Technology: Benefits and Challenges in Grant Proposals

In my grant proposals, the sections where I mentioned how our organization uses technology always gave me high scores. I would include our using Quickbooks Pro® to manage our financial activities and reporting. I would also describe how we used Microsoft® Access database to log our activities and other information.

However some of our technical abilities that we mentioned when submitting our first grant proposal actually did more harm than good. This is an area where I still disagree with fellow grant reviewers. Ours was a situation where the knowledge base was not the same as what was generally known.

There was a section where I was describing how long it would take for us to produce DVDs that featured drama addressing lifestyles and solutions regarding HIV/AIDS. I had stated that it would take us 4-6 weeks to complete each DVD. The grant reviewers’ comments stated that this was not a reasonable amount of time. In reality, it took us even less time than that because of the technology that we were using.

Unfortunately, our proposal did not help the grant reviewers to understand that we had tapped into a little known ability at the time (before 1998). Even the Microsoft support people did not know that their package could include an embedded video using their Pack and Go feature. I hounded the Microsoft support people by telephone and on-line to get them to tell me how to include video with my self running presentations on CD. They all told me the same thing. “You can not have a self running CD with embedded video using this package.” They were wrong. I stumbled upon how to do it by noticing that during the error process, the CD would be looking for the video from the file on the computer. So I simply copied all of the files onto a CD and reconstructed the presentation, drawing the files from the CD instead of from the hard drive.

We went on to apply this new revelation to developing multi-media presentations that could be used for training and development. We got so good at it that we could actually complete the whole process in even less time. The only obstacle that would take us longer was that my husband was so picky about the sound. He would often go to his keyboards and develop the music scores for our scenes rather than use the canned sounds that I chose from the software package. He would cringe at most of the canned sounds and music that came with the software.

When it came to detailing our project in the grant proposal, I simply could not see that they would accept our little known ability to generate self running video-enhanced multi-media presentations using Microsoft® PowerPoint. I did not see that it would benefit us to include that my husband is a gifted musician who scored our presentations with original music. Many people already found it hard to believe that he could play and record audio tracks with all of the instrumentation, including drums (that actually sounded like real drums) along with strings, horns, etc. People often doubted our claim that our music and multi-media productions were generated in the petite studio that resided in our living room. We had to give people demonstrations to get them to see that it was even possible.

With all of this doubt, I did not dare mention any of this in the grant proposal- which brings us to another lesson. Tell the truth about any technological enhancements, and let the reviewers sort it out. I only realized that this was the best way to do things after I became a grant reviewer. If you have a technological ability that is little known, you may include it with a brief explanation about how and why it works with your project. Your challenge is convincing the reviewers that you truly understand what you state that you are using. It is not always necessary that they understand it as long as they are convinced that you understand it. You must also be able to show how this complicated technology will be effective with producing the results that you claim.