The Complete Book of Grant Writing: Learn to Write Grants Like a Professional (Includes 20 Samples of Grant Proposals and More for Nonprofits, Educators, Artists, Businesses, and Entrepreneurs)

The Complete Book of Grant Writing, by Nancy Burke Smith and E. Gabriel Works, is a collaboration by an experienced grant writer and an experienced grant maker. This unique combination of the authors’ qualifications and knowledge makes for a detailed and comprehensive book for beginner and seasoned grant writers alike. As a PhD student at Pepperdine University, I am currently enrolled in a Grant Writing class and had zero experience with the topic previously. This book helped me tremendously in understanding the grant writing and grant seeking process from the grant writer and grant maker perspectives. The book also shared typical methods used and what to expect throughout the whole grant process. This book contains 13 chapters of meaningful information and advice, and is easy to read and digest, even for those like me who are (brand) new to grants. The first chapter even begins with “What is a Grant”, and the last chapter explains ways to become certified in grants. Talk about covering it all! As a someone who tends to take in information fairly literally and sequentially, I appreciate that each chapter has sub-sections, ranging from 3 to 11 sub-topics. This structure makes it super easy to find a particular topic, and go back to find specific information quickly. I especially liked chapter 6, the “Five Core Components of Grant Writing,” which details the abstract, statement of the problem, project description, evaluation plan, and budget narrative. Another thing I appreciate about this book are all the real examples and templates throughout it. Most of the templates also have callout boxes to highlight why the authors wrote what they wrote, and how to consider it for your own proposal. Super practical, applicable, and helpful! The only thing that is somewhat confusing for me are the gray shaded boxes throughout the text. Typically (in my world anyway) these boxes are used as “takeaway messages” to hone the reader in on important things to remember. However, in this text, they are used for tips, terms, questions, examples, myths, stories, application, and key messages, which is practically on every other page. But overall I highly recommend this book, especially for newbies to grant writing. It is easy to read, digest, and immediately apply.

Good quality. I used this book in college and it was pretty great and very affordable. Has a lot of good information for beginners.

This book gives good examples for each of the parts of a grant. It is a little dry to read but you can use it to refer back to for examples of budgets, letters of intent, etc. I didn't end up reading it all the way through, but I'm sure I'll refer back to it later.

Great book

I am a veteran news journalist, currently studying for my MPH degree and aiming to make a career change. I don't expect to become a full-time grant writer, but I feel grant writing skills would enhance my future prospects. I did not purchase this book as a text for any course. I found the book to be very comprehensive and easy to understand. It covers all aspects of the topic and is well written. I can't judge it from the perspective of a professional grant writer, but as an introduction for beginners you'd be hard pressed to make a better choice.

I looked at the physical version of this book in a local book store, and it looked very informative. As the Kindle price is 1/2 of the retail price, I thought buying the Kindle version would be the way to go. However, I cannot see the "examples" given in the book, no matter how large I attempt to adjust the font size (doesn't seem to do much for "examples", only the reading text) on my Kindle, my laptop, or my 19" desktop monitor. If you're interested in this book, buy the "physical" edition, not the Kindle version.

Thank you for this book---I find it a little intellectual high level, consequently, it's a little hard to understand. I was mindful of buying the other book: Grant writing for beginners. However, I was just hooked on the first one I bought, as I want to write professionally. Maybe, I will also buy the other book I mentioned previously: Grant writing for beginners as I feel that I need the base to move successfully up and understand to be able to write eventually as a professional... I hope this make sense... Thank you really, Laura

Hey I couldn’t give a 5 star because I believe In being truthful and I haven’t put it into action but it’s a very good read, a wealth of information, and samples are inside. I’ll give more context after I use the tips and tools.

As the title implies, this is a very comprehensive book on become a professional grant writer.

Reading it...very thorough