Application for grants

What's a reasonable %? 10-15?

If we don't get the grant, the person applying for it doesn't get anything. This sucks. Can we embed this in the system somehow? Say for ex that once we get a grant, the non-successful grant people get a small cut.

I agree. Perhaps it should be calculated at an hourly rate for the time involved in doing the application. It could be a way for people on the enkel to get some work and also help us along. But what happens then if we dont get it?

That time could be banked as enkelcoin perhaps? Or a special 'grant-enkelcoin'. You could redeem it only when a grant has been successfully provided. But perhaps im being too fanciful here.

No, I think that's a good idea, Jordan. If we win the grant you get paid in $, and if not it's banked as enkelcoin, as other work is. Is it ok to differentiate like this between boring and interesting work? That's the question here, I guess.

Perhaps the difference is between 'admin' work or 'direct revenue' work and 'product/services' work? We could also see it as enkel having decided on hiring an admin staff, but rather than hiring someone, we allocate a special type of bitcoin (exchangeable when available) which represents a steak in that job role.

Yep. Good.

I'm not a grant writing person and the only person I know who could be good at that lives in the eastern states so.... I'm not much help I'm afraid. :P But what you guys have been discussing sounds good.

I sense it's time to create a proposal...

I think you will find that this is highly irregular and NOT within the Grants framework, be it Lottery West or State Government.

Having had some dealings with grants in the past with Grant Applications and their Acquittal (accounting for all expenditure), I would doubt that a Grant application with 15% allocated for the writing of it would ever be accepted.

Should the Grant application not state that a portion of the money was fro the writing of it and not be shown in the Acquittal would cause a problem.

I have had legal advice that would that this could be fraud.

Tread very carefully.

That is good advice Andrew Molnar- there will need to be some more thought put into this. I am sure there are ways to build capital that will pay for some of the admin costs which lie outside of grants. Thinking cap on...

This is a first time for me, but shouldn't we be able to include "administration" within our list of expenditures? In which case we would have to think of things differently.The role of 'administration' would simply be shared between collective members; and include the compilation and application of grants.

Yeah Jordan. I think you are right. Adam and I have been discussing this. An important element in enkel is that we must try and look for new ways of doing things that can make our system (outside of 'the' system) work. Which means operating within the law but outside of dated systems that hold progress back. We are preparing a bunch of stuff for lottery west and in discussion with them so I'll ask Pete to have a chat with them on this note.

How do i change my vote guys?

Clarification on one of the objections (to my own proposal):
The amount we seek should not be too small. I don't think there's much point in applying for grants that are less than say 5k.

I also wonder if this reward system would work for really big amounts. Say there's a 200k grant we win from a global philanthropic foundation in Singapore... Would the grant writer get $30000?

I'm not sure I like the sound of that as it creates unease and makes financial gain a big imperative. How do you measure something like that? eg: we work for 18 months part time with zero income (unless we get in back later...)- many other people invest heaps of time and effort over many months. A new member comes along and uses a bunch of that material to write something and gets a hefty grant. All good news for enkel but might leave a few people sour if it becomes a personal gain game....

Clarify if I am missing something- I ma not always the best at seeing the nigger picture on how these things can work....

are you trying to be controversial beb? hehe

@jenlowe1 - If you wish to change your position you can do so by clicking “edit” next to your position statement in the “Current decision” panel on the right-hand side of the page.

Yeah, as mentioned earlier in this thread: How do we decide what's boring work and not?

My personal thinking behind this is that people work on what they like working on in enkel. Everything that doesn't get done (such as grant writing) must nevertheless be done and has to be outsourced.

On the other hand... Perhaps we should just simply not do things no one wants to do. We don't have to apply for grants. 99% of startups in the world don't...

We can also start a "shit bucket", i.e. a database of crap work that no one wants to do. Then we portion out this shit among all members, which makes it easier to do. Maybe one hour / month / member. Admin work is fine for the shit bucket, but grant writing perhaps not...

Great. I couldn't remember my loomio
password :-) but
I thought something calculated according to hours would be better.

Megan.

Re-opening this thread from 2015 as I still think this might be a good way to get grant money. There's a lot of money out there but none of us members have the capacity to apply for them. Perhaps a incentive / commission to a member or external person can solve that problem. There's a comment from 2015 that this arrangement could be considered as fraud, but I'm not so sure about that.

When I go for grants I charge 10% for small grants - under $100k. If it's a big grant, $1m I charge 7%.

I am not sure about the fraud thing. I have assessed grants and you usually know the people/organisation that is applying. You know what they are up to and about how much it will cost. 15% is huge. I knew a woman who was charging 17%. I don't know how much work she got.

If we wanted to write up a grant now I would do it pro bono. My work cranks up again in January and this is part of my work so I would want to be paid if I did it later in the year.

What happens if the grant application isn't successful @Bev Johnson ? Would you still get the same %?

No. That is part of the business and part of the risk. You get a percentage of what you get. If you get nothing your percentage is 0%. On the other hand. Whenever we have missed out on a grant we keep trying. It will be successful eventually. I have never had someone go to a different consultant to write the second application. I guess I would be shitty if I did all the work for the first, unsuccessful, application then another consultant used my work to apply for another grant.

As the conditions of grants vary there may not be the opportunity to have this as a basic rule. How about something like, "Each grant application written on behalf of enkel should have a negotiated amount of between 7-10% for the applicant writer, to be negotiated with the board."