by David Tandet
Jerry Lynch quoted former Olympic volleyball player Lori Endicott in his sports psychology classic Thinking Body, Dancing Mind: “There are six people on the volleyball court. We all have different strengths, weaknesses, personalities. It creates a dynamic that’s more exhilarating than an individual sport.”
In Right Before You Write, Jonathan O’Brien had this to say about collaboration in successful program design (read “grant proposal that gets funded”): “Ultimately, the process of designing an excellent program is really the process of building a collaborative.”
Synergy rules.
As O’Brien puts it, “Funding agencies do not want to see their money go to programs that work in isolation from, or in competition with, other nonprofits in your area with a similar purpose.”
Wouldn’t that be true to the nth degree in the current economic climate?
If there are excellent grant proposals getting funded mainly because they’re strong collaboratives, wouldn’t that in itself make successful program design a team sport?
Successful grant writing is a team sport.