Cultivating Law Enforcement Grant Writing Success: Lessons From...Gardening?
Evan Sorg, Ph.D.
Law Enforcement Grant Writer & Trainer. Criminal Justice Professor. Former NYPD.
Anyone that knows me off of LinkedIn knows that I am an avid gardener. So as much as I have grants on the brain this time of year, I also have my summer garden planning and prep swirling around up there. Hence the seemingly unrelated topics in this month's newsletter. The title and topic may seem like a college professor's (poor) attempt at being jestful, but in actuality, there are quite a few parallels to consider as we move into grant and gardening season.
Planning and Timing
To start, have a look in my office, which doubles as my grow room where I start all of my vegetable plants from seed this time of year.
The largest plants on the top rack are Spanish onions, red onions, and leeks. The second row of immature plants are peppers and beefsteak type tomatoes. The flat on the left is romaine lettuce that is just about ready to go into the ground outside. The third rack are herbs and Roma type tomatoes, the fourth even more Roma tomatoes and some eggplant, and the bottom rack are cherry tomatoes and just a few Jalapenos and small hot cherry peppers. Most of these were started at different times over the past few months.
If you are serious about gardening, you can't just plant a whole bunch of seeds at once and hope for the best. I planted my onions back in January because I want to plant them outside this weekend. They can take a frost should we get one, and the size they grow to is based on the day (sun) length, so they have to get out early. The other plants were started later, some only a week or two ago. A key to timing your garden is to grow your plants indoors so that they are mature enough to go out after the last estimated frost date, but that they do not spend too much time indoors and run the risk of becoming root bound. This will make for much less healthy plants and affect your harvest. Like seed starting, you don't want to rush or put off grant preparation, or you will have a subpar product.
Your department is less likely to be successful at winning grant awards if you wait for grant announcements to come out and start getting a bunch of different applications put together. Like seed starting, grant writing is time consuming, and many have different time requirements. What is worse is that they are oftentimes due at around the same time. Consider the following grants that are currently out and their due dates:
If you are just learning about these opportunities and new to grants, it will be a challenge to get one completed in time, let alone two or three. What's more is that a bunch more excellent opportunities will be released in the coming weeks from the COPS office. A key to being successful at grant writing is to plan ahead of time and begin preparing grant materials well before they are announced. Like grants, most of the seedlings that I have started have the same "due" date, which is May 15th, my last estimated frost date and when I hope to have my plants out in the garden so they can successful grow during the summer months. I did the work over the winter to make this possible. If you haven't yet done the work to prepare for grant writing, there is still time, I just might prioritize one or two that have less time consuming requirements.
Prioritization
Next, have a look at my pantry. When you grow veggies on the scale that I do, canning is a useful skill to have to preserve your harvest. What you are looking at are pickled jalapenos, pickled green tomatoes with hot peppers, cherry pepper relish, pickled banana peppers, and cowboy candy (candied jalapenos). These are all from last summer's harvest.
I have at least a years worth of food left from last year, and since these are all pickled, they will last another year. So this year, I am only growing a few jalapeno and small hot cherry peppers for fresh eating. None will be preserved. What is noticeably absent, at least to my eye, are canned tomatoes. If you took a look in my freezer, you will also notice that there is an absence of bell peppers. Last year, I canned dozens of quarts of whole peeled tomatoes and froze dozens of bags full of bell peppers. I used them all winter for sauces, soups, chili, stews, and the like, so they are gone. So as you might guess, I am prioritizing growing a whole lot of roma tomatoes, which are the best to can, as well as Italian Bell type peppers. That is why there are so many of them on my grow racks. Again, I don't need pickled peppers so they are not a priority this year.
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One of the mistakes that new grant writers in law enforcement agencies make is going for a grant simply because it is available. They will try to rush in three or four grants regardless of whether they actually need what the grant offers. This is a mistake. My advice would be to identify your department's prioritizes and spend the time searching out and applying for those opportunities only. By all means, if you still have the time once those grants are submitted, go for a grant that would be the icing on the cake. However, since grant writers in law enforcement agencies tend to have other duties they oftentimes face time constraints. It is best to go after what you really need and spend the time caring for and perfecting those applications.
Learning
Like anything, the more that you do something, the more skilled at it you become. As I enter my fourth garden season I am still learning, but I have picked up a bunch of important lessons along the way.
For example, prepping my beds at the end of the garden season by adding compost and organic material like leaves to decompose over the winter adds a lot of nutrients to my soil, and this is apparent in the quality of my harvest since I adopted this practice.
Rather than ripping all of my plants out when it gets cold, I now know that several, such as swiss chard, mustard greens, and kale, will last all winter with a little bit of protection. I have been eating from the greens in my garden all winter and they made it through the cold.
Finally, as much as I prioritize food in my garden, I added tulip bulbs at the end of every other bed last year, which you can see have begun to pop up. By mid to late summer, this garden will look like a jungle, so flowers will be a nice aesthetic.
The best way to become a skilled grant writer is to learn and keep at it. This includes reading successful grant applications, getting to know the funding agencies for law enforcement at what they have funded in the past. Start with a simple grant, such as the Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation Grant, and hone your skills from there. Finally, if you are completely new, our training, Law Enforcement Grant Writing 101, is meant to teach new and experienced grant writers how to go about getting successful applications in. It was recently certified by the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training (IADLEST), so sworn personnel who attend receive in-service training credits if you are in a participating state. We have a bunch of in-person and webinar offerings coming up, including:
If you prefer to take in-person courses and are not seeing one near you, keep in mind that your department, university, or academy can host the training and get it for free. You've got to start somewhere, and a grant training specific to law enforcement may be worth your while. You are also assured plenty of gardening anecdotes in the course ;)
Thank you for humoring me and reading about my garden and, as always, good luck grant writing!
Police Officer/CEO, Resilient Heroes, NFP First Responder Trauma and Suicide Psychoeducation Certified Suicide Psychological Autopsy Investigator
7 个月I love this parallel! It’s so true. Thanks Evan!