LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA – As you may know, Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022) is the story of a middle-aged Chinese immigrant who is swept up into an insane adventure in which she alone can save existence by exploring other universes and connecting with the lives she could have led. We watched it last night after learning that it had won seven awards at the 95th Academy Awards: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Supporting Actor, Best Supporting Actress, Best Original Screenplay, and Best Film Editing.
It lived up to its reputation. It was funny, thought-provoking, and insightful. I think we will watch it a couple more times just to get it figured out.
At any rate, a film like this reminds us that one of the most important secrets of success for grant writers is to blow away the funder. After they have read your application, they should be in awe of your charity and what you are doing. This is particularly true when you are writing grants for a newer charity that may not have the built-in credibility or experience of older charities.
This raises the question of what techniques can you rely on to help you come up with a creative, remarkable project that would impress even a twisted villain like Jobu Tupaki?
To generate excitement, the best and fastest procedure is to trust your own instincts. This means you need to trust your own perceptions of the wow factor surrounding the project. Others have taught that this wow factor arises in the awesome moment when you realize why the funder will have no choice except to approve your application.
For us, the sign of truly great grant applications is the feeling that we have had an epiphany.
According to our online dictionary, some define an epiphany as a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience.
For us, a better definition is that an epiphany is when you have an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking.
This fits how epiphanies work for us. Amazingly, we find that an epiphany can occur at any stage of the grant writing project.
It can happen immediately when you hear the idea and understand that no one else has seen something so simple or clever as this before. It may be halfway through the project when you realize that new research gives you powerful support for a fresh approach that no one else has anticipated. It may, in fact, occur at the last minute, when you realize that a single missing piece puts everything else in order.
Practically speaking, the earlier epiphanies are the most useful.
Often early epiphanies appear as moments of confidence when you realize that the only thing the client needed to win a grant was you. This happens fairly frequently because the client may not be aware of the funder’s interest in their work.
By interviewing the client you can identify a unique and original approach at the beginning and then proceed with confidence that you can bring that idea to exactly the right funder.
One of our secrets for benefiting from early epiphanies is to hold on to them tight. This is because the strategy and vision we set up at the beginning of the grant writing process have been achieved in an atmosphere of relatively low stress and low conflict. We think we are most rational at the beginning of the project. As stress increases – right up to the deadline – we find we are increasingly less likely to make good decisions regarding the overall grant strategy. It pays to hold tight to your initial vision.
Another way to generate an early epiphany is to look for ideas that apply new technology to solve existing problems.
For us, this has been the quickest and fastest way to create a project that will “blow away the funder.” For example, you might provide access to your program through a new app instead of a personal face-to-face classroom or workshop. You might invent a new way to counsel people through Zoom or figure out how to deliver groceries with a drone. Often, you can spark an epiphany by asking what new technology the client is using or by bringing the value of new technology to their attention.
