Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
Quit your toxic nonprofit job and replace your full-time income while writing grants part-time, from home! Join our students in the Freelance Grant Writer Academy to create Financial Stability and Flexibility through writing grants for causes you are passionate about: https://grantwritingandfunding.com/freelance-grant-writer-academy
World-renowned grant writing expert and Amazon bestselling author Holly Rustick provides coaching that helps new and experienced grant writers replace their full-time income while writing grants part-time from home (or anywhere they want to live or travel in the world).
She coaches changemakers to master grant writing and start to grow 6-figure+ grant writing businesses on part-time hours via her signature group program, “Freelance Grant Writer Academy."
As an unapologetic feminist, Holly’s work in coaching female grant writers to master grant writing, find their cause-area niche, and navigate value-based pricing and nonprofit sales is breaking glass ceilings for women all over the world.
Every week, she coaches thousands of people through the top-ranking podcast, Grant Writing & Funding, books on grant writing, and inside the Freelance Grant Writer Academy.
Holly has 20 years of experience in grant writing, and began her freelance grant writing journey back in 2005. While teaching in Kuwait and Indonesia, and then earning a Master’s Degree in International Political Economy in Belgium, Holly saw the light of setting up a virtual-based business in grant writing back in the mid-2000s. Having secured more than $45 million of dollars for nonprofit organizations, and then setting up a multi 6-figure freelance business, Holly has a mission to help female grant writers break out of toxic nonprofit J-O-B-S and create high-level income while freelance grant writing.
Inside the Freelance Grant Writer Academy, students have secured more than $225+ million in grant funding and $4+ million in revenue in their grant writing businesses within two years.
To amplify this work, she is past-president of the Guam Women’s Chamber of Commerce and was appointed to the Guam Business Advisory Task Force as an advisor to the first female governor of Guam. Holly lives on the island of Guam with her beautiful daughter, Isabella.
If you are interested in replacing your full-time income while writing grants part-time from home (or from anywhere in the world!) join the Freelance Grant Writer Academy!
Welcome to the Grant Writing and Funding Podcast where it's all about, you guessed it, grant writing and funding made easy so you can increase capacity, grow funding, and advance your nonprofit or freelance mission. Now, let's hand it over to your host, grants expert and author Holly Rustic, so you can increase your funding and drive impact.
Holly Rustick:Hello. Hello. Hello. It's Holly Rustic here with Grant Writing and Funding, and I'm here to help you grow capacity, increase funding, to advance mission. Welcome to the grant writing and funding podcast.
Holly Rustick:Alright, guys. So we have a special, special podcast episode for you today. I'm really excited to do it because this is something that you guys as soon as I mention it, you're always like, oh, piqued interest. How do I do that? What do I do?
Holly Rustick:And I am so excited to tell you I finally released a course on it. Yes. You've been asking me for years, and I finally, finally, finally just released the how to become a federal grant reviewer course. Yes. This is for you if you want to increase your grant writing skills, if you wanna win more grants, and you just really wanna understand the grant writing process more and get paid to do it.
Holly Rustick:So you'll definitely wanna check out grantwritingandfunding.com/220 for all of the show notes today. And what I'm gonna talk about today in this show is what a federal grant reviewer is and what the benefits are in becoming a federal grant reviewer. So you're definitely gonna wanna hang out. And I love this because, you know, I've actually I every time I've said that you know, tell people, my students, hey, you should really become a federal grant reviewer. Every time I've had students that followed what I said and how to do it and they become a federal grant reviewer, they are so excited and they are just so grateful and they get so much out of it.
Holly Rustick:And I know you guys out there who are federal grant reviewers are like, yes, that's right. Becoming a federal grant reviewer is one of the best things I ever did. Cause I know it was for me as well. And I've been a federal grant reviewer now, goodness, for about eight years, and it's really helped my grant writing. It's really helped me just to be a better grant reviewer.
Holly Rustick:Like I do a lot of grant reviews for people as well, and it's just helped secure more grants and so much more. So it's such a great, great thing. All right, but before we get there today, I just wanna give a word from our sponsor, and that's Grant Writing and Funding. Yes, it's us. So please do jump over to grantwritingandfunding.com and join our free hub haven for all of our free resources that we have on grant writing, how to become a freelance grant writer, and how to get your nonprofit grant ready.
Holly Rustick:So please, jump over to grantwritingandfunding.com for, joining the Hub Haven, as well as just a bunch of other resources that we have on there. Alright. So let's go ahead and get into what is a federal grant reviewer. Well, a federal grant reviewer is actually someone who is not a federal employee. K?
Holly Rustick:That would be a conflict of interest. You are a nonfederal person. Right? But you are reviewing federal grants. And once again, this is US based.
Holly Rustick:Okay? So I know a lot of you guys tune in from different places. So just to be clear on that. In other countries, you might have your own national grants programs. Alright.
Holly Rustick:So what you're actually going to do is you're going to apply to read the grant applications that come in the door for those federal grants. And why the federal agencies actually do this is can you imagine here's the thing. You have one maybe you have one grant program. Right? One grant program that may have 10 grants available, each grant for $500,000, so they have a budget, a limit on that.
Holly Rustick:Right? But do you know not only 10 grant applications come in the door. That's only how many they can award potentially. Right? So they may have 300 applications that come in the door, and they can only award 10.
Holly Rustick:Now if you only had the program officer reviewing all those, they'd never even be able to get through them. So this is really an efficiency process of the federal government to actually hire people outside the federal agencies to review these grants. And it's more objective then. Right? So it's people coming in from the outside, giving an outside perspective to have that objectiveness.
Holly Rustick:And also, you're bringing in people that have experience in the field. Now these are sometimes referred to as subject matter experts. Don't freak out about that term at all. Alright? I'm gonna talk about that in just a second.
Holly Rustick:But you're bringing in people that are basically having experience out in the field, review those grants so they're actually gonna give the best insight and the best scores then of what they think is reasonable, what they think is actually achievable, and so much more. Alright. So let's talk about subject matter expert. Because when you're applying to be a federal grant reviewer, as long as you're not a federal employee, you're gonna apply for this. Right?
Holly Rustick:You need to understand, don't get scared of the term that don't subject matter expert. Don't think you have to have a PhD to be a subject matter expert. Not at all. All you need is experience in that area of the grant program. Alright?
Holly Rustick:So think. If it's a Department of Transportation grant and their the grant program is green energy school buses, you know, they're gonna be funding green energy school buses, and you have experience as, like, superintendent overseeing school buses, you could apply. If you have experience as an intern or volunteer at a school dealing with transportation or something similar, you can apply. Right? So you don't even have to be have, like, decades of work experience.
Holly Rustick:It could be volunteer experience. It could be internships. It could be a job. It could be education as well, right? It could be just, you know, you serve on a board of directors that oversees a type of program like that that's similar.
Holly Rustick:So definitely, subject matter expert is somebody just in the field that has knowledge about that area of the grant. So that pretty much is what you are and what do you do then. As a federal grant reviewer, what do you do? Well, you have to apply. Right?
Holly Rustick:And that's a whole process. Once you're selected though, you serve on a panel, usually with two other people and a chair. Right? And it's really, really fun because you have to go through. They give training usually on how they want you to review it, but you can't just say, I like this.
Holly Rustick:I don't like this part. You have to give specific reasons why you like certain sections or why you would score higher, what your score is. You really have to be specific. And then you come to terms with your other panel to see what they scored, why they scored that way. And then you sometimes negotiate and come to a middle ground, or you might say, oh my gosh, I gave them a two, but you gave them a 10.
Holly Rustick:And now I see your point of why you gave them a 10. So I'm going to also change my score, and I'm also gonna then change my reasoning behind that. So the panel really is there to give that input from the field, from the expertise. Right? So how does that benefit you then as a grant writer?
Holly Rustick:Well, you are gonna learn how the federal grants actually get scored. You are gonna learn what the grant reviewer goes through by being one. You're gonna be writing out complete ways of why you're scoring the way you're scoring. You're gonna be understanding what they're looking for because you have to follow the criteria. You're gonna also understand what pops out and makes sense, right, to you.
Holly Rustick:You may have one grant that has no headings in it, and you got lost in it, you're tired, etcetera, where you have another grant that has headings and, oh, maybe that gave you a great idea then to put headings in your grant. Right? You're also gonna see some grants that get denied because of simple things. And you're gonna be like, oh my gosh, they went over page limit, and now they just blacked out all those pages. I had no idea they did that.
Holly Rustick:So there's so much you're gonna learn as a grant reviewer. So that's definitely one of the tips that you are gonna learn so much. That is definitely gonna help you to become a better grant writer. Now the other thing about federal grant reviewers is that they have to do this usually seven to ten days to review about 10 different grant applications. That is a lot to do in a very intense short amount of time.
Holly Rustick:Right? So you're also gonna learn that, yes, as objective as it is made to be, there's also humans involved. So you're also gonna learn that part of it. And that's also gonna help you be a better grant writer because it's gonna make you say, oh my gosh. I need to make sure my writing is clear as possible.
Holly Rustick:I need to put some charts in here if I can. I need to make it readable as possible, and I need to write to the criteria because that's what they score. Right? That's what they're using to score. So that's definitely a benefit.
Holly Rustick:And of course, benefit to being a federal grant reviewer is that you are gonna increase your professionalism. Right? So that's something you can put on your resume that you are a grant reviewer. That's something that you can add to your skills. That if you're a freelance grant writer, that's something that you can definitely add in your portfolio.
Holly Rustick:So if now a nonprofit that you're working with is going to apply for that specific grant, you know all about that grant. Right? You are so familiar with it. So you're probably gonna have a much better chance of securing that grant than other people who have never been a federal grant reviewer for that program. And finally, yes, you get a stipend.
Holly Rustick:You get a stipend to be a federal grant reviewer. For your time, you get a certain amount, and this changes you know, the amounts change per federal agency. But on average, it's about a $125 per grant. And on average, you review about 10 grants. So a little over a grand isn't bad.
Holly Rustick:It usually falls right around there. And it just depends on the number of grants they have coming in, how many grants, applications they've had, etcetera. And the thing is is once you get your foot in the door, you can easily then apply to other places to become federal reviewer, even to the same agency, but to different programs, etcetera, because that is a lot of training that they invest in you to train you how to review the grants. So once you have that type of training, they're gonna wanna keep you around. That So is gonna help you increase your grant writing.
Holly Rustick:It's gonna help you secure more grants. It's gonna help increase your professionalism in your resume, and you're gonna get increase your bank account. Alright? So I hope you enjoyed this today on how to become a grant reviewer. Please know that we do have our course now all about that, so you can really get your foot in the door as soon as possible to becoming a federal grant reviewer.
Holly Rustick:All right, guys, I hope you enjoyed today's episode about how to become a grant reviewer as far as what a federal grant reviewer is and what some of the benefits are. I hope to see you guys in the course, and please do check out grantwritingandfunding.com/220 for today's show notes. Alright. Once again, you guys, that course may not always be open, but I am launching it this week, so you definitely will get a good price on that. And I may be shutting the doors to that very soon as this could just be rolled into a bonus for my future larger signature courses.
Holly Rustick:So I'm not sure yet what I'm gonna do with that, but but I do know that it's open right now. Alright, guys. So I will see you next week. Alright. Have a great, fabulous week.
Holly Rustick:And as always, if you love the show, please do me a favor and leave a review on iTunes as that really does help other people find the show. And I love to hear what you guys are saying about the show. Alright, guys. I'll talk to you soon. Bye bye.