Speaker 1: Now let's get into our podcast episode so you can learn how to win grants and advance impact in the world. Hello. Hello. Hello. It's Holly Rustick here with Grant Writing and Funding, and we have a juicy, juicy episode for you today, and it is something that has been going around in the news.
So I really wanted to talk about it because it really does affect grant writing or it could. So what we're looking at right now is we're talking to talk about what happened on 05/29/2026, just a couple of weeks ago, and we're gonna talk about what that means for you as a grant writer and if you should be concerned, what you should do, what you can do, and as a freelancer, what this means for you as well. Okay? Overall, let me actually start with what happened. Right?
So what what am I talking about? What is OMB? OMB? What are you talking about, Holly? Alright.
I am talking about the office of management and budget. They make rules all the time. They make, like, guidances all the time. And, well, like, every other year, every, I don't know. Every so often they they do it.
Okay? So not like every day. But they do have guidances on how things on on the federal funds. Right? So we just saw late twenty twenty four was the latest updates, and those were things like indirect cost rates went from 10% to 15% de minimis.
We also saw so, like, you know, you can ask for indirect cost rates in your grant budgets and what can you ask up to if you don't have a negotiated cost rate. That still might sound like another language. If it does, how about this? It also talked about, like, what equipment means and equipment cost could go from $5,000 to $10,000 in a grant. So if you have let's say, if you purchased 10 computers and they're a thousand dollars each, you would say, okay.
I should put computers under the equipment category because that's $10,000. Right? $1,000 times 10 computers equals $10,000. And they actually said no. What it means is if you buy one purchase, like one item, and it's $10,000 and has a longer lifespan of one year, so let's say a food truck might be or something like that, right, is more than $10.00 for one item and it's gonna last longer than a year, that would be considered equipment.
So they give, like, these guidances, right, these things and they say, this is what this means for now so we're all on the same page and there's clarity. And they give other types of guidances as well, but those are a couple that just came to my brain. Another one is for requiring external audits. Right? If you're a nonprofit or organization, you are required to have an external financial audit if and it just increased in 2024, you get more than a million dollars in federal grant funding in one year period.
So things like that. Right? So you're like, okay, if I only made $7.50 from federal grants last year, I don't have to pay $30,000 for an external audit or 50,000 or whatever it is. Right? So they do have these guidances, so there's some sort of uniformity.
Right? And what happened the other day was actually they're trying to come out with a whole new system. And what let me talk about why this is important for you. Okay? Stay tuned.
I know I was getting a little nerdy there for a second, but let me tell you what this is all about. I actually think one of the biggest parts of this entire thing is they're trying to rename this from the guidance for federal financial assistance to the regulation for federal financial assistance. Changing the word from guidance to regulation is enormous framing, and it really does matter. Because under the old framing as guidance, right, individual federal agencies, and there's a lot of them, they had the ability to maybe deviate from when the rules didn't really apply to them or if they needed something different, etcetera, etcetera. And that's really important is this really is, like, these are regulations, not just guidance.
And I think that's very important. And it has all of the federal grant making agencies adopt these at once. And that's, like, so interesting. So, anyways, what are what do they want to adopt? Well, they're coming out.
They have this 100 page proposed overhaul, and these are the common rules once again that govern how every federal grant is applied for, awarded, administered, and audited. Every federal grant. And this does not count for foundation grants. So if you're only writing foundation grants right now, you don't have to follow anything I'm saying because it doesn't apply to you. But it is important to know what's going on.
Right? So, one of the biggest change that people are talking to and I do think this is huge is right now when a federal grant goes out, you know, it's announced, you're gonna apply for it, you apply for it and then it goes to the federal agency to review it. It goes through an independent peer review. And what happens there is in that peer review is that actual experts in the subject area, sometimes scientists, sometimes people just with education or even volunteer work in that cause area, sometimes people with lived experience, nonprofit experience, whatever that experience, subject matter experience, and they spent their careers in that field or they have a lot of experience or knowledge from that, those people are invited into, they have to apply, but then they're invited in, they apply, they are able to and any of you can apply to be a peer reviewer. If you have certain experience or education in this area, you know, on a certain cause area and you're like, I wanna apply it to be a peer reviewer on that grant, you can.
We actually teach you how to do that. It is so cool. Because what it does is it really helps you understand how grants are awarded, and that's such an interesting thing to know how. Right? To know how.
But what they do have is they have a rubric. They have a criteria, they have to score on that criteria, and you're usually in a group, not always, but from my experience on being on many different federal agency review panels, there's usually about three of us, me and two other people or two other people or me. Right? And then we have a chair that oversees that. And we all review on our own with the scoring criteria.
And then we have to submit our scores and then we meet together usually. And it's been just online. I used to be in person way before the pandemic but now it's usually like online or on the phone, right, and and you're able then to reconcile scores or to talk about them, etc. And this really brings an objectiveness to the federal grant process that is very valuable because, basically, what these people are looking at yes, we have a scoring criteria, and you can't just be like, oh, that section was bad. I gave it a zero.
You literally have to give, like, several sentences and examples, etcetera, from the grant application on why you scored it that way. It's very, very robust, the process, and it makes it very good. If you have certain grants, so usually at the top level, they're like, okay, we're gonna, you know, we'll we'll look at all the grants that scored, let's say, 95 and up. And then, you know, you can submit. So your panels, if you had any grants that scored 95 and up, they would then be submitted on up.
Right? And sometimes from the top two, they can, like, look at other things like, or we haven't awarded in this certain geographic area in a while, can you give us all grants that scored, you know, maybe 80 and up because we want to also give to that area or whatever it is. I don't know. They have different things they may be looking at but overall they have to go through a scoring criteria and that is a very, I love being a federal grant reviewer, I think it's so important to that and maybe I have some bias here but I've seen behind the scenes of what it actually is and how important it is. And you have to sign, like, you don't know the organizations, you have to sign, you have to review them first.
So you're also having to sign a conflict of interest policy and all of that. So it's very objective, right? Foundations, if you talk about foundations, they really don't have to be objective like that. Right? They can be very subjective.
They're like, no, I want to only work with people I have relationships with. But the federal government really does keep it as objective as possible and part of that is through this process. And what's great about that too is, like, any organization can submit a grant. Right? As long as you submit you have the eligibility and the requirements, you can submit a grant to the federal government and you're kind of like, you're at even even level with other people.
And I think that's a part of a beautiful process. So let's get back to this proposal. This proposal is actually saying, we'll just have those as if you wanna keep your peer reviews, it'll just be advisory. But really who makes the decision is going to be political appointee would have the final say over whether a grant gets awarded or not. And the criteria would then include whether the grant, what they say is quote, demonstratively it advances the president's policy priorities end quote.
It doesn't talk about whether the it hit the rubric, whether it was sound, whether what score the panel gave it, you know, all of that. Not whether the program model works or if the budget makes sense, it's whether it advances the current administration's priorities. And if you think about what that actually means in practice, it means that every federal grant application would have a political filter on top of the merit value or merit review or not even really look at the merit review. And the people operating that filter are appointed by whoever is in office. Office.
Right? Whoever is in office. And what I wanna just really, like, spend some time is is no matter what side of the aisle you are on, it would depend on whoever is in office. So let that sink in for a minute because if you're like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I love the president. Who's the president today?
Well, in a few years, that's not gonna be the same president, right? And then if the other side, then all of a sudden it's so, oh, this gets sticky. It gets sticky really, really fast and it takes away a lot of the ability for the economy to thrive, right? For economy to thrive. And I think that's so important, because if you can pull back a grant whenever you want, we'll get into that in a minute, then as soon as people come into office, like that could disrupt your entire community.
So another part is it screens up grants that use DEI language, gender ideology, or what it calls quote anti American values end quote. And that's something to specifically flag because it's very broad and it's vague and it's like, well, if this political person says, I don't think this is American values, right? It's more like, it's very subjective. And then there's, of course, another part, which is the termination piece. This is huge, you guys.
This is huge. The proposal gives federal agencies expanded authority to terminate grants that are already active. Not just future grants that your clients may apply for, but grants that have already been awarded, grants they've already built programs and hired staff around. And we saw this in 2025 when grants were frozen and they were rescinding them And then we saw the court step in like months later, right, to kind of rectify or try to rectify this. Like, it was so disruptive for every community and it didn't matter what side of the political alley that community was in, it was every community.
Right? And this is the thing, there's like multi year grants. So if you're having grants and you're thinking, okay, already hired the staff, this is what's happening, we built up this infrastructure, and then it gets pulled like, ugh, like, what? You know? So that can be hard for every everyone who gets grants.
And remember, it's not just tiny little nonprofits that gets grants. Businesses get grants. Huge nonprofits get grants. Government agencies get grants, like you drive down the road, you don't even realize how many grants are operating in front of your eyes, that basketball court, that garden over there in the corner that makes the playground so nice and where you plant your The school your kids go to may be a nonprofit. That government agency might have brought in those new police vehicles, right?
And like there's so many grants that get awarded, and that operate as a part of the community. So this would have real impact to the economy and that's where I get like a little bit like, oh, about like as someone who sees the impact that grants have on economies. The after school program, right, that gives the kids somewhere to go, the food pantry your neighbor volunteers at on weekends, the veterans programs that help someone in your family, the housing organization that helps people, to find, you know, people have places to sleep and live. These really aren't abstract. They are real places in your actual community.
And if active grants get terminated mid program, those programs lose the funding they built their entire year around. Staff get laid off, doors close, and the people that walk through those doors, your neighbors, the kids, the seniors, like they don't have a backup plan, right? And especially at this quick of a pace. These grants really do provide healthy communities. So this is not a policy debate, but it really does affect real people, right?
And as a grant writer, like many of you became grant writers because you believe money should go to mission and this is about protecting that. So here's what I really want you to sit with and this is the thing that I think should matter to every single person listening regardless of your political beliefs, that if this rule of it passes, it does not belong to one administration. It becomes permanent infrastructure. The next president gets to appoint political reviewers who screen grants for alignment with their priorities. Fit.
And if you think about what that means, a future administration, a different one, they could use these same rules to screen out maybe programs that this administration does protect more, right? And typically we see Republican administrations throughout my time writing grants in the last twenty plus years, we see more priority towards faith based organizations, sometimes rural development programs, veterans programs, those types of things can be a little bit more conservative leaning, sometimes not always at all. But overall, if we're talking about like trends, those are would be some trends. And any grant that a political point in the future administration decides that doesn't fit their priorities, maybe a democrat one, they wouldn't be as leaning and they wouldn't prioritize any of those as much potentially, right? And they would say, oh, that doesn't fit the values and then they're gonna, they wanna fund other things.
So that's very disruptive, right? This is not a left or right issue. This is a question of whether federal grants get awarded based on the quality of work or based on who is sitting in the White House that year. And no matter which side of the aisle you're on, handing that kind of permanent structural power to any administration is not in the interest of the nonprofits you serve or the business that you're building. And that's really the heart of this episode, right, is about how do we protect this industry?
Because this industry impacts our economy immensely. It impacts our communities immensely. It is meaningful work and it is powerful work. And when we're looking at throwing things because, you know, that don't really have any merit behind them to change up the structure, like, that doesn't make sense to me. Okay?
So I get it too. Like, two things can be true. Right? And I've been saying that a lot lately. And I get, like, yeah, if you need to streamline policy, if you need to streamline something, if you wanna clean something up, like, we can do that.
But going across, like, all of these changes all of these changes don't make sense. Do some of these make sense in here? Yes. It talks about not touching the indirect cost. There's a couple other things, like, yeah, of course.
So I'm not, like, saying everything about this is wrong, but I am saying that a lot of the main structural components should make nonprofits or any organization that receive grants pause because there's a lot more behind here repercussions that could happen of harm than good in my very educated opinion. Okay? Let's so let's wrap this up. If you wanna understand really what this o m b and go read it if you want it, it's hundreds of pages, it's long, long, long. So, but go for it.
So if you really wanna understand what this means and what's in the news and what's all the buzz and what this means for you, if you receive grants or a grant writer, there's basically two separate things happening. The language piece, banned words, trigger words, DEI screening, flagged language in federal applications, and part of that is already happening. Let's be true, like since early twenty twenty five, executive orders have already changed what words get flagged at some federal agencies and grant writers submitting federal grants right now, they're already navigating this. And if you need my help and you might, I have a free resource on my website called the banded trigger words guide and it includes a fully replaced checklist of what gets flagged and what to use instead. The link is in the show notes.
You can definitely check it out. The work is real and people find a lot of usefulness of it already. So it like, that one has gone viral on my website. But what this OMB proposal would change is something and it is the structure the fundamental rules about how grants get reviewed, awarded, and terminated across every federal agency the political appointee override of peer review and the power to cancel active grants mid program, the locking of all of this into regulation across all the agencies at once. So when I say don't panic, I'm I'm saying nothing has changed right now, but a lot has already changed and you're already dealing with it.
So what do you actually do right now if this is still a proposal and it hasn't taken effect? Okay. Here's three things that you can do. Number one, you can submit a public comment. Right?
Go to regulations.gov and search for the docket number OMBDash2026Dash0034. I know it sounds intimidating, but it's super not. You're not writing a legal brief. You're literally just describing how this proposal would affect your work and your client's work in plain language. It's very simple.
Just go there. We have some templates inside the show notes, like a short one that if you need some verbiage, go for it. And update it with what how it will affect you and your nonprofits or your agencies, your organization, your grant writing. It's fine. Simple.
Submit that. Number two, email your member of congress. Go to house.gov or senate.gov, enter your ZIP code, find your representative, and send them a short note. And really talking about, like, this crosses party lines is this rule gives permanent power to every future administration to screen federal grants for political alignment. And, really, federal grants should be awarded on merit, not politics.
So I also have a template for this in the show notes, and it just takes a couple of minutes. Number three, share the episode. Text it to a Grant Writer friend, post it for the newsletter. The more informed people we have participating in this comment period, the stronger the response. Now the comment period ends July 13.
Put it in your calendar right now before this episode ends and communicate. Talk to your people. This is how we do it. Right? This is how we do it.
If you don't or if you're like, Holly, I'm fine with this. I don't care if any of those things go into practice. That's up to you. Great. But if you're like, that doesn't make sense and that could have big ramifications for our communities, then send something, share.
Before I close, I wanna give you some real perspective because I think the news cycle makes everything feels more final than it is. Earlier in the administration in 2025, they tried to freeze federal grants entirely, courts reversed it. Just in the last few months, the National Council of Nonprofits, which represents over 30,000 American nonprofits, has seen courts side with nonprofits in two separate decisions. The legal and advocacy community is awake and moving on this and it's not over. I also want to say that the bipartisan coalition defending the integrity of grants and nonprofits is real and growing.
I also want to say that in the last week foundations have given millions and millions of dollars. We have three separate donors that gave $200,000,000 to back public health and AI programs. Foundation giving is not stopping, private philanthropy is not stopping, the money that does not answer to the OMB is still flowing. Even the Office of Violence Against Women, a federal agency, they just sent out an email the other day saying, hey, our peer review panel, submit for to be on the peer review panel. Like, people are still operating as is that this thing does not get passed.
Right? They're still doing their jobs. So I'm just saying that too, like, before you think everything has stopped and then this is just the way it is, there's room for things to change. Things are always changing as well, but it does take being aware of what's happening. And the other thing that no matter what happens in Washington, there are 1,900,000 nonprofits in The United States.
Foundation grants, state grants, corporate giving, none of that answers to OMB. The world is still wide open. Although, I don't wanna see like, I do wanna see more federal grants still. Right? And as a freelance grant writing business owner, when you build it the right way with multiple clients across multiple funding types, this is still way more stable than a nonprofit job.
Actually, because of all these changes, freelance grant writers are needed more and more all the time. We're seeing so many freelance grant writers in our programs get hired just to help organizations they work through navigate these these changes or just navigate these news headlines, etcetera, and actually becoming more consultants. And part of the retainer is just keeping up to date with what's happening and then giving a report. And that is extremely extremely valuable. Extremely valuable.
And not just a report, but also, like, advisory, right, on what to do. So so important. So the organizations that are going to get through this are definitely the ones with a skilled informed grant writer in their corner. Someone who actually reads the rules, understands what it is, listens to podcasts like this, and can help their clients respond with a clear head. That's you all.
That's you. Here's my recommendation for you all today is to if you're feeling it, submit your comment. Right? Email your congress member. Use our templates if you want.
Like, it's all good. But do know what's going on, and do know that you have an opportunity to have a say and have a voice in this. Alright. One more thing before we go. Tomorrow, June 10, I am hosting a free live training and I really, really want you there, especially right now given everything we talked about.
So definitely come to talk about what freelance grant writers are doing to have consistent clients in 2026 and that's at 5PM eastern. Go to grantwritingandfunding.com/academy-webinar to find out more because everything we talked federal grants becoming less predictable, funding landscape shifting, the importance of not being dependent on one funding source, that is exactly what this training is about. If you've ever thought about starting or growing a freelance grant writing business so you can decide your clients, your funding types, and your schedule, this is for you. It's free. It's tomorrow.
And honestly, after this week in grants news, you deserve to come hang out with people who get it. Alright. I'll see you there. I know it was a lot today, but you needed the full picture and now you have it. And I just wanna applaud you for your work as a changemaker in the world.
I hope you enjoyed today's podcast episode. And if you are still struggling with how to write a grant, it still feels overwhelming. Maybe you're new to it or maybe you're a seasoned grant writer with no processes in place on how to write grants. So every time you onboard a client, it is a lot of work. Make sure you subscribe to our private podcast on how to write a master grant template.
When you sign up, you even get a free download workbook. You'll get five episodes that walk you through how to write our Master Grant Template Framework that has helped hundreds of people inside our Freelance Grant Writer Academy win more than $238,000,000 in a And ahead of to read each and every review, and this helps other people find the podcast. Thank you for listening to our podcast today.