Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Collecting Threads for Weaving a Grant

Last fall, two colleagues and I were working on an IES grant. Time was short but we were determined. Anything was possible. After all, we had plotted our our professional development model, and we had the content ready for delivery. But when I met with the head of our research center, she asked me about our needs assessment. We hadn't thought of a needs assessment.

After all, we thought we had the answer. We thought we knew what these principals would need. We had a bibliography packed full of helpful literature. We had experience in working with and coaching principals. We knew this was going to work. All we needed was the grant money and we were going to do great things.

A needs assessment. Of course. It made perfect sense. Most of the research on large-scale coaching efforts suffered from not having done an adequate or any needs assessment at all. I had a sinking feeling that we would not meet the grant deadline. Our logic model begged for a needs assessment component and not having that needs assessment would set us back. We didn't have enough days left. And since the goal of writing a grant is to actually get the grant funded (not just write the grant and submit it) we decide to wait until the next submission date. It was a good decision.

I am going to take the lead on writing the 25 pages of this proposal. I'm very excited about this work ... and so are my colleagues. We think that coaching is THE THING. And tomorrow we'll start weaving these loose threads into a fabulous grant proposal.

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