High-Impact Ways to Improve Your Grant Proposal - Create Optimism

A visionary leader with over two decades of executive-level management experience, Luvina Beckley is the CEO and founder of M.H.M. & Associates Enterprise, Inc. (MHM). Luvina Beckley and her team help clients access needed resources and empower agencies and individuals, (through a proven processes, use of their date driven grants library and best practices) in elevating successes in accessing grants!

Writing a grant proposal can be a complex process. Often, organizations underestimate how much time will be consumed in performing the needed research to find the right funding partners, compose a coherent proposal with relevant and compelling data to support the need for the proposed services, while ensuring the data you find accurately conveys yours program and optimism from the reader/potential funding agency. One of the most important things you can do to create optimism for your readers, is performing meticulous research to find the best partners capable of implementing 'best and proven' practices. These proven practices, often called 'best practice models' have been compiled by MHM in their library which enables any writer to increase their chances for success.

Another key factor in creating optimism is explicit knowledge about how the grant will make an impact on a very distinct population. Your funding agency will also want to know why you are the right person or group to serve the targeted population and receive a grant from them. This will need to be articulated clearly and in such a way that the reviewer/reader representing the funding agency resonates with your idea, your plan, the specified needs and planned impact.

Last, it's key to pay close attention to how you can build public and private partnerships into your overall design and into your planned budget. Often, funding agencies will look at a budget before they even consider the narrative to assess if your request is aligned with their planned allocation. If your budget show promise of collective partners with strong justification for divers roles and responsibilities, and the requested amount is aligned with their planned giving, you can create a level of optimism among funding agencies, even before they read your narrative!.

An Overview of Six Sigma e3p3 As Part of a Quality Management Strategy

Since 1994, Luvina Beckley has served as the CEO of M.H.M. & Associates. Under Luvina Beckley’s leadership, the Ontario, California, firm works to obtain government grants and other funding to support a variety of economic, environmental, social, and civic projects designed to revitalize communities. She also serves as chair of the MHM-created National Resource Development Council for Inclusion and Equity (NRDC-IE), whose patent-pending e3p3 grant-securing model has received recognition from the federal government.

MHM established NRDC-IE out of a passion for solving regional economic and environmental injustices and inequities. The organization was developed in collaboration with the University of California’s Center for Economic Development, the Loma Linda University Center for Community Resilience, and prominent leaders in government and social policy.

MHM’s patent-pending e3p3 model for securing grants has notable antecedents and parallels in the business world. The basic Six Sigma e3p3 methodology centers on ideas generated by business experts such as Joseph Juran, Kaoru Ishikawa, and W. Edwards Deming.

The mnemonic for the Six Sigma e3p3 methodology (“e-cube, p-cube”) is “evaluate, evolve, execute, perfect, progress, and preach/practice.” The steps involved begin with defining the problem, managing appropriate inputs and processes, and then executing the plan itself. Then MHM uses the approach to “perfect” the grant concept and model being developed, by ensuring planed impact and targeted performance measures can be accomplished, which leads to increasing successes in grants produced and further progress of the programs, accomplishments, and sustainable.or replicateble performance

Through its iteration of this evidence-based Six Sigma e3p3 methodology, MHM and its e3p3 model wil enhance healthy and sustainable communities, as well as to promote the well-being of community members, particularly blacks andother minority under-resourced parts of the United States.