...Although each of the "due (dates)"
are critically important for all grantees to meet (because, if we DO NOT
receive all input from ALL grantees at the SAME TIME, we are forced to review
the ones that do not meet our deadlines out of our normal efficient zone for
review. That costs us time that we can not spare AND it costs the
grantee a tougher and more critical review (so, you, too, lose by your
laxity). Too many times, it is apparent that the work itself was done at
the last minute and this, too, will later require more additional work by the
grantee AS our review will again be tougher. The correct and proper
method in every case is to make sure that your work is documented in a written
procedure (continuity!!!!!!!) and updated and amended each year for changes
that are either new or recently thought about. What this really suggests
is that all work should be started way in advance, not at the last minute.
Each "due (date)" has many parts, some of which can be done
well before the due date. We strongly suggest that ignoring these
principles will COST you more than it costs us. Ignore it at your own
future risk...
...We have asked repeatedly for questions
(submitted well before December 31st each year) from you whenever you do not
understand something. Those who do not ask, now five or more years into
the program, have no excuses for not complying completely with our
requirements...
... as part of overall organizational continuity ... be sure that YOUR
own position and all of its processes and its relationship with this
Foundation has been documented so that next year NOTHING that we have had to
discuss, criticize, and/or correct this year has to be repeated, other than
for changes in circumstances (and even those should have been at least
semi-solved by prior discussions now documented for future readers)...
...If you think you MUST physically talk to me, my first
choice is to use Skype (free software from skype.com) and second would be local
landline. I have no truck wit dem nu-fangled tings call celfones. I am usually
available between 8:45am and 11:00am to START a phone call and again between
2:15pm and 3:30pm seven days a week. But I ask that you have your browser open
to the page that you want to discuss and your thoughts in order. I don't have
enough oxygen to breathe, balance a phone, look at my browser, etc., for long
periods of time...
...as far as the Due Oct 31, AND/OR the Due Jan 31
responses are concerned, if you ever even attempted to figure out what
continuity actually means, you would have used what was acceptable from prior
years and read, reviewed, and then updated everything by correcting, adding,
deleting, amending, adjusting, re-focusing, re-evaluating, etc, but do not
reinvent the wheel when so much of what you've done before can be re-applied
(INCLUDING changes for our comments thereon made in the past). That is part of
continuity. Don't exclude the past from the present. Have you ever taken a
course called "History"? Learn and use. This is when continuity gets
translated into WRITTEN words that can TEACH and EDUCATE your volunteers. Surely
it doesn't take a college professor to have some inkling of the value of
teaching and education...
...I have earned my
fortune in management consulting. I have consulted with organizations larger
and smaller than yours. The only new factor is that you have an unpaid
volunteer organization drawn from a small and ever changing available
population. That IS a problem. But I have known that to be the case for all of
SMA organizations since I first pondered it back in 1996, well before there
was a MPWCF, and our grant process was designed by me to acknowledge the
differences between SMA and the rest of the world. Hence no need for an
experienced grant writer. The questions we ask and the responses we are
looking for relate ONLY to SMA organizations, not those one might find apply
to other places...
...
as we have spent countless hours over many years creating this web-site and
more time updating it whenever necessary, we encourage any grantee to have
spent some time reading and understanding it, because (now in our own
maturity) we no longer have the time to "re-invent the
wheel" with each new volunteer at each individual grantee and what those
new volunteers think are their own unique questions...
