Book Review

Webster’s New World Grant Writing Handbook

Author: Sara Deming Wason

ISBN: 978-0-7645-5912-9

Published by Wiley, Hoboken, NJ, 2004

$16.99

 

Mary Paruszkiewicz

Freelance Book Reviewer

mtparuszkiewicz@verizon.net

 

 

Review by Mary Paruszkiewicz

 

Webster’s New World Grant Writing Handbook is a source of information on how to write a grant. The author, Sara Deming Wason, has a master’s degree in nonprofit management from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs.  She is currently the Executive Director of Corporate and Foundation Relations at Syracuse University.  She has experience in nonprofit administration and higher education development. 

 

Giving trends and philanthropy have changed due to the economic downturn, grants have become more competitive.  Grant writers need to be more innovative and more creative in selling their projects to organizations offering grants. This book guides you through the process of researching the grants you need for a particular project, writing a proposal and defining the need for your project.  It helps you fine tune your project, write a mission statement and determine if your goals match that of the organizations that will fund your project.

 

Many foundations and organizations along with federal and state government organizations offering grants have cut back dramatically on their staff. Many grant applications have become available on the internet through their website.  This book helps you understand how to fill out such applications, who to submit them to, and the importance of being concise and to the point about your project, when applying electronically.  Webster’s New World Grant Writing Book gives you instructions on how to write a concept paper, the length of each segment and the level of detail you need or don’t need for the paper.  Throughout the book samples for various parts of the grant writing process are given to show you their format.  This book explains the best practice to use when approaching a prospective donor, how to present yourself and your organization along with advice on how to be prepared.

 

This book was a required book for a grant writing course that I was taking. While it offers a lot of information, I found this book to be very dry and boring.  I had to force myself to read it and found myself re-reading some of it because it lost my interest.  For the novice grant writer such as me, this book lacks a lot of information.  It uses grant writing terms that are not listed in the glossary.  This makes it very confusing for the reader and they need to refer to other sources for the definitions of these terms.  Instead of having the reader flip back and forth to the glossary to look up terms that may or may not be there the book should have sidebar notations for the definitions of the terms used including the terms that were not in the glossary.

 

Throughout the whole book the author repeats the same points over and over again sometimes verbatim.  In part 2 the author talked about scandal and fraud and how it has lead to the Sarbones-Oxely (SOX) Act of 2002.  She then brought it up again in part 3 where she discussed measurements, accountability and scandal.  Parts 2 and 3 could have been revised and combined into one chapter.  In part 7, the same material on endowments is presented as in part 1 (see pp. 191 and 9). Information previously covered in part 6, Organizing the Proposal was again covered in part 7.  In part 8 Proposal Review and Follow Up the author again repeats previously discussed topics.  Pages 149 and 245 are the same subject on how to handle rejection. 

 

This book also assumes the grant writer works for a non-profit organization and does not mention that individuals can apply for grants.  I would have found a discussion on this topic very helpful.  The author does give good points on what the proposal outline should contain and goes into detail what should be included and how these aspects of the proposal should follow one another.

 

Overall the book needs a major revision, combining chapters and synthesizing information that is repeated.  A format and style that keeps the readers interested and maintains a consistent flow that doesn’t confuse the reader would be appreciated.  The author’s intended audience is for experienced professionals, as well as for novice grant writers, but the manner in which the book was written does not target the inexperienced or independent grant writer.