Wednesday, June 27, 2007

GrantWriters - There Are Some Bad Apples!


Click on the link above and you will see a news article about a woman that defrauded a lot of people. The picture that you are looking at are some of the people that she defrauded who appeared in court to testify against her. She got prison time and has to pay restitution.

Unfortunately there are going to be "bad apples in every business and I know that the allure of "free government money" is alluring to a lot of people. However after reading the article myself and seeing some of the examples of the fraud I can't help but think as to why the woman didn't know about the actual grant programs that were available to help these people. Maybe she didn't want to do the work. But it is so sad because there are actual grant programs out there that she could have used to help those people.

That is why I provide all of my clients with the grant program information FIRST. Then that way they can decide whether or not they want to apply for the grant(s) themselves or hire a grantwriter (be it me or someone else) to write the grant for them.

I think that there is another message that should be understood here and that is that a grant is not guarenteed! You have to apply for the grant and your grant application will be reviewed. Then the decision is made on whether or not you will get the grant award.

2 comments:

Thomas / @5ifthproject said...

I hope you got the grant, your site is loaded with information, i like it.

Anthony

Rose said...

I think you misunderstand. The article was about a woman who was taken to court because she scammed people out of a lot of money.

I would not have used this woman's services only because I know that you can't guarentee a grant. The money that she was asking for was a percentage of the grant amount that she said the people would get.

I don't work that way. People pay me to find grant programs that they are eligible to apply for. They get all the information about the grant programs including the contact information for applying for the grant. They can then decide whether or not they want to apply for the grant themselves or hire me or someone else as their grantwriter.

That way they have all the information that they need and then they can make their own decisions from there.

This woman in the article simply told her clients that she would apply for the grant but they would have to pay her a percentage of the grant first.

Grantwriters know that grants can't be guarenteed. They have to be applied for and reviewed before it is decided whether they will get the grant award or not.