According to a recent piece on CityLab, smaller cities and towns have much in common with smaller non-profits when it comes to applying for grants. They both have great need but lack the staff and resources to effectively compete for grants.
Citing the case of Jackson, MS which has been in a state of distress since 2022 when their water infrastructure failed due to flooding, the article quotes the former chief administrative officer, Robert Blaine about their lack of capacity to secure grants:
Robert Blaine, now at the National League of Cities, said one of many issues that impeded the city’s efforts to fix its water crisis was its inability to compete for and win grants due to a lack of staff to complete applications. “We really, really needed the funds, but we didn’t have the competency, we didn’t have the capacity to be able to apply for it,” he told Streetsblog in 2023.
The article mentions there is a lot of funding available from the federal government that isn’t getting spent due to this lack of capacity. Many non-profits are stepping up to help by offering training to cities about how to go about securing grants, most of which require a lot more data than most non-profit arts and cultural organizations are required to gather. Some non-profits have assembled former employees of different federal agencies or former municipal grant writers to provide advice and read drafts of grant proposals.
Additionally, the Inflation Reduction Act provided funds for technical assistance to help states and municipalities complete grants including funds to gather the required data in addition to writing the grant proposal. Since it benefits states to have their cities secure funding for projects, some states also provide technical assistance.
Though it sort of sounds like the “you need experience to get a job, but you can’t get experience without a job,” paradox to be required to write a grant to get the funding to hire people who are good at writing grants. I did appreciate the flow chart on the Colorado grant writing assistance program that shows that if your application is denied, you can modify and resubmit. Also, they appear to commit to reviewing applications within 14 days so cities will be able to maintain some momentum. I think a lot of non-profit cultural entities wish that sort of do-over opportunity was available to them with their own grants.
According to a staff member of one of the non-profits helping cities write grants, there is a similar situation to arts and culture non-profits where those with the most direct interaction with communities in need of assistance are often those without the capacity to secure the grant funding they need:
“I always look at the grant world like a spectrum,” said Relf. “At one extreme, you have organizations that know how to write grants, and they win grants, but they’re not really in the community doing the work. And then you have these organizations that have a heart for the community. They’re there every day. They just don’t have the capacity to write the grants.”