Last week I wrote about going to see the exceptional recently released romantic comedy, Fly Me to the Moon, to help me cope with the awful news of the attempted Trump assassination. The weird political and world news continues so last night I went to see another new film for distraction—Twisters, billed as this summer’s blockbuster. Not a bad film but not exactly a blockbuster. I saw the original and much better original, Twister, when it came out in the summer of ’96 with my then three pre-teen kids at the Factoria Multiplex in Bellevue, WA. To save money, the drill was to go to a matine ..read more

Like most American’s I was shocked and saddened by the assassination attempt on former President Trump last Saturday afternoon. I stopped writing the proposal I was working on to watch the chaotic news coverage, not on CNN or Fox, but on X, which is now the best news source. A profound sadness came over me, as I’m old enough to remember the spate of assassinations and attempts from JFK in 1963 to Reagan in 1981. During that ~20 year span, political violence was normalized in America, but faded over the next ~40 years for no apparent reason. Then we got the often violent George Floyd demonstrat ..read more

Happy 4th of July in this troubled summer of 2024. I live in a New Urbanism-inspired Phoenix area exurb so I can walk or bike to the charming faux main street for coffee, while being shielded from the antisemitism and general chaos in many American cities. Still, as a grant writing consultant, I must stay current with public policy news and, like many of us, am experiencing enervating uncertainty*. My anecdote was to spend a few hours this morning gardening in my bird and bee friendly backyard: mowing the grass for my 110 pound Golden Retriever (AKA Lawn Hippo) to take his daily sunbath, ferti ..read more

If I hopped into the Time Tunnel to go back 15 years or more, I’d find that Seliger + Associates was writing a fair number of proposals for nonprofits providing services to refugees and immigrants—the term migrants was not yet in vogue and, depending on the client, we’d still sometimes use illegal alien rather than the softer undocumented person now de rigueur in polite society (to quote an old English writer of some note from Romeo & Juliet, “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”). Still, not only have we not written any grants for this target population* in at least 10 year ..read more

The City of Los Angeles recently announced plans to “renovate” the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the world-famous 1.3-mile section of Hollywood Boulevard centered on the Chinese Theater. Pretty much every tourist who first visits Los Angeles walks along Hollywood Boulevard trying to figure out who Charles Bickford was (hint: great character actor with two stars, one for movies and one for TV, but largely forgotten except for folks like me who love classic films and Turner Classic Movies). And all stop in the Chinese Theater Courtyard to measure their shoes against John Wayne’s boot prints (surp ..read more

Note: this is the first post written by our new Associate, Liz Rego (erego@seliger.com). Some federal agencies, like the Department of Education and the Health Services and Resources Administration (HRSA), but not all, publish forecasts of when certain funding opportunities will be issued, usually before the start of the federal fiscal year on October 1. Case in point: Last July 3, HRSA published a forecast on grants.gov that the FY 2024 New Access Points (NAP) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO, which is HRSA-speak for RFP), would be published on December 12 with a February 2024 deadlin ..read more

As 2023 has stumbled to a close, a grant writing post-mortem is in order. Having written grant proposals since dinosaurs walked the earth (mid-70s, but close enough), the process remains relatively the same, except now we use computers instead of a legal pad* and the Internet instead of endless trips to the library. So, like the Talking Heads song Once in a Lifetime, it’s the “same as it ever was.” This is because very little has changed in how human services are delivered, how capital projects get built, etc.—outreach and case planning are still conducted in the same ways and site control and ..read more

It’s been 2016 since the Health Resources and Services Administration issued a New Access Points (NAP) Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). That’s a long dry spell for Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and their Look-Alike brethren, but fear not, the FY ’24 New Access Points will be published on December 12.* There will be $150M up for grabs, with 230 $650K/year grants for five years to be made and the deadline will be February 12. I have no idea why HRSA has not issued any NAP NOFOs for years, but, if your organization is an FQCH, LookAlike, or want to become an FQHC, I’d get o ..read more

Many nonprofit and local government executives think that federal and foundation grant funding priorities are relatively static, but they’re not—we’ve written about grant waves before, and a massive new grant wave is forming just over the horizon. Unlike sudden funding shifts due to unanticipated disasters such as COVID, or a major hurricane like Katrina, grant waves develop over time as the legislative and executive branches react to emerging challenges. The new and building grant wave is one I’ll call the “Urban Doom Loom Grant Wave.” The media is filled with Urban Doom Loop stories like “Th ..read more

* I spotted an interesting HUD program that covers a topic I’ve never or rarely seen the feds touch: “Increasing the Supply of Affordable Housing through Off-Site Construction and Pro-Housing Reforms Research Grant Program Pre and Full Application.” Four million dollars are available, with grants of $500,000 and five estimated awards. (Five times $500,000 is $2.5 million, not $4 million: feel free to ask HUD about the discrepancy). Still, the “Increasing the Supply of Affordable Housing” offers funding for research to “build the evidence base to accelerate the adoption of effective practices a ..read more