Jenny Betz:

Welcome, everyone. So glad to have you here. We are on session five of five of the Proposal 101 Series for School and District Leaders. Today is about pulling it all together, looking at some case studies and examples of proposals, talking about some feedback and also some tools, and then some tips for final reviews when you have created a proposal or an application and you are ready to send that puppy in. What are some of the things to do in the last minute to make sure you’re really ready to go? So, we are very glad that you’re here today. So today, this session and all the four sessions before it are hosted by the California Stronger Connections Technical Assistance Center, which provides support to local education agencies or districts to really foster safe, healthy, and supportive learning environments. And a big need that folks saw was support for grantees and for other folks out in the field that support writing really good proposals, especially you’re doing good work.

We want to help so that you can really shine in proposals and get the funding that you need. So today, we are here, Lora Markel, Shannon McCullough and myself. Shannon and I will do most of the talking. However, we have a special guest voice today, and that is Rebecca Cerna. You may not see her, but you will hear her and get used to her voice. She’ll be reading some of our examples a little later.

We today are in session five, right? So we did session one, session two, session three, session four. Each of those had a discussion hour afterwards. And now, here we are, the final session, which really is pulling it all together. So, we hope that whichever ones you are at, you can sort of build on that information. And then tomorrow, there will be another discussion hours.

Today, we are reviewing examples of strong proposals, and then we’re going to do some talking about what makes them strong. We’re also going to look at some that maybe aren’t as strong, and we’re going to talk about what makes them not as strong. They’re real examples. We’re going to use real world things that we got from our CDE colleagues, although change, so you don’t know where it’s actually coming from so that we can really use real examples. Then we’ll talk about some wrap-up and final checklists before you submit something, and then also tools for getting feedback and even using some online tools like AI.

All right. So, the majority of our time today is going to be reviewing proposal samples. And what we’re going to do is we are going to focus on one, and then everything will be connected to that. So, what we’re going to go through is a request for proposals that was from California Department of Ed, and it was called the Restorative Justice Grant Program. It is no longer… The deadlines are over all of that, but it’s a great, great example. And it is real grant, but no longer accepting applications. So, none of this is really to be go write this for that grant. It’s just a great example. So, we wanted to show you upfront, and we’ll come back to it, that one of the first things that’s important to think about as you’re preparing to write a proposal, and also for the rest of our time together here is the point breakdown of the rubric.

So, we have our problem statement that is 20 points, the district commitment and capacity, 20 points, proposed grant activities, 30, measuring impact, 20, and budget, 10. We’re going to go through examples of those first four, not so much the budget. And every grant is a little different, right? The amounts of things and how much they weigh can change. But for these set of examples, this is what we’re looking at. Basically, without the budget, the other four are 20 points, and then the grant activities, what’s your actual plan, is 30.

And as I said, these are real examples. We pulled the text from real proposals that were funded. And then, we also created, both using generative AI in our own imaginations, we created a companion example for each of those that maybe doesn’t meet all of the criteria. So, each of these that we go through, and it’ll make more sense once we get into it, you’re going to have an example one, which is the real one that did really well in scoring. And then, you’re going to have an example two that maybe if it got submitted, wouldn’t do so well in scoring, and then we’ll talk about them together, really. This is a great time to remind you that there is a Padlet that has resources for all the previous sessions, including the transcripts and the recordings and the slides. And while we don’t obviously have the transcript or recording for today’s session yet because it hasn’t finished, the slides are there.

So, it may be really helpful, particularly today, to have those slides sort of going alongside with you because there’s a lot of texts that we have to go through to be able to do the activities, but it might be helpful just to have your own copy up. And then, we did want to just let you know ahead of time that the… Sorry, I think…

Anyways, sorry, I’m having a little trouble with my mouse not wanting to do what I wanted to do. So, this is from that restorative justice grant. This is the actual rubric grading, and it’s a four to five is outstanding, three is a good, fair is a two, and a minimal is a zero to one. And you can see here that the four to five is that the applicant’s response to the prompt is exceptionally clear, specific, detailed, and relevant and thorough.

All the things actually we’ve been talking about in the other sessions, it makes sense that that is what they’re looking for. And if you give them that, the folks reading it, you will get a good score. Three, which is good. That the response is sufficiently clear, it’s pretty specific and relevant, and it provides adequate detail. They can read it and see what’s going on and understand, but it’s maybe not, doesn’t have all the details and clarity of the other one.

Then we have fair at a two, right? So, that’s that the responses to the prompt is in some ways clear, specific, and relevant, but it also lacks detail. So, maybe they can follow up and then they’re like, what does that really mean or what would that really look like? So, it leaves the reviewers with a lot of questions. And then, the minimal or the zero to one score is that the response is really minimal, insufficient, and vague. Someone is just writing, maybe rushing or something like that, and it’s not enough to give anyone really any insight to how you would use this money or whether you should be given the money or anything like that. And just to say that the points, right, each of those come from different sections in the proposal. And there is a link in there. The link to the program rubric has all the different things.

So, there are multiple sort of questions or sections under each big header. So, you can follow those along too, which is how then you get to a 20 or something. So, with that, I am going to pass it over to Shannon to get us started on our first example.

Shannon:

Great. Thank you. All right, don’t panic. There’s a lot of words on the screen, but we are, like Jenny said, we’re going to go through, this is an example that was from the CDE that was funded. After this, you’re going to get another screen with still a decent amount of text on it. That is the example which is maybe not so great. And then, the slide after that is going to be both of those together. So, you are going to see both of these examples next to each other, and that’s where we’ll kind of discuss through those in a second. So, I’m going to start by asking our special guest, Rebecca, to read through this for us, to read through this example one.

Rebeca Cerna:

Okay. Thanks, Shannon. So, this first example one, RVUSD is facing a critical need to transform school climate and disciplinary practices. Chronic absenteeism stands at 18.9% district-wide, with notably higher rates in the upper grades. Suspension data are especially troubling. While the overall district suspension rate is 4.4%, both middle schools, Canyon Ridge Middle School, 16%, and River Bend Middle School, 13.1%, report significantly higher rates. Disaggregated data reveals stark inequities. At both middle schools, African American Black students are suspended at a rate of 26.4%, which is five times the district average. Students with disabilities are disproportionately affected contributing to the district’s current differentiated assistance status at Canyon Ridge Middle alone. At Canyon Ridge Middle School alone, 23.2% of students with disabilities were suspended. Riverbend Middle School shows similar concerns with suspension rates reaching 14.1% for socioeconomically disadvantaged students, and 16.3% for white students.

Shannon:

Hey, Rebecca. All right. So, this is our CDE funded example, and we’re going to switch over to our example number two, which is the example that we generated that maybe has a few quirks and issues to it. So Rebecca, can you read this one for us?

Rebeca Cerna:

Sure. RVUSD experiences challenges related to school climate and student discipline. The district has concerns about student attendance and reports issues with chronic absenteeism at some school sites. Suspension rates indicate that discipline remains an area of need, particularly at the secondary level. Certain student groups appear to be more impacted by disciplinary actions than others. These trends suggest the district would benefit from improved approaches to supporting student behavior and engagement.

Shannon:

Thank you, Rebecca. All right. So, I said we’re going to see them both together. Now you got it all in one place. All right. So, that’s a lot to take in at one time, but what we want to do is kind of look at what we’re noticing here, and you all can feel free to come off mute if you want to share vocally or if you’d rather put things in the chat. Some of the questions to think about first, let’s think first, are you able to tell what the story is that the school is telling? Are you able to understand their problem?

And the second question might be something like, what do you notice about these two separate examples and what maybe makes one feel stronger than the other? What makes maybe example two feel a little bit weaker? Any thoughts? Valerie. Second one’s missing any data, right? Just has words. It’s kind of telling a similar story, right, but it’s not really giving us any evidence about that story. Right? It says it has challenges related to school climate and discipline, but it’s not really telling us any of that data, any of the details that really bring that picture fully to light in the first example. Right?

Anything else you’re noticing about these two examples and comparisons?

Yeah, the second one’s pretty vague, right? You could probably say example two for a lot of schools. It doesn’t give us any specific details about this district here, right? The data helps demonstrate the need and the issues, right? Like I said, example two could apply to a lot of schools. Example one is very specific about the need, very specific about what the challenge that they’re facing is and the specific problem.

Yes. Also, we don’t know the exact schools in example two, right? They say there’s some problems more specifically at the secondary level, but in the first example, we get those, the middle school, the specific names.

Anything else?

Yeah, the data helps understand the magnitude, for sure. Right? You can use a lot of words to kind of say things are difficult, but when you really see those numbers, that’s what kind of pull it together.

Yeah, we have the student groups, the very specific student grouping in example one. And Timothy, we say identifying specific issues with data on schools that tells us about an area of the district. We see population specifics. Yeah, a rationale for certain interventions. Perfect. Yeah, that’s great. And one thing I think a lot of people think about too when it comes to writing a proposal like this is, is that there’s often word limits. And so, the first example is a little bit longer, granted, but it’s not that much longer and they’re packing a lot more information in that first example, with just a little bit more space. So, you want to try to think about how you can really tell this whole story even if you’re pretty limited in your space there.

All right, I am going to pass it back to Jenny. She’s going to go through the next piece for you.

Jenny Betz:

Awesome. Thanks, Shannon. And the next piece now is district commitment and capacity. So, in that actual real request for proposals, right, it started with that overview, statement of purpose, give us the highlights, right? And then, the next piece is district commitment and capacity. What do you already have to be able to do this work and build upon? So, going to ask our special guest voice, Rebecca, to read this one as well.

Rebeca Cerna:

Okay. District commitment and capacity, example one. To date, restorative justice practices have been introduced informally by a small group of trained counselors, psychologists, administrators, and our district social worker. These early adopters have begun using tools like restorative conversations, reentry meetings, and community building circles, but efforts remain fragmented. With this grant, we will transition from the isolated pilot sites to an integrated model that reaches every school, staff member and student.

Jenny Betz:

Thank you. And the next one.

Rebeca Cerna:

Example two. RVUSD is currently implementing restorative practices in various ways across the district. Some schools use restorative practices by having students complete written reflection packets after incidents and requiring them to attend administrative meetings before returning to class. In certain situations, students participate in behavior contracts and extended detention schedules that are intended to be restorative. Staff have also used restorative practices during disciplinary hearings by reviewing students’ behavior data and determining consequences through a structured decision-making process. While these strategies are used to address conflict, they are not implemented consistently and there is no clear guidance on which restorative practices are being used or how they align to district discipline policies.

Jenny Betz:

Thank you. That was a mouthful for sure. Let’s look at these together. And what are the things you’re noticing? Because one thing is that in the last example, right, example one was much longer than example two. This time, example one is sort of short and succinct, and example two has lots of words. So, what are the things that stand out about why these might get different scores? And again, you can unmute or put it in the chat.

And we know it takes a minute to type out what you’re thinking, so don’t you worry.

The first example, using strength-based language, and the second using deficit language. Yes. You hit on it right away, Timothy, right? So, there are technical things and we can still talk about those, but also there are some value things too. So, using asset-based versus deficit-based language, things like that, that any reviewer who’s reading this and knows what restorative justice is might be like, “Wait a minute, something’s fishy here.” Robin says, “Example one identifies a clear problem and clear solution.” Yep, this is what’s going on. This is what we’ve tried. It’s working. We’re going to now, we need to do more of it. Example two, Sasha, “Also doesn’t really speak to how they will leverage current capacity and practices to use the grant to expand that more broadly.” Absolutely. What else are you noticing there?

In example two, the things that they’re listing as, I guess both of them, right? So, we’re looking at example one and seeing that they have practices that are coming through psychologists and a small group that got trained, right? They’re using tools like restorative conversations, reentry meetings, community building circles, all things that if you know restorative justice or restorative practices, those make sense there, right? What about the things they’re saying in example two?

I see things like after something happens, they write some reflection and then they are required to go to some administrative meeting before they go back. Things like behavior contracts, extended detention, talking about consequences, let alone that they really don’t have a plan for doing it. The second one, there’s no clear solution proposed. Yeah. Yes. So, they seem to be referring to a discipline matrix, which is a bit troubling. Troubling because that’s what’s going on at their school. Troubling because they’re applying for restorative justice grant and they maybe don’t really know what restorative justice is or should be. So, there’s a lot of red flags in this one. For sure. Lots of words, but not really formally labeling the strategy. Yeah. Maybe because they’re writing in a vague way, but maybe because they don’t have a strategy really.

Let’s keep going to grant activity. So, again, these are building on from RVUSD, right? What was their overall purpose? What has been going on, what they want to continue doing or do more of? And now, what does that really look like? And we’ll go back to Shannon.

Shannon:

Yeah, thanks, Jenny. All right. So, like Jenny just said, next section is focused on the actual proposed grant activities that schools are going to do. And I can go ahead and read this one, give Rebecca a little bit of break.

RVUSD will implement key restorative justice best practices over a phased two-year period. First, build a strong foundation. Core training for counselors, psychologists, and administrators will begin in summer 2025. Site RJ planning teams will be formed to lead implementation. To engage the entire school community, family and staff RJ info sessions at all sites will build trust and understanding. Students, classified staff and parents will be included in ongoing planning and provide ongoing professional development. Training begins with student services and admin, expands to optional staff PD in year one and full staff tier one training in year two.

All right. And example two. RVUSD will be doing restorative practices as part of the grant to help with discipline and school climate. The district plans to use different restorative strategies such as reflection activities, behavior discussions, and meetings that focus on expectations and consequences. Restorative circles may be used in classrooms or when there are discipline issues, and students may be asked to complete apology statements or service activities as part of the process. In some cases, peer mediation or check-ins with administrators will be used to address behavior. These restorative practices will be implemented as needed and adjusted depending on the situation and school site.

All right, let’s compare these two. You can see a pretty different approach, again, to these, as we were mentioning in the last two. Some were a little shorter, some were a little longer. This one, the first example took this bulleted approach, which I think can be useful, especially if you’re limited in space, but I’m curious what you all think and what you’re noticing in terms of sharing the actual activities of the grant.

Valerie, the second one sounds wishy-washy. We might do this or we might do that, but we don’t really know. Yeah. This makes me think a lot about our logic models that we discussed. It sounds to me like the first example maybe had a logic model that they followed through and they could very clearly connect everything, whereas maybe the second example didn’t really quite think through everything they were going to have or what they were going to be doing.

Yeah, Robin says, “A specific plan for two years.” We don’t even know how long example two is planning to do this or when they’re planning to do any of this.

Sasser says, “The second one does not have a clear timeline or plan for who will be involved when. Also, really sounds like they have no idea what RJ is, so maybe the first thing they need to do with funding is to train the people about what RJ is and how it works.” Exactly, yeah. I feel like example two would be a pretty big red flag for these reviewers of this grant, especially if you look at the RFP, it’s very clear about what activities can be done as part of this grant, and a lot of the things that are listed here are not included as possible activities.

The first one, differentiated plans for year one and two. Yeah, it’s very clear about what’s going to happen. You can tell they took their time to kind of plan this out. First one is building the process data for measurement. The second one doesn’t have a clear plan. Yep. Yeah, you can see the systems change happening here. And so, even though example one is a lot more condensed, you could tell they had a lot that they had to put in maybe a small space, but they found a pretty effective way to do that, whereas example two maybe didn’t have quite the planning going on. All right, back to Jenny for our last one.

Jenny Betz:

Okay. So, we had what was the purpose? What is our capacity to do the work? What have we already done? Then what are we actually planning to do? And back to our logic models, right? How are we going to measure our impact? So, that is always important to folks at CDE or any sort of grant folks, but to different degrees, right? So, Rebecca, I hope you’re ready. You got a break. If you could read example one from measuring of impact.

Rebeca Cerna:

Yes. Key Metrics and Targets. Chronic Absenteeism: Goal: Decrease district-wide rates by increasing student engagement and sense of belonging. Attendance Rate: Goal: Increased daily attendance among historically underserved student groups. School climate and connectedness (via CHKS and internal surveys): Goal: 10% improvement in student and staff perceptions of safety, respect and belonging. Restorative Practice Implementation, Tracked Metrics: Number of classroom and community circles, reintegration meetings, student participation in Bridge Builders peer leadership, and staff participation in restorative justice professional development.

Jenny Betz:

Thank you. And then, we’re going to go to example two.

Rebeca Cerna:

Example two, RVUSD will measure the impact of the proposed application by looking at different types of information related to student behavior and school climate. Data will be reviewed over time to see if there are improvements and staff will discuss results during meetings. Attendance and discipline information may be used along with other feedback from schools to understand how the program is working. Surveys and reports will also be considered as part of the evaluation process. Overall, the district will use multiple methods to monitor progress and make adjustments as needed.

Jenny Betz:

Thanks, Rebecca. So, first of all, I’m wondering, what are the strengths you see in either of them? Sample one includes implementation data as well as outcome data and is evaluating staff perceptions as well as student perceptions because staff perceptions will impact how faithfully it gets implemented. Yeah. Yeah, they’re looking at metrics in multiple ways. Number one has specific measures for effectiveness.

Example one says that they’re doing with clear goals and measurement, but example maybe two is that they may do something and no measures.

The other few areas, number two talks about data more broadly, but one is more specific with detailed data elements. Yeah. You read one, you get a sense of like, oh, they know what they’re doing, they know what they’re going to measure, they know how they’re going to measure it. And at the same time, right? In all of these, these aren’t like A plus, plus, plus, plus. So, are there things that you notice about example one that if it were you, you might beef up or change a little bit?

Example two says they’ll review data and results and use that to make adjustments, but they don’t talk about how that will happen, right, and what the adjustments might be. Absolutely.

And I can’t say that I’ve never written a paragraph like that that’s like, oh, I got to write on something, but I’m not really sure. And so, I’m just going to write all the words that I think are right, but not really saying anything. And number one, add the timeline. By this year of the grant, we expect to see, right? And then, they could add baseline measures. Right. So, that’s making me think of smart goals or smarty goals, right? Are we saying by when and exactly what? And also, those first two things, chronic absenteeism and attendance rates. Example one might add how much you want to increase attendance rates by. Yeah.

Otherwise, you’re sort of doing what example two was. We’re going to improve some things because we will and then we’ll figure out how much we improve them. And school climate and connectedness and restorative practice implementation definitely have more specifics. Let’s see. Since they have a phase plan and example one, yeah, earlier, right, they might want to set goals for each phase. Absolutely. Especially with limited space, having a logic model… Oh, this is Shannon. Having a logic model as a figure could be really helpful to make this all clear. If you all didn’t go to the logic model session, I laugh at this because Shannon is actually the logic model person on our team. And so I was thinking, “Oh, Shannon, someone’s talking about logic models. And I was like, wait, that is Shannon.” Okay. Valerie, you might clarify if the data sources are from dashboards or from internal reporting like Aries or any of those things, PowerSchool, those types of things. Yeah.

So, even though example one has more information, and you could say, I don’t know what you think, but it seems to me like they still know what they’re doing or what they want to do, and bullets are great. Thank you, Rebecca. There’s still stuff that you could do better. My guess is that they may not have gotten a five out of five on the rubric for this one. Maybe they got a four or a 4.5 or something.

So, overall, what are… If you would sort of think through all of those that we just looked at, what were the big picture things you think that are different between example one and example two?

Details. Yes. Thanks, Stacy. Tracy.

Yeah. What the metrics are being used. Specific things that you can then report on later, right? You can report on the stuff in example one. If you report on example two, it’s going to be equally vague, right? You need data, identify people involved, outcome metrics, detail clear proposed solutions. Yeah, that was throughout in the example one.

If you were deciding whether or not to fund the project from example one, would you fund them?

And as you’re typing, same question, would you fund number two? Robin, yes, it was intentional design versus reacting to situations. Absolutely. Which is not helpful for a proposal, but also not with restorative justices. Cynthia would not give example two money. I think that’s fair.

Yes, I think they were fundable, but I’d want to see all the other applications, yeah, and know how many were possible to award. Yep. Tracy’s saying yes to one, no to two. The other piece that is in here is the budget, right? So, the budget, we talked about this in one of the other sessions, yes to one, no to two, Valerie, is that the budget after all these words, right, that you hope are logical and make sense step by step and all are aligned, then there’s a budget piece. And you can write the best proposal, but if your budget is way off track or not aligned or saying it’s funding things you’re not allowed to fund or whatever, right, that can be a big problem, that your budget then, and even if you have a budget narrative, should still be using those same things that you’re pulling out, right? Be detailed enough, be thought through enough, make sense and have it actually be practical.

I would hope, for example two, that they would go back and watch the recordings of these sessions and then it could really help them. Robin, example two seems to be trying to stay safe with no real accountability. Yeah. It’s like if you don’t promise too much, then you don’t actually have to be accountable to do too much. Probably not fund. Yeah. And in some situations, maybe the grant is a smaller grant or something and the grant monitor might say, “Hey, we know you, RVUSD. Can you rewrite your proposal or have some questions?” Sometimes they have interviews or meetings also.

Sasha’s worried that the example two is planning to misappropriate those funds. Yeah, I’d be really interested to see what they report on down the line.

So, that was a lot, but we hope helpful. We’re going to keep on going, but these could be examples that you could really break down even more with a team at your district or your agency, whatever, or even using this type of activity might be something that you want to use. So, as always, take the learning, and if there’s something about the process, it’s helpful, take that as well. I’m going to pass it to Shannon, who’s going to take us into our next section about AI.

Shannon:

Yeah, thanks, Jenny. All right. So, just real quickly, we wanted to talk a little bit about using generative AI to do some editing and review. If you looked at that rubric that we posted, there’s a lot there. There are a lot of details. There’s a lot that has to be aligned. There’s a lot that has to be thought of. And so, we think that AI could be a helpful way to kind of make sure you’re checking all of those boxes and just have some review at the end. So, if you can go to the next slide for me. Thank you. All right. So, why do we want to maybe take this road of using generative AI? Generative AI is things like you’ve probably heard of ChatGPT, there’s Copilot. We don’t recommend using it to write your proposal, but we think that it can be helpful for these little editing tasks and to try to help you with aligning your proposal with the RFP or with the rubric once you get to that point.

There are some tricks and tips that you can use to help use AI to focus on the quality of your writing, the clarity of your writing, and especially when there’s a word or a page limit, trying to kind of be concise and brief in the way that you’re pulling and writing together. And we spent so much time over these five sessions talking about building a story and telling the story of your students and your school that, again, we do not want you to be using this to write your proposal. AI is not a human. It doesn’t know your school. It can tell the story, but it can be used to kind of compliment all of your human expertise on your team.

A big trick with things like ChatGPT are using the prompts that you use to kind of get it to do what you would like. So, here are just a few sample prompts that you can use, especially if you’re trying to do these specific things. You don’t just want to throw your proposal in there and then say, “Can you review this?” You’re probably not going to get what you want. So, for example, if you’re trying to make sure that your proposal is clear, you can use a prompt like “Edit this section,” or if you want to put your whole piece in there. “For clarity, keep my voice, but make each sentence easier to understand.” So, that is a very clear prompt that you can use that is going to give ChatGPT a very specific job.

Similarly, for flow, you could say something like, “Review this draft for logical flow and transitions.” Maybe you’re feeling like things are kind of chunky and doesn’t quite flow as a whole story together. Specifically for length, you can say, “Shorten this text to 1,000 words without losing the meaning. Make this X number of pages, or find a way to condense all of this writing into a smaller piece without…” Especially if there’s specific pieces that you want to make sure in your final proposal, make sure you list those things that you specifically do not want to lose or do not want to have gone. And I think this last one is a really big one for proposals like this. Consistency, identify areas for improved consistency in tone, tense, formatting and terminology. So, I think that terminology piece is really big. You don’t want to be calling something attendance rate in one paragraph and then graduation rate in another, or you don’t want to say use a certain term in your problem statement and then another term later on. So, having AI be able to flag those inconsistencies can be really helpful.

And lastly, alignment with the RFP, putting that through ChatGPT can be really helpful. So, you can ask ChatGPT to pretend they’re a grant reviewer and upload the RFP into ChatGPT or paste it, and ask them to compare the draft below to the RFP criteria. You could also upload the rubric. You could ask it to identify strong areas of alignment, any gaps that you might have, sections that might need clearer connections, especially if they can see the funder priorities, any suggestions for improvement. Some of the best practices for this, I prefer to upload whatever, if I have a document, to upload the document to ChatGPT. You can paste it and then post your draft section. This next one is my biggest thing. Please review what it tells you. It can be wrong a lot, so make sure you review anything that AI spits back out. And, again, use the results to guide anything you’re changing. Don’t just follow whatever AI says in your decision-making.

And with that, I’m also curious, I see some comments. If folks have used this at any point, if you have any success with editing using ChatGPT, Tim said, can see it being helpful. Always make sure that AI does not change the language that may be specific and aligned to the point system, especially for federal grants. Yes. Yeah. Like we said, go back and double check. One thing you can do too, which I think is helpful, is you can tell ChatGPT, please bold or highlight anything that’s changed so that it’s easier for you to see this is what was generated in my paragraph so that you can go back and review those pieces that might be new in whatever it might be spitting out for you. All right, for the sake of time, I’m going to throw it back to Jenny to wrap, get us into submission.

Jenny Betz:

Thanks, Shannon. And actually before that, if you don’t mind, I’m going to just add one little piece, which is what a thing that I’ve figured out is doing sort of what Shannon just said. I find it really helpful to ask it to identify and even suggest changes, but not tell it to revise anything because otherwise it will rewrite it. And then I’m like, I don’t even remember what I had before. What did it change? And so then, instead I can go point by point. It says, “This part would be stronger if you added a part about this thing. You may want to write it this way.” So, maybe I at least pay attention to what they’re identifying and then I can go write it however I want back on my proposal. So, sometimes asking it to pull the changes its suggesting out instead of just automatically putting them in allows for a little more control.

And that way, if you don’t agree with some of them or you know a different piece about context that is like, “Oh, that doesn’t really make sense,” again, you can have control. And then the other thing that recently I’ve learned more about is that if you’re not sure what prompt to use, you could say, “Hey, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, whatever, what would be the best prompt to use with you if I want you to review this and look for this and whatever?” And it will give you the prompt. Then you just copy it and you paste it back in and you ask the prompt, and then it will hopefully give you the answer that you want. So, those are some additional things that I just, I don’t know why I couldn’t not share them because I found them to be really helpful lately, and helps get it so that we don’t get to what everyone’s calling AI slop, right, where it’s doing so many things that it ends up being like example two, right? Plenty big words, but what is it really saying?

Okay. So, we also said that we would talk about those last steps, those things to really finalize your submission. You’ve done the writing, you’ve worked on the budget, it is let’s say hopefully due in a week or something like that, not like in two hours, give yourself some time. And then, you can create a checklist, right? And that’s what we often do. And we’ll show you an example on the next slide, but some of the really important things, RFPs can be really long and you can find the information in all sorts of different places. So, I’ll often go and highlight and then pull out all those things that I need to make sure I remember, right?

And then, I can make my own checklist, right? And you want to think, of course, still about that scoring criteria. So, what earns the most points, right? If proposed grant activities has the most and that’s the place that I maybe don’t have as much detail, maybe I want to beef that up. If problem statement is really important, but it’s still a 20, but I gave it way more space than the others, I might want to think about condensing that. So, this gives you actually an insight into the proposal reviewers, what they’re going to see that is important, what they want to see, and what they value in what ways. So, it’s always really interesting to see how the scoring rubrics work because it’s different and it could tell you a lot.

Make sure to pay attention to little things, especially like someone said in federal grants, right? What are the required sessions or sections? Put them in your proposal in the order that they ask for them, even if it doesn’t make sense to you. If they’re asking for these five sections, name them what it says in the RFP, even if that’s not the words that you would normally use. Make sure the word limits are right, make sure the font size and font are right. In a lot of things, it might not matter, but some places it really matters and you can really lose points for things that are really technical and not actually about your project at all. Thinking about what are those key terms and priority language that the funder is consistently using that’s either in the RFP. I will often go Google it, Google the program, Google past year’s reports and try and see what are the other things, the values or language that they’re using that I know they’ll respond to because it’s actually similar to language they’ve already used somewhere else.

Budgeting is a huge one that you really have to pay attention to what is allowed and what isn’t and ask questions if you need to because it can make things really tricky. Even if you write something that makes sense to you, if you’re putting in things that just aren’t allowable, it’s really going to be a problem. And then, make sure all those deadlines and hits and you get all the attachments, and whatever they are going to require or score, make sure to add it to your checklist ahead of time so that at the end, you make sure that all those things are done. This is an example from one of the grants that we support and there are more details, but generally we start at the top and we say, “This is the complete list of what this grant is asking for.” Right? You’re going to have three files.

File one is the application packet. You need to put it in a PDF, right? It has a cover sheet, a project abstract, an application narrative, and then MOUs or other letters of agreement with potential partners, right? So, those are totally maybe telling the same story as you would in the previous example, but this grant is asking for it to be written and talked about in a different way, right? And you just want to make sure that you hit all of those things and in the order that they’re asking. File two, often there are different things that are like attachments. So, this one, file two was about participation form where they had to fill out an Excel sheet, right? You PDF the first one. They want an Excel sheet that’s giving data and a list of the schools that you think you’re going to participate with. And then, three is the budget in an Excel file.

Sometimes they’ll give you a template and say, “Put it into this exact table.” Sometimes they’ll tell you what type of file they want you to do. Sometimes they won’t. Sometimes they want you to PDF all of it together into one document. But whatever it is, make sure you know before you submit, that you have all the pieces. And then, at the end, a last pass review, it helps to have someone who isn’t you look at it, someone maybe who’s not even on your team look at it. And be thinking about, is everything clearly addressed? Am I mirroring their language? Does it seem clear enough so that the reviewers can actually understand quickly and give me a score? Do the things align? Did I do all the technical stuff? And are the signatures right? If they’re asking for a wet signature versus not, sometimes they get real picky.

So, make sure you have that right thing. And then, always the final check is, if I were a reviewer, could I quickly confirm that this meets all the requirements? They’re reading through a lot of the things, so help them not have to do as much work. Key takeaways as we wrap up here. So, they are closely reviewing the scoring criteria or rubric, right? All of those things really matter and they give you a great outline for what you need to do. Have someone who has not worked on it, review it. They will always see things that you didn’t because you looked at it so long. You can use AI to check for quality, clarity, and brevity right? Don’t use it to write the whole thing because it probably won’t be good, but you can definitely use it to give you advice on things too. Creating that checklist to make sure before you hit submit or put it in the mail that all the things are done.

And then, you’re asking yourself, if I were a reviewer, could I quickly confirm that this meets all the requirements? You can always reach out to us and for more opportunities from Stronger Connections, you can go to the link that Laura just shared or use the QR code. You can always reach out to us at WestEd email, if we’ve sent you any email reminders and stuff like that, and we will help in whatever way we can. Thank you all so, so much. We appreciate you being here. Take good care and let us know if you need anything.