How the
Northwest Connects

Grant Writing 101: Your Competitive Edge for Funding

With a recent infrastructure deal locked in by the U.S. Senate, $65 billion in federal money will soon become accessible to local states, cities, and tribes to alleviate the lack of access to affordable, high-speed broadband. Disbursed over the next five years, this funding for underserved areas means there’s never been a better time to have a grant strategy in place. Whether you’re new to the grant-writing process, are not winning as many grants as you’d like, or have too many grants to write in too little time, the NoaNet Grants Assistance Program is here to help.

In the run-up to funding, governments and municipal leaders can increase their chances of bringing a share of these funds to their communities by becoming grant-writing savvy or finding a partner that already is. Expert, government-level grant reviewers know exactly how to zero in on the quality of applications vying for opportunities, and when scoring, every little point matters. To get a high score and advance your broadband grant application toward the award stage in this exceptionally competitive environment, having grant-writing reinforcements significantly boosts your chances of succeeding.

NoaNet has teamed up with Learn, Design, Apply, a talented grant-writing team with an impressive award track record to help bring broadband funding to Washington’s communities. In addition to the myriad of ways we already assist our clients gather the data to support their broadband projects, we now seamlessly coordinate with Learn, Design, Apply to help secure grant funding to realize your project’s aspirations.

The Grants Assistance Program can manage all aspects of state and federal grant applications, from opportunity alerts and grant writing to ongoing funding reporting and project management services. This partnership allows organizations and communities who don’t have the personnel time to dedicate to a grant application to access the sizeable federal funding programs for broadband deployment.

Nobody has a crystal ball to see every piece of application criteria ahead of an opportunity alert, but getting a broadband program “shovel-ready” with a well-researched, credible plan will show that your application isn’t an afterthought. Rather than stating the obvious (everybody already widely accepts the benefits of broadband), our Grants Assistance Program can help you get specific about how the grant will help your particular community in the areas of education, public safety, health, and economic development. Other factors we help you look at include partnerships that support your project’s credibility, sustainability, and capacity, how the project will be monetized in time with data-backed numbers, and how well you articulate your project’s long-term plan for technical support, updates, and ongoing network management.

Ready to foolproof your application(s) for the best possible outcome? Our NoaNet Road to Broadband toolkit, now complete with the Grants Assistance Program in partnership with Learn Design Apply, is a start-to-finish resource that you want on your team. Read more about this innovative partnership here.

Northwest Open Access Network (NoaNet) is a not-for-profit wholesale telecommunications mutual corporation that has been serving Washington State since 2000. As a mission-driven organization, NoaNet focuses on bringing world-class telecommunications technology to hard-to-reach communities which lack access to high-speed, affordable broadband services.