The process of applying for a grant is arduous and tedious. A grant application pulls together both the quantitative aspects of your project, such as the budget and timeline, and the qualitative description of your goals and outcomes. In this discussion, you reflect on this process of creating a grant application.

Respond to the following in a minimum of 175 words:

• What are your reflections on the overall process of developing a criminal justice initiative to address a problem, finding a funding source, and writing a grant application?
• Identify at least one personal strength that helped you during this process.
• Identify at least one area for personal growth and development related to the grant application process.

Respond to 2 replies to classmates or your faculty member. Be constructive and professional.

1)The process for acquiring a grant and completing a proposal is very difficult and tedious. It involved a lot of research, calculations, and of course writing. The personal strength that helped me the most during this process was my perseverance, determination, and my ability to pay attention to detail. Paying attention to detail helped me with my budget and analyzing direct and indirect costs to implement the program. I could have improved on the methods and process of accomplishing goals and objectives, the description of the intended scope of work with the expected outcomes, the outline of activities, and descriptions of personnel functions with names of key staff and consultations. I use my mistakes as a learning curve and expect to grow from them moving forward. I also feel that if I were to utilize my ability to write grants in the future, I would do more research and carefully choose the initiative that I would need the grantor to invest in. Choosing and researching the background of the initiative you are seeking a grant for provides future investors with some insight on why they should invest in your business.

2)Honestly, as I stated before the grant and funding process is a lot more in-depth and requires a lot of not only problem solving but analyzing techniques that aren’t used very often when determining decisions in everyday life. It was doable but it definitely was a challenge for me and it mostly was my own doubts about being able to do the mathematics because I always forget how much technology we have at our fingertips to help with these things to refocus on what really matters in preparing not only the fundamentals and explanation of the purpose for funding but the specifics required per the grant application instructions. A personal strength during this process was my organizational skills in order to make a blueprint and map out the required needs and where to fill in the gaps to work and ensure the best chance possible at funding while having the utmost transparency with those who will assist in the future. In regards to personal growth, I definitely need to work on my time management skills as I am a successful procrastinator that has a hard time breaking that habit, and things such as grant applications require much more research than just a quick reference and citation resource and more thought process than a single day or two of work to make sure the wheels are turning at the pace necessary for a successful outcome.