A Primer on Grant Writing for Foundation Support for First-Time Grant Writers in Academic Libraries: Challenges and Opportunities

IntroductionGrant writing can seem like a difficult and grueling task for those attempting to obtain external funding for the first time in their professional careers, regardless of how long they have been in their respective field or their level of education (MLS, second Masters, or PhD) (Marshall, 2012). As budgets for academic libraries continue to shrink in the face of the challenges of the current economy, librarians at all levels are looking to external funding to support creative endeavors within their institutions. Among the institutions on which libraries are becoming dependent for funding are private foundations. The growth in private foundations in the United States has been exponential: in 1975, just under 22,000 foundations existed; by 2012, just over 84,000 foundations existed. Furthermore, foundation assets have grown from $682 billion in 2008 to $798 billion in 2012 (Foundation Center, 2013). Foundations in the United States gave approximately gave $55 billion to various nonprofit, educational, religious, and cultural organizations in 2012 (Foundation Center, 2013).Foundations are a distinctive part of American history and are a unique institution in American social and economic culture. Defined, a Foundation is, "That which is founded or established by endowment; an institution (e.g., a monastery, college, or hospital) established with an endowment and regulations for its maintenance." (OED Online, np). Foundations endowed for charitable giving reflect of our nation's economic history. For example, the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, and Gates Foundation were all funded from the profits of entrepreneurs and industrialists who wanted to give back to society and have a method of sheltering some of their assets from taxes. The principal method of distributing funds from a foundation is through charitable gifts to recipients with a defined use for the money, and the principal way of identifying the recipients is through grants.What is a grant? Ask this question among professional librarians and you'll get different answers: Free money? Money for a special project? Before we focus on the process of writing of a grant, we need to truly understand what a grant is and the role it plays in library funding. The Oxford English Dictionary defines a grant simply as, "A sum granted, esp. by a government or institution, to a school, institution, scholar, etc." (OED Online, np). In short, a grant could be defined as a specific amount of money, for a specific project over a fixed or finite period of time. For the purposes of this article, we will define grantsmanship as the pursuit of external funds from private foundations, or government agencies that support the mission of librarianship. The goal of this paper is to describe the basic processes and principles of pursing external funding from private foundation to support projects at academic libraries.The Need for GrantsAs a general rule, grants won't fill the holes in your budget that are created as a result of budget cuts, they won't make up for salary cuts, and they won't cover the day-to-day operating costs of your library. Instead, grants should be solicited in an effort to provide funding for a clearly defined or special project that has not been defined in the annual budget. Some examples of specific projects that grants have funded in academic libraries include endowed positions for library and visiting faculty, subject-specific collection purchase or development, rare book or retrospective cataloging initiatives, a new method of outreach to students using iPods to conduct library tours, and digitization projects for the creation of digital collections (Dodson, 1988) (Prophet, M., Fitch, M., & He, J. , 2004) (Hill, 2010). All of these projects have either a specific purpose or a finite period of time to accomplish the tasks and they require a specific amount of funding.The Ecology of the GrantAs traditional funding resources decrease, the demand on private foundations is greater than ever before. …