the training was especially valuable in three areas. It gave everyone a "good foundation" for writing project proposals. The concentrated time gained during the week also gave the groups a big jump ahead in a sometimes slow process.

Lastly, he said reviewing other groups' proposals made everyone "think like a funder" rather than thinking like a seeker.

Gulick said the training took the focus away from the organization seeking funds and placed it on "how the needs of the client will be met."

That's what funders want to hear, he said, adding that it also became clear that "the key" to successful grant writing is finding out who is willing to give you money for what you are doing.

Gulick said the training at the center gave participants some good networking opportunities and one of the benefits is that all participants get a full year's access to the center's data base of funding sources, resources and upcoming opportunities.

That information was helpful to Wilson because she is "always looking at different grant opportunities," that would benefit On My Own, she said. Wilson had already been to some training seminars and classes, but this training "was intensive," she said.

It was a great experience -- in depth training, that required the group to use the skills as they learned them, she said.

Wilson said the critique aspect of the training was very helpful, as was learning how to tie everything in the grant back to the budget.

Coincidently, while at the training, Wilson learned that a grant for which she had applied was approved. Wilson said the grant would be used to reestablish the Community Health Assist-ance Resource Team (Chart) and create a new Vernon County Resource Guide to the various health and well-being services available in the county.