Adding Grant Funding Opportunities to K12 Sales & Marketing
Back in 2006 I started working on a new idea with a friend Scott Tracy. Scott was/is an accomplished grant writer and had a cadre of top writers, nationally, to tap into for writing assistance. I have an education background, from grad school, teaching, and years of selling into the education vertical. At the time I was working for Thompson Learning, later sold to Cengage. So the pieces were in place to explore a new recipe: Competitive Grants + Education Sales & Marketing.
If you are not familiar with grant competitions at a state and federal level let me sum it up for you: Funding Dollars available in K-12: $352,770,560,166 (from my associates at RFP Match https://rfpmatch.com/)
The Premise: find competitive k-12 education grant award opportunities and match them to the districts and schools that would be the best fit for the awards, aka benefit most from the influx of products and services. The first step is to find competitive grants that have a track record of providing ongoing funds with decent revenue. Next, dig into possible schools and parent districts that have the largest gaps that need to be filled. These gaps can be performance related, technology related, afterschool programming related, essentially anything that needs fixing and believe it when I say there is funding for pretty much anything if you can show that there is a need and you can help prescribe a plan to alleviate that shortfall at the school or district level.
Our short list of top grant competitions was the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant (CCLC) and the Enhancing Education Through Technology Act / grant (E2T2). The 21st CCLC was a great fit for afterschool programs at schools and Boys & Girls Clubs. In particular putting more resources into programs that offer afterschool programing to kids that might be better off at a safe afterschool location than on the mean streets of their neighborhood or at a home that offers no adult supervision (maybe bad supervision, no food options, or abuse…). The E2T2 was pretty much a great fit everywhere as use of technology in the classroom was starting to take off with new products being created by companies that sell into the education space and a fervor that had not been seen up to that point.
So we had this piece covered now we just needed to find the best candidates to match the grant funding opportunities to. This was three fold.
1. We needed strong educational curricular products, software, hardware, and staffing to implement the prescription.
2. Next we needed to narrow our search to the best candidates
3. We have to approach the districts that need grant writing help
(This is where I first started thinking about collecting demographical data on the US education system. This is where K12 Data was conceived. K-12 Education email lists that combined contact and detailed demo information from the Superintendent and Principals to the Special Education, Curriculum Directors, and down to the teachers themselves. You need a good map before you pull the mainsail up. Keep your eyes peeled for the new EdLights on https://k12-data.com/)
The Pitch. Back in 2006 there were a lot of grant competitions but at the same time the number of Grant Writers as a job title at districts was diminishing, as were many non-essential titles/employees. This was our “in”. We devised a plan to market our grant writing services to these understaffed (and often huge) districts and it went something like this: “Dear Mrs. Superintendent, we would like to write five of your schools into a grant that has a 3-5yr award of $300k-$500k at no cost to you. What’s the catch you ask? Well our team of grant writing professionals have a 59% win rate and the cost to cover the writing and overall project is being covered by (example) Hapara. If we win the competition then Hapara gets plugged into providing $xx,xxx amount of technology and professional development as a piece of the overall formula.” Not a lot of friction in the decision but the sign-off still needs to be made by the superintendent and the application needs to be on the State’s or Fed’s door by 5pm by x date. So you write 20 for “Hapara” and charge $2k each. You win 12 x $20k of products and services per year = $240k x 5yrs = $1,200,000. For a $40k investment = 30 fold ROI for education vendor. So how did our company make money? We line itemed ourselves in to provide back end reporting that needed to be accomplished each year as a part of the evidence of efficacy within the scope of the grant. More to come.
In the meantime, if you need to connect with two of the top experts in vetting educational grant funding opportunities and creating a plan of attack from soup to nuts these two ladies below should be in your Rolodex. I have known them both for years and every client I refer comes back to thank us:
Jenny House: jhouse@redrockreports.com https://www.redrockreports.com/
At RedRock Reports, we help large, mid-size, and start-up companies navigate the world of education funding. If you make hardware, software or science products for schools, you understand that FUNDING is the gateway to your success. You need to know:
This is our world because we’ve been on both sides of the table. At RedRock Reports, we are education funding experts. Education funding is our SOLE area of focus and expertise, including federal, state, and private funding.
Paula Love: paula@rfpmatch.com https://rfpmatch.com/
Funding Match.com for Education Solution Providers
RFPMatch.com connects the dots between education funding and how to sell, market, and develop solutions for schools. Our RFPMatch OnDemand service acts as your just-in-time virtual assistant, providing access to All Things Funding for individuals, companies, and organizations.
MORE FUNDING. MORE CLIENTS. MORE SALES.
If you have these questions, RFPMatch.com is your answer. Think of RFPMatch.com as All Things Funding.
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