LIS-S 591 Grant Writing
3 credits
- Prerequisite(s): LIS-S 500, LIS-S 507 Note: School Library Certification students may bypass S500 and S507.
- Delivery: Online
- Semesters offered: Summer (Check the schedule to confirm.)
Description
Students will work independently and in collaboration with course peers to prepare a grant funding proposal for a library/school library media center or non-profit organization, including organizational fact sheet, needs assessment, demographics, and problem statement; project design and development; logic model; budget; staffing; timeline; and evaluation plan. S591 is an introduction to the craft of writing a successful grant application developed via a real-world grant template and outcomes-based planning. Through a combination of individual exercises and peer review in groups, you will discover the importance of grant writing to the success of a library, school media center, or other. You will learn how skills in grant writing may be valuable to your own professional success.
Program Learning Goals Supported
Instructors map their courses to specific LIS Program Goals. Mapped program goals drive the design of each course and what students can expect to generally learn.
- Connect Core Values and Professional Ethics to Practice
- Facilitate Engagement in the Information Ecosystem
- Conduct Systematic Research to Inform Decisions
- Innovate Professional Practice with Information Services and Technology
Learning Outcomes
Instructors develop learning outcomes for their courses. Students can expect to be able to achieve the learning outcomes for a given course after successfully completing the course.
- Assess and analyze past, present, and potential of library services to children, young adults and adults
- Demonstrate the acquisition of skills required to assesses needs and utilize goals and objectives to plan services and programs and in evaluating services and programs
- Assemble and reframe basic organizational information for presentation in a grant application or partnership agreement
- Assess an organization’s needs; create an advocacy- oriented statement based on the assessment that is tied to the organization’s mission, vision and/or strategic documents
- Design and develop a project or program responsive to the need(s); document the need(s) and solution(s) with statistical data; formulate a project timeline
- Select and qualify prospective funders and collaborative partners using indexes, databases, and/or news or social media resources
- Express the project or program as a logic model to emphasize outputs, outcomes, and impact; evaluate the impact based on the funder’s mission and point of view
- Calculate project costs and sustainability; formulate measurements for evaluation and reporting
- Propose the project or program to funders and anticipate their questions
- Collaborate with a team to develop and revise compelling and effective grant proposal materials tied to a funder’s mission
Course Overview
Instruction is in Canvas. Lessons are organized into Modules whose length may vary.
Module 1: Course overview
Introductions, review of the grant template and decisions
Module 2: Fact sheet; needs assessment/problem statement
Find and assimilate organization’s mission/vision/strategic plan/other key documents to create an organizational fact sheet. Assess the need you will be targeting, per your choice, and write a problem statement.
Module 3: Project design, development, documentation
Design and develop the project and timeline; document proposed solutions.
Module 4: Funders and logic model
Determine the funder’s point of view; analyze the project in a logical model.
Module 5: Budget, time line, staffing, sustainability, evaluation, follow-up
Create the project budget; explain staffing and sustainability; develop evaluation and follow-up plans.
Module 6: Cover letter or executive summary; final paper
Synthesize results from the final quiz, and then apply them to revise completed grant application to share with colleagues.
Policies and Procedures
Please be aware of the following linked policies and procedures. Note that in individual courses instructors will have stipulations specific to their course.