Books by Bess
About the Author
Grant money can make all the difference in developing new services,
Grant money can make all the difference in developing new services, creating worldwide access to your unique collections, or enabling you to showcase awarded projects that advance your career. But competition for grants is as fierce as ever. To get a leg up, you need an insider who will share proven strategies for success. In this book, Bess G. de Farber, who has led the management of 187 awarded grant projects from under $5,000 to more than $1 million at the University of Florida, does just that. Drawing from profiles of 57 grant proposals, sponsored by 31 funders including federal agencies, foundations, and library organizations, her detailed 10-step workflow guides you through submitting and managing collaborative grant proposals. You will learn
- about successful projects related to digitization, preservation, research, technology, and more, including such initiatives as digital publishing on Black life, audio of the sounds of the Panama Canal, digitization of scientific fieldwork from the 1960s, and supporting learning with smart pens;
- the crucial components of a fundable project plan, with a particular emphasis on collaboration, both internally and with external organizations;
- the fundamentals of crafting your own grant proposal, using as models the successful grant proposals included in full, with budgets, as weblinks;
- how to recruit partners and shape ideas;
- ways to incorporate assets and supporting materials into your plan; and
- advice on anticipating the unexpected, how to stay in communication with your partners while the proposal is being reviewed, what to do once you receive notification, and fostering a culture of grantsmanship at your institution.
By lifting the veil on the mysteries of grantseeking, this book will equip you with the knowledge and tools you need to create fundable grant proposals.
Praise for Creating Fundable Grant Proposals
“Wonderful resource for potential grant writers. I read Bess de Farber’s book and I must say that I was impressed. As a research development professional, I have read quite a few reference materials of this nature. Most are not this well-organized or useful. This is an easy- and enjoyable– to read walk-through grants with well-detailed examples of how to navigate work with partners as well as funders. Ms. de Farber has worked in a library setting, helping to secure funding for years, and her experience here is clear. I think anyone working in a library setting and wanting a good foundation in grant getting should have this book as a reference. I also think faculty in the humanities can benefit from this book. I applaud Bess for this effort and think it will help many people.”
— Beth Hodges, Director, Office of Research Development, Florida State University
“This is a book about how to create a successful program, how to develop an approach to successful grantseeking, how to bring more satisfaction into the workplace, and how to view grants as opportunities to build your organization rather than as bandaids to stop your fiscal bleeding. Chapter 1 alone is worth the price of admission. Along with chapter 6, de Farber presents a comprehensive, concise approach to building a grantseeking program no matter the skills of your people nor the resources of your organization. Chapters 2-5 are full of inspiring, true stories of grants developed, submitted, awarded and completed… Bess de Farber is the real deal – 93 awards totaling more than $7.5 million!
Whether you are developing a program or simply attempting to craft your own fundable submission, this book is a great training document and reference tool.”
—Dr. Laura Spears, Director, Assessment and User Experience, George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida
A collaborative approach to grant seeking can stimulate and reshape the culture of your library organization.
The exciting and rewarding activities of developing a successful grants program can yield enormous dividends for the benefit of your staff, patrons, and community. Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A Practical Guide for Librarians will share new insights for those who want to access grant funding without reinventing the wheel. Based on years of practical grant writing and collaboration development experience, this resource provides a complete guide for setting up a library grant-seeking program, and for combining forces with community partners to increase grant funding to libraries. Venturing into the grants world can be scary and unpredictable. This book offers detailed strategies and practical steps to establish a supportive and collaborative environment that creates the capacity to consistently develop fundable proposals, and gives readers the confidence needed to make grant-seeking activities commonplace within libraries.
Collaborative Grant-Seeking will share featured topics unavailable in other grant writing publications, such as:
- interpreting sponsor guidelines
- identifying appropriate funding programs
- determining the feasibility of project ideas
- asset-based (vs. need-based) proposal development strategies
- actual examples of successful and unusual library projects
- initiating and sustaining collaborative relationships
Praise for Collaborative Grant-Seeking
“Grant collaboration has an exponential benefit to partnering libraries and organizations that extends far beyond the dollars received. Collaborating on a grant project enables libraries to establish lasting relationships in addition to implementing new grant-funded services. De Farber contends that grant writing is an overlooked activity and that librarians are naturally inclined to be successful grantees. The author walks readers through the process, beginning with identifying funding opportunities and forming alliances. The guide provides specific suggestions for establishing communication and work flows between partnering institutions. Assistance is also provided for all common components of a grant application, from selecting a title to preparing the appendixes. To provide inspiration, several examples of successful applications and projects are shared, while checklists and samples demystify the practice. What makes this an excellent complement to other grant guides is that the focus is not on winning but instead on building the team.
Verdict: A solid guide for novice to expert grant seekers tired of going it alone.”
— Library Journal
“The book is conveniently organized in a way that allows its reader to jump to useful information on the aspects of grant-seeking that are of interest to them without needing to read other parts of the book which may not apply. After reading this book, any librarian can be more eager and less intimidated to pursue grant-seeking opportunities because of the way the author demystifies the process of developing a grant proposal. I would recommend the purchase of this book to any librarian or library wishing to develop an understanding of grant-seeking because it will provide you with a step-by-step guide to achieve that goal.”
— Journal of the Canadian Health Libraries Association
“Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A Practical Guide for Librarians is a welcome guide for librarians new to the world of grants, and useful for the experienced grant writer. In seven easy-to-read chapters, De Farber takes the reader through the entire grant-seeking process…. De Farber brings a wealth of experience to her writing, having served as grants manager for multiple universities and on grant review panels for all manner of organizations. The background information, suggestions and ideas here are excellent. However, what makes the book indispensable are the examples. The book contains everything from sample timelines and budgets to application checklists to opening paragraphs to evaluation plans, and everything in between…. The book itself, part of Rowman & Littlefield’s Practical Guides for Librarians series, is clean and easy to move through…. The writing is clear and quite understandable, even for those with no grant-seeking experience whatsoever…. Librarians from all types of libraries will find this book helpful…. Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A Practical Guide for Librarians is highly recommended for all libraries and all librarians.”
— Technical Services Quarterly
“Bess de Farber’s Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A Practical Guide for Librarians should be required reading for anyone who works or wants to work in a library. Grants offer libraries opportunities to innovate, experiment, and jump-start new services, but many librarians are unsure about how to be successful grant-seekers. This guide provides credible and highly useful advice based on the author’s full career as a successful grant-seeker. It demystifies the grant-seeking process, and provides an effective toolkit to help libraries justify, plan, implement, and sustain an organizational culture of grantsmanship. With de Farber’s guidance, libraries will be better prepared to leverage and align grant-seeking to more fully support an organization’s strategic goals and directions. I highly recommend this guide to anyone who wants to help libraries succeed in the current fiscal climate.”
— Chuck Thomas, Executive Director, USMAI Library Consortium and Former Federal Grants Program Officer
Provocative participant comments collected during collaboration workshops in response to the question,
“What’s one thing most people don’t know about you?” are coalesced with images selected from the rich, library collections of the University of Florida (UF) Digital Collections (DC). A multidisciplinary team of UF workshop facilitators, scholars, and librarians collaborated, curating 118 workshop responses with over 150 images that illuminate the digital collections while also sharing these diverse and vulnerable responses. This interactive work introduces the reader to the robust UFDC and asks them to consider their own reactions to a simple but inspiring question.
Interaction with strangers cultivates creativity and provides opportunities for joining forces to achieve great ends.
However most people tend to avoid talking or working with people they do not know, whether in the library, a classroom, or in academic and nonprofit settings. And to do so is to short-circuit much of the creative potential that is so necessary for innovation, and that organizational stakeholders crave. Enter CoLAB. Developed and presented by de Farber at workshops across the country, and used by the authors to successfully spur faculty-librarian collaboration at the University of Florida, it showcases the power of face-to-face conversations. Leading readers through a unique framework that breaks down barriers to collaboration while also kindling long-lasting enthusiasm, this manual includes
- testimonials from workshop participants that demonstrate the benefits of a Collaborating with Strangers workshop;
- step by step guidance on every aspect of organizing and presenting a CoLAB workshop;
- helpful photographs and diagrams that show prep and workshops in action;
- ready to use surveys for assessment before and after the workshop;
- grant proposal development techniques for bringing two or more organizations together on a project;
- pointers on how to adapt the workshop for ice-breakers, conference programs, or classrooms; and
- samples of workshop promotion pieces that can be adapted as needed.
Libraries have always connected patrons to resources and information; this resource shows how, through successful group collaboration, organizations can extend that connection to include the talents and assets of community members.
Praise for Collaborating with Strangers
“This book offers a fresh new set of strategies for engaging communities of people in dialogue. It offers a clear description of the concept of CoLAB, then it lives up to its billing as a how-to guide by clearly laying out the steps needed to run one of these dynamic meetings. This is a must-have resource for anyone who wants to engage communities in collaborative action. Very timely and much needed. Congratulations to the writing team for producing such a valuable resource.”
— Ingrid Bens, author of Facilitating With Ease!
“An impressively organized and presented resource.”
— Library Bookwatch
askbess@gmail.com