Episode Details

We made it. Grants.gov. For those of you who have been following this podcast series on How to Find Grants, you are probably ready to dive in and start finding grants. We ain’t quite ready, yet, though. Believe you, me, it’s all about getting SET up and understanding the layout of the grant world before you dive in and get overwhelmed.

You may have been using Grants.gov for years, but have only ever used it to search or apply for grants. Or you may be new to Grants.gov and have never visited the website. Either way, you are in for a real treat.

Next week we are going to go over what to look for specifically in the grants search on Grants.gov (oh, yeah, we will nerd out), but today I am going to explain the functions offered on the website and give you my favorite tools.

This is great information for you grant writers or for those who aspire to be grant writers. The reason I am breaking down Grants.gov is that it is a mammoth website for federal grants, and being such, it is very busy. As of May 2018, the website is in need of an update. It has that very busy mid-2000s website feel, with an overload of information outlined in different ways, which can lead to paralysis. Like, seriously. I have been going there for years but tend to stick to looking for grants and applying for grants. So I decided to dive in and find out the full capacity of the website, so all of us grant writers might actually use it.

The main menu has nine headers or tabs. These headers/tabs include:

• Home
• Learn Grants
• Search Grants
• Applicants
• Grantors
• System-to-System
• Forms
• Connect
• Support

The drop-downs under any of these headers contain a bunch of info. So let’s break it down in layman’s terms.

Tab #1 Home

Okay, it just brings you back to the Home Page. That’s it. Easy. But what you might find useful on the Grants.gov Homepage is that they now have a free app.  This is good for any alerts on upcoming grants or those that you started to apply to.

For those of you who prefer using your smartphone rather than a desktop, this app is very useful and user-friendly. The app itemizes searches a little bit more where there is a separate tab for eligibility at the bottom of the search rather than integrating it into the page like the desktop version. Pretty cool. You can just go to your app store on your phone and search for Grants.gov, and it will pop up.

Tab #2: Learn Grants

Grants.gov has a ‘grants learning center’ on its website and includes a community blog, articles, and a Twitter account (@grantsdotgov). The community blog offers ongoing updated information about – you guessed it – grants. The article sidebar tab is where it gets a little confusing. Once you are on the community learning page, you can click on the side to access different topics, which will then bring you to a slew of articles that may include links to PDFs, hyperlinks to relevant blogs, and so forth. The topics include the following:

• Grants 101
• Grant Policies
• Grant Eligibility
• Grant Terminology
• Grant Agencies
• Grant Systems
• Grant Programs
• Grant Reporting
• Grant Fraud
• Grant Events

There is a slew of information available, but I wouldn’t recommend sitting down in one day and reading through it all. It’s a lot of information. But there are some great resources located here that might give you the answers you need. I like that they have a Twitter account, but since I’m not on Twitter, I can’t vouch for any of their social media posts.

Pros: A lot of grant and grant-related information; on social media

Cons: It is very busy

Tab #3