How to Pursue Grant Funding When There is "No Funding".pdf

The federal government is undergoing a major reset, with mass layoffs and the pullback of grant funding at mass scale. One agency just lost 80% of its prior programming. Whole agencies are being dismantled, with occasional residual parts and pieces moved elsewhere.
Institutions of higher education (IHEs) are highly reliant on federal funding, for student loans, for partial financial supports for programs, for advancing work, and for research funding.
In this time of mass cutting of federal funding, including for grants, what is the way forward for grant writing?

1. How to Pursue Grant
Funding…When There Is “No
Funding”
March 2025

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3. Overview
•The federal government is undergoing a major reset, with mass
layoffs and the pullback of grant funding at mass scale. One
agency just lost 80% of its prior programming. Whole agencies are
being dismantled, with occasional residual parts and pieces
moved elsewhere.
•Institutions of higher education (IHEs) are highly reliant on federal
funding, for student loans, for partial financial supports for
programs, for advancing work, and for research funding.
•In this time of mass cutting of federal funding, including for grants, what is
the way forward for grant writing?
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4. The Work of Grant Writing
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5. Basic Tasks of a Grant Writer
•A grant writer…
•Scours the Internet and WWW, grant databases, and other sources for
grant funding opportunities—public, private, corporate, and others…to
share with the college community and individuals on campus
•Collaborates with an on-campus team (and sometimes off-campus team)
to create a grant application (for a grant-funded work opportunity)
•Conducts research for the necessary data for respective grant
applications
•Writes the grant application (or co-writes)
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6. Basic Tasks of a Grant Writer (cont.)
•A grant writer… (cont.)
•Collects the necessary documents for attestations, letters of support,
memorandums of agreement (MOUs), and others
•Double checks the grant budgets (and the consistency of representation
of expenditures)
•Trains the college community in aspects of grant pursuit
•Co-edits / edits a newsletter about grant seeking to make a culture that is
pro grant-pursuit
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7. Guessing at the Future
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8. Near-Term, Mid-Term, Long-Term
•There is not a clear “level set” understanding of the current
realities.
•Near-term, there is a lot of dynamism in the government space, with mass
layoffs and de-funding and bureaucratic change.
•Mid-term, there may be some slimmed-down form of government and
repercussions from the near-term changes. Recovery is not a given.
•Long-term, the U.S. will likely have smaller government.
•Rose-colored glasses will not solve any real problems.
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9. A Great Reset, A Paradigm Shift
•These are linear assumptions, and the world changes in ways that
are nonlinear, discontinuous, and unpredictable.
•The current changes read to be part of a great reset, a large
paradigm shift, a new agreement between how government
interacts with the citizenry.
•Some problems are solved with the changes, and others are
introduced. The prior status quo was not seen as tenable with the
masses of government debt and so much going to debt service.
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10. Near-Term Grant-Seeking Context
•The forecasted funds in grant notices of funding opportunities
(NOFOs) have a low probability of being partially or fully funded.
•Private foundations do not have the resources to replace federal
funds…because of scale…and because of resourcing…and
because of differing objectives…
•Are the changes temporary? Are they for good?
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11. Options Going Forward
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12. Going to Ground
•Remove the grant writing capability from the college. Wait things
out. Rehire for the capability some years later when the dust
settles.
•Avoid anything that looks like politics.
•Fall in line with the ruling ideology.
•Understand that there are real consequences for all actions.
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13. Keeping On
•Continue with grant-seeking capabilities.
•Broaden the scope of grant pursuits in other realms, in addition to
competing for whatever federal funds are available.
•Monitoring the space closely.
•Keep learning deeply. Document what is learned. Share.
•Support administrators. Support colleagues.
•Position the college to be more competitive.
•The moment is a stress test with very real implications for funding
/ non-funding.
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14. Keeping On (cont.)
•The know-how is important to maintain. It is important to be ready
for changes into the future.
•As the rules for grant-seeking change, and new standards are
raised, the college has to be ready for those.
•It may be several years of hardship…the thin years that arrive after
fat years (of over-spending).
•In this “justify your value” period, grant writers have to justify their
value…which goes beyond the amount of funds they help to bring
in from external sources. In a time of “austerity,” this argument
may not hold.
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15. If Financial Exigency
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16. The Lifeblood of Organizations
•An organization’s lifeblood involves the following: cash. Its
cashflow has to work for it to survive.
•An organization’s peoples are also part of its energy and
capabilities. But these cannot exist without the first. People do
not work for free.
•For many, grant writers included, they will come to a fork in the road. They
can choose to add FTEs of other work to their positions to keep their jobs
(a typical bargain in higher education)…or move on…to what is available in
the world. It is a big world out there.
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17. Fork in the Road,
Horns of a Dilemma
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18. If Financial Exigency
•IHEs are putting into place hiring freezes. Programs are being cut.
The headwinds have become even harsher than in prior years.
•The enrollment cliff is also nigh, with demographic factors limiting
the numbers of traditional-age college students.
•Depending on funding, if the government pulls back on funding
higher education, a tranche of IHEs will go under. (Some 100 or so
IHEs have closed in the U.S. or merged with other educational
entities in the past few years.)
•In a financial exigency, all bets are off.
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19. Conclusion and Contact
•Dr. Shalin Hai-Jew
•Grant Writer
•Hutchinson Community College
•[email protected]
•620-694-2453
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