Grant proposal to reduce homelessness

Scenario – Your city wishes to apply for grant funding for the purpose of assisting homeless persons in your community. You have been tasked with developing the project timeline for this grant-funded project. The city manager is counting on you and will be presenting your timeline to the City Council next week. Consider the timing for the steps in your entire grant life cycle from concept to conclusion

Timeline

Action

Timeframe

Summary

Homeless Market Research and Data Gathering

6 months

Research understanding the homeless market opportunity and home it can be improved by grant funding.

Recruit additional staff to assist with research and information gathering

6 months

Additional staff and data analytics experts to help provide further insights into the issue of homelessness

Draft proposal to mitigate the impact on homelessness on the community

6 months

Construction of the draft proposal on the best methods to mitigate homelessness in the city

Discussion and debate with industry experts

3 months

Debate with industry experts to further refine the plan and make it more effective

Discussions with City Council and other political figures around the willingness to support this program

4 months

Discussions with political figures and community leaders on their willingness to support this measure and to provide insights into changes they would like to see implemented

Second Draft of proposal taking into account expert discussions and feedback

2 months

Second draft of grant proposal taking into account expert and community leader feedback

Review of second draft and correction

3 weeks

Final corrections to the proposal

Submission of grant proposal to the city council

1 day

Submission of proposal

Hiring and training staff to implement the homeless proposal

4 months

Attracting, recruitment, and training of personnel required to implement the proposal

Project launch

1 day

Launch of the project

Project implementation

2 years

Implementation of the grant proposal to mitigate the impact of homelessness on the community

End of grant and final evaluation

2 months

Evaluation of the overall effectiveness of the grant proposal and improvements that could be made to increase effectiveness.

Summary of Timeline

The timeline an be summarized into three phases. The first phase heavily emphasizes the research required to conduct the grant proposal. This research phase is predicated on conducting due diligence of the grant, along with eliciting appropriate feedback in order to properly implement the goals of the proposal. Likewise, this section is predicated on discussions with prominent community, social services and political leaders to improve the overall plan efficacy. The research phase is particularly long given the amount of data and analytics required to propose an effective solution. The next phase is predicated on the implementation of the grant proposal. This is the largest portion of the plan and will consist of a two-year plan to reduce homelessness within the city. The implementation phase builds on the work conducted in the research phase. Finally, the plan concludes with the evaluation phase which is predicated in reviewing the overall progress and success of the proposal. This phase is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of the overall proposal in an effort to improve future homeless initiatives. Likewise the phase can be used to analyze the overall return on investment achieved on the project.

Review of Individual Steps within the Proposal

The proposal begins with individual homeless market research and data analytics. This will be conducted initially be a single individual to evaluate the overall market opportunity. This evaluation is designed as a preliminary review to see how deep the homeless problem within the city is and how it impacts various elements within the city. Once the market opportunity is determined other research analysts will be hired to conduct a further analysis. Here, variables such as financial impact on the city, reduction in tax revenue, and overall society cost will be evaluated. Likewise solutions will be proposed during this phase of the plan. These proposals will be centered around mitigating the homeless population within the city in a cost-effective manner. The additional staff will have experience not only in data research and analytics but also grant proposal processes and procedures. Here, data analysts will leverage their expertise to formulate various solutions to the homelessness problem.

Next, the proposals will be evaluated based on centralized criteria such as cost, effectiveness, ease of implementation, and resource requirements. Here, the data analytics team will evaluate each proposal in an independent and objective manner to determine the best solution. The team will decide on the two best proposals that will undergo further review. These two proposals will then be submitted to industry experts within the homelessness field for their feedback. Here, the use of industry experts will not only provide validation and credibility to the plan, but it also will help to improve the overall effectiveness of it. These experts typically are emersed in the homeless population and therefore have insights that data analysts may not have. These insights can therefore be leveraged within the proposal to lower costs, improve effectiveness and improve outcomes for the city. Community leaders also play a large role here as they too can help improve the sense of urgency related to the issue of homelessness within the city. Church leaders, for example, will be used during this phase, as they have a captive audience who can assist politically with the grant approval process. This audience can also help in providing manpower for the overall implementation of the proposal if needed. By engaging these communities, the proposal an better engage the entire city in a more collaborative fashion, thus improving overall effectiveness.

With the feedback of the from community leaders and industry experts, the second draft of the proposal will be created. This second draft will leverage the insights garnered from industry experts to improve the overall proposal and make it more credible during the grand process. The next step here will be to discuss the proposals with politicians and other administrators to elicit their support. Here again, the aim is to establish a strong coalition of community leaders, politicians, and industry experts to support the program prior to the grant proposal process. This will mitigate the likelihood of rejection, provide a solid foundation by which to hire volunteers and have a steady pipeline of government funding for future funding initiatives. With the support of political figures within the city, the proposal will not only have much more intellectual capital behind it, but also financial capital behind it.