Facing budget shortfalls due to the COVID-19 pandemic, now more than ever municipalities need to be strategic about finding funding for capital projects.
The Dig Deep Grant Pursuit Strategy (GPS) helps you navigate the grants world, increasing your odds of striking gold and getting water infrastructure projects funded.
The GPS provides a roadmap for city leaders to help fund their specific project needs.
The Dig Deep GPS is a fit for any city, county or water district looking for external funding for a water-related capital improvement project. Our typical client serves a population of 10,000-50,000 residents, but we work with communities of all sizes.
The GPS Plan creates funding guidance specifically for water-related projects – drinking water, storm water, wastewater – we do it all. Really!
Ummm…. ya – at least the grants you have a good chance of winning. Most municipalities underestimate the time, effort and skill it takes to find grants and overestimate their odds of actually receiving grant funding. There’s a big difference between being eligible for a grant and being competitive enough to win a grant.
Manager / mayor / public works director:
We want to build a __________ (water project). Since grants are made publicly available, we’ll have someone here to search the internet and find grants that may fit this project. There are a couple months before the deadline. Plenty of time! Maybe we can find an engineering firm to help us write the grants – that’s the hardest part.
Engineering firm: Here are the technical details of the project. Good luck winning the grant!
City Staff: Wow. So many grant applications. Which one do we choose? Federal? State? We don’t have time to do them all. Let’s do these three. (Has no idea that hundreds – or thousands – other more-qualified applicants are vying for those same grants.) Dang. This is taking a lot of time. I thought I could just do this over the weekend. I’ve been buried in this project for weeks. I don’t need sleep. I know if there’s enough coffee to pu. I sure hope we get it. (Doesn’t know they’re not eligible or their grant submission is not competitive.)
Result: Lots of wasted effort. Lots of frustration. No funding received. Construction of project is inevitably delayed.
Manager / mayor / public works director:
We want to build a __________ (water project). Our community really needs supplemental money. Our capital improvement project is a year or two out, so we have a solid year to do this right. We should call Dig Deep and ask them to develop a Grant Pursuit Strategy for the project. That way we know what’s out there, and only apply for the grants where we have the greatest probability of success.
Dig Deep: Here’s a list of the best grant opportunities for this project. Here’s how competitive we expect each of these grants to be and why we believe they would be the best funding options to pursue.
City Staff: YEAH! I got my weekends and evenings back.
City Leadership: YEAH! We now know which grants to pursue and can proceed with confidence.
Citizens: YEAH! I love that our community works to keep our water rates low.
Result: Efficient use of municipal resources. Increased odds of securing external funding and avoiding water rate increases.
Knowing how limited your time is, we’ve made the Dig Deep GPS as simple as possible. Fill out a short GPS questionnaire, a few meetings, then sit back and let us do the digging. At the project’s conclusion, we’ll deliver our findings to you in a comprehensive GPS report.
Municipalities who have followed our GPS advice have seen a 100% return on investment (ROI) within 18 months, and 6-to-1 ROI long term.
Ready to get started? We dig it!
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