November 2003 · Volume 85 · Number 10

FYI

Getting More Grants Without Increasing Staff 
Pursuing alternate funding sources often meets with a bit of resistance from staff, already strapped with multiple and growing responsibilities as budgets become tighter and vacated positions are frozen. In addition, small- to medium-sized local governments often face additional challenges simply because there are fewer staff to share in the overall workload.
So, how do some of these localities manage to boast thriving and successful programs while others lag behind? How is it that some localities manage to do more with less? The answer for one community lies in the design and setup of its grants function.
Boynton Beach, Florida, is an urban community of 62,000 located on the Gulf Coast of Florida. With a council-manager form of government, it has revolutionized its grants application process by forming an interdepartmental grants team. Ask any team member, and they will cite the commitment and support of City Manager Kurt Bressner, who gives them the permission to break the chain of command. Simply put: the team is tasked with identifying grant sources, writing applications, and supporting the entire grants process. Bressner instructs this core group of staff to be innovative; they now enjoy flexibility in defining projects and are no longer constrained by internal barriers.
In the first year, the team determined that it would seek and acquire alternative resources for funding to enhance the quality of life of the citizens of Boynton Beach. To achieve this goal, all team members were trained, recent grants were identified, and the role of the finance department was fully explained. The team also was able to identify and familiarize itself with all resources, to brainstorm about possible departmental collaboration on grant projects, and to learn about community foundations.
Boynton Beach 
16.1 square miles.
62,000 population.
850 full-time employees; 100 part-time employees; includes sworn officers. 
18 members on the eCivis grants team.
All 18 city departments represented.
Total grants applied for in 2002: 32 totaling $7,735,152.
Total awards given in 2002: 25 totaling $5,629,674.
Success rate: 78 percent on grant applications.
Total local match: $2,181,812.	

The second year brought such new goals as providing research, planning, support, feedback, and other assistance to departments in the development of alternative funding sources for citywide projects. No longer do grant announcements trickle from the city manager’s office to department heads until finally arriving on the desks of the staff responsible for writing the grants applications—a process that often left only a few days for writing a quality grant. The streamlining not only allows the newly trained grant writers to sleep the night before a deadline but also gives the city the competitive advantage that only organization and time can provide.
Now, announcements go directly to members of the grants team, who employ a variety of tools to keep up to date on new funding opportunities while spending the least time searching for them. One of these tools is Grants Locator by eCivis (www.ecivis.com), which is an ICMA Corporate Partner. This system offers daily announcements of new grants, along with a fully searchable database of more than 3,000 federal, foundation, and select state grants. Grants Locator also has management features that allow staff to improve coordination and effectiveness not only within the local government but also with community-based organizations.
This transition has meant a few struggles and a few unanticipated outcomes. The team, though, not only has learned how to work together—when information is needed to complete a grant, staff responds quickly to requests—but also has learned to complete research more effectively, as well as to motivate other team members and to address the concerns of managers who feel uncomfortable with being left out of the process.
In the end, Boynton Beach has emerged with a more successful grants effort using the same staff, who have simply become a better, more flexible team committed to securing alternative funding for the community.
For more information about Grants Locator by eCivis or the ICMA Corporate Partnership Program, visit icma.org/partners or send an e-mail to Jennifer Price at jprice@icma.org.
Jennifer Price, Business Development Manager, ICMA, Washington, D.C.

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