Photo by Redd Francisco on Unsplash

This is post 2 of 3 in my summer evaluation series. If you missed last month, check out a real-life example of evaluation in the Science of Reading project!

This month I'm sharing about my favorite evaluation tool - focus groups.

Ever wish you understood your people better, but you don't know where to start? Focus groups just might be your answer.

What is a focus group?

• A small group conversation with 4-8 participants. It can be held either in person or online and is usually audio-recorded for future analysis.

• Guided by an experienced facilitator (like me!). Ideally the facilitator is someone external to your organization or project. Your leaders are not present so focus group participants are more comfortable answering questions.

• Designed with a small number of open-ended questions. I plan questions in advance with my client according to what they want to understand better (or even what their funding agency wants to know).

Examples from my work

I have used focus groups to help clients explore each of the following:

• Long-term impacts: Talking with a nationwide group of K-12 teachers to understand the long-term impacts of a grant-funded professional development program (I presented with my client about this strategy at the American Evaluation Association conference in 2023)

• External partners: Exploring the experiences of external partners on a large, collaborative grant project funded by a federal or state agency (I have used focus groups to help these clients maintain accountability and improve their large projects along the way)

• Internal staff: Talking with my client's own staff or students to better understand their motivations and capacity building in a workforce development project (I just turned in an evaluation plan that would use this method)

• Strategic planning: Hearing from residents of a rural town as a component of strategic planning for economic development grants (I recently participated in a federal grant proposal where we would use this strategy)

Why focus groups?

• Exploration: If you're doing something new, a survey probably doesn't exist. Focus groups allow you to explore what's happening in your new frontier. Once you learn some themes from focus group participants, you can use those themes to build a survey for the next evaluation round.

• Time and confidentiality: When led by an external expert, focus groups save you time while keeping confidentiality for participants. The focus group facilitator handles all coordination. You receive a streamlined, visual report of results with example quotes.

• Value for money: If you are leading a large grant project, focus groups would cost a small percentage. For example, $15K for a set of focus groups is 1.5% of a $1M project budget. (On the other hand, if you have a small grant project, focus groups would likely not be the most cost effective evaluation tool.)

• Real stories: Compared to simple "agree/disagree" surveys, focus groups allow you to dive deeper and gain more meaningful stories than you could have written into a survey question. These meaningful stories are especially helpful for funders and other stakeholders!

Want to partner with me for focus groups?

I'd love to talk more! Please reach out, and we can check my availability to lead focus groups in the next few months to a year. Looking forward to hearing your ideas!

Happy Summer 2025!

I am happy to introduce my summer blog series on project evaluation - this is post 1 of 3.

Kicking off the series with a real-life example of evaluation, I sat down with two recent clients to discuss their $4 million Science of Reading project at Louisiana Tech University. I had the honor of serving as the external evaluator for this project, which was the largest ever completed by the university’s College of Education and Human Sciences. 

Welcome to our conversation.

Let’s start with a fun question before we dive into details. What are each of you most proud of about the Science of Reading project?

Dr. Cummins: There are a lot of things that I am proud of in relation to this project. One is the fact that we were able to pull so many people together, both internally and externally, to work together as a team. We were also able to forge some needed connections between higher education and the Louisiana State Department of Education, so that we are all working toward the same goal. And I guess in the bigger picture, the thing that I am most proud of is the fact that the project has the potential of huge impact. When we help teachers grow their content knowledge, the ultimate goal is impacting student learning across the state of Louisiana. So that would be my proudest moment, thinking that together with the Department of Education we have the opportunity to make that happen.

Ms. Jordan: I'm most proud of the impact the project has on our state’s young readers now and also for years to come. You know, reading is essential to success in any area. So if we're able to help educators deliver the content that will, in turn, help students with literary knowledge, then we are helping to set all students up for success in whatever field they choose to do. I'm also proud of the engaging format of the modules.

Yes, that is huge. Now, Dr. Cummins, you are the PI of this project. Can you share a little about your background and how you got put on this project, to help set some context?

Dr. Cummins: I've enjoyed 50 years of working in a profession I truly love and have had the opportunity of working in that profession from various positions and roles. I served 15 to 17 years in the classroom. I actually began in high school and then moved my way down working in the elementary grades. I had the privilege of teaching every grade in elementary school, but most of my time was spent with my love absolutely being first grade. Of course back when I first started that was where you really taught children to learn to read; that since moved down into kindergarten. Then I changed roles, serving the district as Title 1 Elementary Curriculum Supervisor and had the privilege of also serving as an elementary principal. Over the past 23 years, I have been in higher education. 

So a lot of different roles and positions have helped me understand education in general. But the best thing has simply been that every single role still involved working with children. Even though the children may have grown as they moved into pre-service, or even in professional development with well seasoned experienced teachers, they all involve being in classrooms and working with children.

I have also been engaged in literacy education on an international level. I was on the Board of Directors for the International Reading Association (now the International Literacy Association) from 2003-2006 and then on the Executive Board from 2009-2012 serving as President in 2011-2012.

And how I got involved in the project - this was one of the few projects that I didn't have to seek myself. It simply started with a phone call from the State Department of Education. They had been awarded this wonderful grant and asked if I was interested in working with them to execute it. So that led to talking to my Dean and making sure that our university wanted to take this on, that we had the facilities and capabilities of doing it. They all agreed, and that's how it started. 

Awesome. Okay, so let's talk about the project itself. What were the main deliverables of the project? 

Dr. Cummins: Our wonderful modules. Twelve very content-rich online modules that would ensure all of the K-3 teachers throughout the state were working with a common base of knowledge. Starting with the old no Child Left Behind as our basis of knowledge, but then fine-tuning that into what we now know from the current research, better known as the Science of Reading. And then we tried to make that content knowledge as interactive and fun and engaging as possible. 

Then fast forward to today. Can you see how many teachers are enrolled? 

Dr. Cummins: Right now we have 1,550 teachers who are at some stage through the process of the modules. At Louisiana Tech University, it is also impacting our pre-service teachers. Our literacy professors have been using a lot of our content and have rearranged their courses to be more current with the content. So it's making an impact with people who will be doing their teaching residencies this coming year. 

Yes, that's awesome. And then considering how many students each educator teaches in their lifetime, that impact is going to just multiply over the years. Wow.

This next question is for both of you. What made the project challenging? 

Ms. Jordan: The most challenging part of this project was keeping up with all of the moving pieces. There were too many moving pieces that we could not even imagine when we sat down to try to map out what all this project would entail. But taking all those moving parts, both anticipated and unanticipated, and organizing them while keeping communication open between the team members was one of the biggest challenges. You didn't want two people working on the same thing, and then you also didn't want something not getting the attention it needed. So just basically keeping the communication open and pulling all of those little pieces together to form the big puzzle. 

Dr. Cummins: For me, the first challenge really began with the uncertainty of what was needed and wanted. The State Department of Education had just received this funding, and the guidelines were not yet developed. Often there is a very specific list of guidelines that you have to follow, but this one was initially wide open. That freedom is a good thing in many ways, but it's also a major challenge when you're not sure that what you're doing and thinking will meet the expectations. This challenge was soon rectified as discussions led to firm expectations which then propelled the project forward.

And then another challenge was finding the right people to write each module. The people who had the content knowledge, but also people that others would recognize as having the content knowledge so that they went into the modules feeling like they were getting the right information. So finding experts who were interested in doing it and also had the time to provide the information was a major challenge. And then just keeping a timeline when you had that many different people with different things going on in their lives and all working on other projects. And then finally putting all the content together and keeping it unique so that every author's voice was heard, but also keeping it uniform in some way so the modules were easy for teachers to navigate.

Yes, that makes sense.

Okay, now I want to turn our conversation to talk about evaluation. Dr. Cummins, at some point during the project, you made a comment that “learning never stops.”

Knowing your extensive background in the education field, that comment was really profound to me. Can you talk more about how evaluation connects to learning? 

Dr. Cummins: You're right. To me, learning never stops. Hopefully, we're all learning something every day, regardless of how old we are.

In teaching, we start our instruction where a child is, and then we move from that point of knowing to the unknown and trying to move them forward so they continue to add to their repertoire of knowledge. So in education, evaluation is the way that we find out where children are to start with, so we then know where to proceed from that point.

And so that same evaluation principle applies to any project you do. You have to determine where you are and where everyone else involved in the project is, and then move forward. 

We used the notion of formative assessment constantly. One in a formal way with you helping us stop and rethink everything. But then even between our internal team meetings and our evaluation meetings, we were constantly saying, “What have we gotten done? What do we need to do? What do we need to go back and redo?” And so we were constantly using that new data, to eventually get us to where we needed to go. That's what made the project successful.

I love that. Now I want to talk about the nitty gritty of project management.

This evaluation was different because we weren't looking yet at impacts on teachers or students. My whole evaluation was on the process of creating the modules.

So Ms. Jordan, as Project Manager, can you describe your role and responsibilities on the Science of Reading project? 

Ms. Jordan: Well, traditionally a project manager's job is to oversee and coordinate all the aspects of the project from beginning to end, making sure you're staying within a budget and that the deliverables are to the standards of the stakeholders within this project. I would say we use the meaning of team to the n-th degree. We all did project management in some sense of the word. So as far as my role, I helped with the budget, making sure that payments were made on time and to the right people for the right amounts, the contracts were done the right way, and getting them through the university’s system. I took on a lot of secretarial roles, which was my former job so it made sense for me to do those things.

And that was no small job - we counted 20 contracts created and over 200 payments processed throughout the whole project!

And yes, y'all were a great team, for sure.

What were the biggest lessons you learned through the project and that you are taking into new projects?

Ms. Jordan: To plan for the worst, but aim for the best. We should all learn from our mistakes; and there are some areas where maybe in the past, I wasn't as vigilant on documenting conversations with external contractors. Whereas now I'm asking, what exactly are they going to be doing? What exactly are the standards they're going to deliver? Let's make sure we're getting all of this in writing ahead of time, that we're all on the same page on what we expect them to do. So I think that probably was the biggest lesson that I've learned. 

Yes, what a good lesson.

Well, the last question is for both of you. What advice would you give to other grant teams about working with an external evaluator? 

Dr. Cummins: That one I could say a lot about. But I guess my biggest thing is to get to know your evaluator early. I enjoyed working with you, Alicia. I will be honest, I have not always felt that way with external evaluators. In other grants that I've worked with, I didn't really know who the person was until the end when all of a sudden they were pulling it all together and sharing the “report.” So it’s important to get to know your evaluator early on. And you made a point of doing that, Alicia.

I’d also say to other grant teams, be honest from the very beginning. Don't try to hide things or provide a right answer. Say “this is what's happening right now…” so you can truly build that rapport that facilitates a natural conversation. Because I think that is what helped you be a part of our team, Alicia, not someone outside and external coming in at the end and telling us what we did well or what we needed to improve on. You did understand the project from early on, and that helped you form your questions from a place of knowing. That made us push a little deeper to get what we needed.

So that’s my advice - know your evaluator, and involve them in the process so that you feel good about your results. Even when the results aren’t good, they are honest and will help you do a better job in the future. 

Yes, I love that. And that’s the kind of client I want too. The kind who wants me involved, to be in formative conversations from the beginning. So thank you for being that!

Teresa, anything to add as advice to other grant teams?

Ms. Jordan: I tend to be more open than some people concerning struggles or obstacles we encounter. I think constructive criticism is very valuable for a team, and you can't get it if you're not being honest. But the person giving the constructive criticism, like Dr. Cummins said, needs to really understand how things work. And so it is important to get someone like you, Alicia, who can get in the middle of everything and understand how the project really works instead of just looking at it from the outside. 

So true. Well, I appreciate y'all so much. Thank you again for your time today.

Dr. Cummins: Thank you, we have enjoyed working with you. 

Want to know what a real evaluation report looks like?

Here’s an example! The Results Summary page of the Science of Reading project’s summative process evaluation report:

I've been a micropreneur for over 10 years. It changed my relationship with work.

And now I see an opportunity for micropreneurship to meet the moment we are in, not only as a nation but also as a global society.

What is micropreneurship?

Micropreneurship is entrepreneurship on an intentionally small level... a microbusiness has fewer than five employees (and may never desire to grow any bigger).

How can micropreneurship meet our moment?

• As a response to AI: Experts like Bill Gates say that within the next 10 years, many human work roles will shift to AI. Does that mean humans won't have to work at all? No - I believe we were created to work, and it's fulfilling to contribute to society. Micropreneurs - especially working together - will have the autonomy, efficiency, resilience, and creativity to innovate and provide new solutions to new problems in a world revolutionized by AI. I love the way the business strategy book Beyond Disruption addresses this point!

• In "life after DEI:" Regardless of your opinion on DEI programs, the shifts in the last few months have been huge for a lot of people. In the end, we all want to thrive and belong, don't we? To tell you the truth, micropreneurship has given me a chance to thrive - dream, try things, make mistakes, and learn - more than I ever did in a larger company. And I'm not alone. Even 12 years ago, a report published by the Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) shared that "microbusinesses create a variety of positive social impacts by providing income, wealth and upward mobility across racial, ethnic, and gender lines." And if we look much further back in U.S. history, entrepreneurship was the path taken by some Black women (both enslaved and free) in order to pursue more agency and autonomy.

• With Gen Z: Gen Z wants to work on their own terms - like choosing meaningful work and flexible schedules. This can be frustrating to employers, especially when Gen Z workers keep leaving jobs or at least disengaging while staying. Employers want more. And Gen Z wants more. They'll contribute more value as micropreneurs, providing more flexibility and more value on both sides of the labor relationship.

• Contributing to national and local economic development: According to the same AEO report linked above, "[d]irect sales and receipts and indirect and induced economic output of microbusinesses combined to result in an almost $5 trillion economic impact [in 2011]. Correspondingly, microbusinesses contributed $135.5 billion in tax and fee revenues to federal, state, and local governments." This is good for communities.

What does it mean for your grant projects?

• If you are a micropreneur: Know that what you're doing is "a thing." You are creating your own job - that means no one else has to. It's not easy, but you are not alone. In your work on grant projects, you are creating value for your clients and for yourself. You are learning, growing, and hopefully thriving. Keep it up, and share what you learn! Because you're also paving the way for others.

• If you're in a big organization (and prefer it that way): That is great! Not everyone wants to be a micropreneur. You might begin to see more opportunities to streamline your organization's core work. You can focus on your core activities and then add flexible capability that you can turn on and off when needed. For instance, instead of staffing up to do everything on a grant project, you could look for a local micropreneur to join you. You'd list this partner on the contractor/consultant line of your grant budget, and when the project is over they would rotate off until the next project that fits.

• If your grant projects are in workforce development or economic development: Take special notice of funding programs supporting entrepreneur training. When you think about the "workforce pipeline," begin to envision how the ultimate end of the pipeline could lead not just to jobs but to businesses. And when you see press articles about a company bringing in "X hundred jobs" to your area, ask those industry partners about outsourcing and entrepreneurship opportunities in addition to jobs.

My closing thoughts

I'm not an expert in any of this - just trying to take in a lot of information and connect the dots. I know micropreneurship is not a "quick and easy" solution to the challenges described above, and there are a lot of logistics to be worked out. (Research topic, anyone?)

In any case, I am really interested to see what happens over the next 5-10 years!

What are your thoughts??

More reading:

• This Association for Enterprise Opportunity (AEO) report from 2013

• This 2024 blog post about how micropreneurship fits in today's society

• The book Company of One - this was the first book that introduced me to the micropreneurship strategy of business

• The book Beyond Disruption - a followup from the authors of Blue Ocean Strategy

Photo by SumUp on Unsplash

In the last year, I’ve had the privilege of working with Dr. Dan McCarthy, Dean of Research and Innovation at Southeastern Louisiana University. From the beginning, I knew Dr. McCarthy was a dreamer AND a doer. I had to know more about his story.

Welcome to our conversation.

Can you give me a brief history of your work, especially related to grant projects?

Sure. I'm a physicist - I studied fusion energy. And so the bulk of my grants were research grants funded for about 10 years from the US Department of Energy. These grants funded my research at Southeastern, but also in collaboration with physicists at MIT, UC San Diego, and UK Atomic Energy Agency as well. 

Awesome. Okay. What do you like about working on grant projects? 

I like getting them funded. It's a lot of work, and there's a degree of randomness. You can have a fantastic proposal - well you think you do - and it doesn't work. And other times it works out well. You are always at the whims of the reviewers, so I like when proposals are successful because it's the same amount of work for successful or unsuccessful. It's always a real thrill to get them awarded. 

So true. Next question, what is the smallest grant that you've been awarded, and can you tell me about it? 

I'd say the smallest might have been the most important. When I was first an Assistant Professor in 1994, the State of Louisiana had known at the time the Louisiana Educational Quality Support Fund, now called the Board of Regents Support Fund. Those grants were for junior faculty just to get started. I was awarded one, and it wasn't much. I mean, I'm not an expensive researcher. I'm a theorist and computational person, so I just needed some summertime and student time and travel. The total cost of the grant was maybe $75,000 for three years. It wasn't much, but it led me to getting funded by DOE for the next 10 years. It was the springboard to long-term funding from the Federal government, which is the entire purpose of those grants. It's meant to make you Federally competitive, and it did. 

That’s so cool - faithful with the little things!

Next, what's the largest grant you've been awarded, and can you tell me about it? 

When I was Dean of Science and Technology, I was very closely involved in a large grant from a private company called Air Products. The project was to do environmental monitoring related to a carbon capture project they're proposing. It was a $10 million grant over three years. So it was a thrill, as you can imagine. 

Very exciting because we have had five investigators on the project. There was a real challenge of bringing them all together and then tying all the separate projects into one coherent product. We've never had anything like that at Southeastern. Again, not your typical Federal award, but one from a private industry and a big dollar amount. So that's what led to me moving into the Dean position - I realized there are more opportunities for grants like that, and I needed a lot more time to work on them.

Wow yes, that’s big. Can you share a little more about the project? What led to it, and what have the outcomes been so far?

Well, we're in the third year. It's ongoing, but the work's been so successful, they're going to ask us to do it for two more years. They didn’t put an RFP out; rather it was more relationship building. We had to convince the company that we were capable of doing the work. They recognized our capacity and asked us to do it.

As far as outcomes, the project involves environmental monitoring of Lake Maurepas. One component is the aquatic environment, both the populations and health of all the fish and the crabs and shrimp, and then also the stresses of the various organisms. It's a very poorly understood lake. We've discovered species in Lake Maurepas we didn't know existed. We found that even though it's labeled as a shrimp sanctuary, in three years we only found eight shrimp. We found Gulf sturgeon there, never seen before in that lake at all. We're finding a lot of interesting things about the various heavy metals in the lake which we did not know before. We're doing both mechanical analysis and also Tisch samples. 

We're also working on the wetlands. We're planting a number of trees and trying to reforest the area. We’re doing experiments as to what's the best environment for the trees to grow. What can we do to get them reforested? Because there used to be a huge cypress forest there, and it was logged. And it's been a real challenge getting things to grow back.

The whole project is a variety of things that are way outside of my field of physics! But it's still been cool to learn about all this stuff. 

Yes, and you talked about your role bringing people together with the right expertise. 

Right, that's the big part. And getting people who normally don't work with each other to work with each other. That's been really beneficial, and we're seeing a lot of synergy. So it's really more of a project management type role.

Another part is relating to the community, getting these data out to the community. A lot of the work will be published in scientific journals, but a huge component of this is making sure the community understands what we're doing. And talking to elected officials; they need to know too because the science in this area is going to have an impact on policy, and elected officials need to be informed about the science.

So it's a very far reaching project with a lot of different stakeholders. As opposed to back in my research days where communicating with stakeholders was going to conferences and publishing papers; it was really other physicists who I'd work with. This is now working with all sorts of different people. 

Yes, I can only imagine!

Next, what has been your favorite grant project and why? 

This is a project we started recently. I worked with a fellow colleague of mine who's also a physicist, and we started a program at Southeastern called STEM Scholars. We received private funding, and we also have NSF funding through the FUEL grant led by LSU and DOE funding through the H2theFuture grant led by the Greater New Orleans Development Foundation.

The STEM Scholars program provides a very intensive year-long research experience for high school students from underserved populations in Louisiana. The students work with our own faculty and with our undergrads on a research project over a year, and it's had a tremendous impact on the students. Many of our populations just don't have access to things like this. So we're really reaching out and showing students that they are able to do this work, they can do it, and they should do it. And it's making them much more interested in going to college and pursuing a degree in an energy-related discipline. It's also been really gratifying to see the program grow. The first year we had 30 students, and now we serve about 150 students.

So that's my favorite project because I really do think it's the most meaningful and is truly changing lives of students and also improving the state. We're accessing a population that had been largely overlooked before; and now they are moving into higher secondary education, post secondary education, and hopefully really good careers in STEM fields. It’s a very exciting program, and we're very proud of it. And it’s going to be ongoing for a while - I think we're going to have another contract signed next week with another company. 

It's so neat and inspiring to me to see your journey from being a growing researcher, then a successful researcher, and now full circle to helping the next generation to do the same. 

Next, how have you changed as a PI? What's the biggest thing you've learned? 

A lot of times, when junior faculty start, they don't really know how to be a PI. I didn't, but I was lucky in that I had worked with really good people when I was at University of Maryland. I had written a lot of papers, which helped with grant proposals because it meant I had some ideas.

Now I’ve moved from doing my own thing to really helping facilitate others and find their talents.  What I'm supposed to be doing as a Dean of Research is not so much advancing my own individual agenda, but advancing the research agenda and priorities of the entire university and identifying the skills in the university and opportunities that we maybe haven't thought about before, such as STEM Scholars and working with companies. 

Okay, that leads right into the next question. What is your advice for up and coming PIs? 

There are three basic elements to writing a grant. First of all, understand what the agency wants to fund. I mean if they want to fund K-12 education, don't write a research grant about neutrinos. It just doesn't make any sense. So understand what they want.

Explain to them why what you're doing is important and relevant. You need to let them know this is an important thing, this is relevant, this is meaningful. So it's really understanding your audience and then letting them know why it's important.

And then, and this is the last part, tell them why you're the person to do it. Show them you can do it and you can do it where you are. So let’s say I’m at Southeastern, and I identified a good problem, but I needed a million dollar piece of equipment in a lab - that would make no sense because then I can't do it here. So you need to make sure that you have the ability to do it, not just within your own talents, but at your institution… which could mean collaborating with another institution. So that was actually what happened with DOE when I was collaborating with others at MIT. They clearly have resources at MIT that we're not going to have in Hammond, Louisiana. 

You have to be honest about your idea and your capabilities. Reviewers will figure out quickly if you aren't telling the full story. Show them you really understand what you're doing, you understand your barriers, and you know what it takes to successfully overcome those barriers. If your problem isn’t that important, try to find another important problem. Or if you need some help, find an institution down the road or another state that can help you out.

That’s great. So in the last year, you worked with me and my colleague, Dr. Allie DeLeo-Allen. Can you share about that experience? 

We have written some proposals which required assessment, a type of assessment which we didn't have the skill set for, and you certainly have that skill set. So that's been really helpful. You've assisted us in identifying some opportunities which I did not know about before, finding a rural workforce development grant. And I think it's going to be really helpful with you guys working with our junior faculty to give them some skills that they're going to need to move forward. Sometimes hearing it from someone external is more powerful than hearing it from someone internally.

Yes, we’re looking forward to that!

All right, anything else you want to share? Questions I haven't asked?

You talked about my different path, and I guess it's like everything you do. Something can have an impact on what you're doing, and it is completely different later on. So the more experiences you accumulate, the more you are able to fit yourself into a place that you never imagined you could before. I never could have done what I'm doing now when I first started as assistant professor. It's a variety of experiences which have allowed that to happen. 

That’s so wise. Well, thank you so much for your time today! I continue to learn from you, and I hope the rest of our community will as well.

A while back, I wrote about sowing days and reaping days. You guys responded more than any other post.

Today I'm following up with something that's been on my mind and heart - choosing generosity. Come with me...

So you've sown seeds, and the fruit is starting to grow. You have authority and opportunity of your own. Finally!

If you're like me, you now begin to find yourself in situations where you have a choice:

You can either hold on to all the opportunity you've worked for... or you can share it.

Eek. In these situations, I want to make a case for choosing generosity.

Now of course, we need to be fair and responsible to everyone, including ourselves. But when it’s not clear cut and could go either way… let's be generous.

I am so thankful for those of you who have modeled everyday generous decisions for me in our world of grant and research work. I have written before about Dr. Krystal Cruse, Dr. Ramu Ramachandran, Dr. Danielle Williams, and the Innovation Enterprise, all of whom have modeled these things for me!

Here's what "everyday generosity" can look like in grants:

• noticing and building up others' potential

• including someone with less experience on your project

• recommending someone else to be PI

• listing someone before yourself on a paper

• allocating someone more money in a grant budget because you know the whole picture

• giving the advice that no one gave you (or that you had to pick up from a hundred different places)

• meeting someone at the table now, even if they didn’t support your early vision

• partnering with someone who could be seen as a competitor

Y'all, some of these are easier than others. And especially today, when many are facing uncertainty, it's easy to focus on our own challenges and hold our fists tightly around what we think we can control. But I truly believe there's enough for us all, and we will ease anxiety and do our best work when we raise each other up.

--

Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash

When I found out about the most brilliant use of Complete Grant System yet, I knew I had to share it with you!

Thank you to this team from Louisiana Tech University’s Innovation Enterprise who sat down and told me about their student grant program:

• Dr. Donna Johnson, Chief Innovation Officer

• Ms. Kathy Wyatt, Director of Enterprise Development & Entrepreneurial Ventures

• Dr. Allie DeLeo-Allen, Supervisor of Student Grant Assistants (DKB Solutions)

• Ms. Katherine Cortez, Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Student

In only a year, their pilot program has WON OVER $1.5 MILLION (and counting) for projects in their own community.

Welcome to our conversation.

Can you tell us more about the Innovation Enterprise and where you are located?

Dr. Johnson: Louisiana Tech University is located in Ruston, Louisiana, a town that is largely centered around the university. When you look in any direction—east, west, north, or south—within a nearly 200-mile radius, we are the only research institution. Given our regional placement, we have established ourselves as a hub for innovation, research, and education.

At Louisiana Tech, we have a division dedicated to fostering this mission—focusing on our impact on the region and the lives we touch. We operate at the boundary of the university, both in terms of physical location and function. On campus, we manage facilities that are integral to our division, including two multi-story, multi-tenant buildings where corporate partners have office spaces. Our division, the Innovation Enterprise, serves as the interface between the university and these corporate partners, as well as external entities, agencies, and municipalities that choose to collaborate with us.

However, our work extends beyond supporting corporate partners on campus. Our collaborations are not limited to those within our 200-mile radius. In fact, we have international partnerships that allow us to work with researchers and institutions worldwide. While we are rooted in Louisiana—a rural region with a mission focused on research, education, and workforce development—our reach is truly global. The Innovation Enterprise is committed to bridging the gap between the university’s resources and the needs of external organizations seeking to work with us.

Because we operate at the boundary of the university, we are university employees, but we strive to be market-responsive. Universities are not always structured to respond quickly to market demands. External partners have different timelines, terminology, and goals, which can sometimes be misaligned with traditional university operations. Our role is to ensure that we effectively leverage the university’s assets and resources in a way that creates mutual benefits for both the institution and our external partners.

To be market-responsive, we must listen to the needs of those we work with—both outside and increasingly within the university. A recurring trend we’ve noticed is the availability of grant funding. Many external partners, as well as some faculty members, are interested in pursuing these opportunities but lack the insight, capacity, or expertise to identify grants, craft winning proposals, and manage awarded projects.

Securing and managing grants is something universities specialize in. We conduct research, write proposals, and oversee funded projects regularly. Given our role in connecting various stakeholders, it made sense to consider how we could build capacity to meet this growing demand. The student grant program is one initiative we believe directly addresses this need.

Great! Next, can you walk us back to the beginning of your pilot, around the end of 2023.  How did the program start, and what challenges were you responding to?

Ms Wyatt: So when this program was started, as you said, in 2023, that is when we made application to receive some funding that would allow our division with the university to deliver technical assistance to small businesses in the region that wanted to use grant opportunities to help their ventures. So we made application for those funds in August 2023. They were announced or awarded at the end of the federal fiscal year, which, you know, concludes at the end of September. And then we were allowed to begin going through the grant process of executing forms and documents and signing things. And that really took us through most of the first quarter of the fiscal year 2024. So our student grant program really got kicked off and operating, I would say, in January of 2024. So really we have been functioning as a unit delivering these services for approximately a year.

And when we talk about why we started this - we as a team within the University recognized both a need and an opportunity that would allow us to fulfill multiple objectives that we had, one being an opportunity to increase revenue flowing into our department and the university and to do this in a manner that would allow us to engage students as grant writers and in doing so, to use that student talent to in turn help us expand our capacity to deliver services in the community to these small businesses. And that's essentially how it started. 

Ok thanks. So a follow-up question - what are the pilot’s results so far?

Ms. Wyatt: So we are working with a federal agency. We were coming in and basically helping small businesses assess feasibility of an investment that they wanted to make. And then, if that investment proved feasible for them, then we had the ability to help them apply for funds to make that happen. And so in this program over the course of a year, we have basically been able to do that initial financial feasibility for 14 different business sites, or locations throughout North Louisiana.

Of those 14 different sites that were assessed for feasibility, there were six applications submitted. And the total value of the grant applications that were submitted is approximately $1.9 million directed toward helping provide investment for these small businesses.

Now, of those six applications submitted, there are five awards that have been allocated, and one is still in review. And so essentially we've already seen $1.5 million approximately come into our community and $400,000 is still under review.

But the other exciting thing is that these grants did not fund 100% of the investment, but they were the catalyst or the motivation for investment in larger projects. So the total project value that's been brought to our community is about $3.8 million in one year. 

We used a really good model, the Complete Grant System, which helped us find a way to do that. And because we had such a good system, we attracted great talent, which I know you're going to learn more about as you talk to Dr. DeLeo-Allen and one of our fabulous grant writing students, Katherine Cortez. 

Wow, that is amazing! Can you tell us what the program looks like? Who are the different players, and what’s everyone doing? 

Dr. DeLeo-Allen: Sure. There are several players depending on the specific grant opportunity. First our clients - in our pilot projects, our clients were small businesses. We also worked with technical teams, including engineering firms and vendors. We also communicated with the funding agency’s program directors, asking questions and for their guidance. And then of course, our student grant assistants.

As far as how the program was laid out - the student grant assistants communicated a lot with the client and some of the technical team, gathering the necessary documents and information, researching locations, and gathering the environmental information that was required in the application. Then they would take all the gathered information and compile it into the grant application so it was ready for submission. 

In my role, I helped guide the students through that process, communicated with the grant program director to keep a single line of communication with them, and then offered any feedback and support to the students so they could do their job well.

At the beginning, a lot of our focus was not only learning about the actual grant opportunity, but establishing a process - a process we could use each cycle of this grant funding and replicate with other clients and grants if that opportunity came about. It was a great process improvement exercise for the students and myself to go through a cycle and then at the end of it see where we could improve - what didn't work, what worked.  Though our clients were similar in some aspects, the students came across differences that required different resolutions, so understanding how our process needed to adjust to accommodate that was important. 

Yes, that is great. Continuous improvement. And now we get to hear from your student! Katherine, why did you do this program, and what has the experience been like for you?

Ms. Cortez: So I think part of the reason why I chose to do this program was because I wanted to get into a project while I was job searching. I wanted to do something that had value, that added something to me, to the community, and to the university that I could feel was worth my time and effort. 

I feel like this experience has truly been innovative because it's been bringing value to the local community. These small businesses we've been working with, with the federal partnerships, and tying it all back to the university - I think it's truly brought a lot of value to the local community. And driving around and seeing the effect of these changes has been amazing. Knowing that I have actually been part of something that made a change to the place that I'm living in is incredible. I'm grateful to have the opportunity to aid in that change.

And the Complete Grant System was so good. The videos and the guide were so helpful to narrow down what we needed and to provide guidance on other things. Not just the grants and the grant writing process, but also to narrow down things that we were looking for during these projects. So while we were researching for other grants or were narrowing down ideas for the roadmap, we really relied on these topics because they served as a good foundation for us. 

I’m so excited to hear that! Ok so my last question - What is your advice for other universities who want to try this model?

Dr. Johnson: I would recommend building something that is synergistic with your campus. What you don’t want is a bolt-on service that doesn’t integrate well with the university. If you don’t intentionally design it to fit within the campus ecosystem, it won’t function effectively. So, as you develop your plans, make sure either the initiative is tailored to fit the campus or that the campus is prepared to adapt to what you’re creating.

Another key consideration is establishing clear expectations when collaborating with external partners. Universities are well-equipped to handle the workload, pace, deadlines, and reporting requirements of sponsored projects. However, corporate partners, agencies, municipalities, or other external entities may not be as familiar with these processes. It’s crucial to create a shared understanding from the start regarding each party’s role in the project process.

While the idea of partnering with a university to pursue a grant may sound great in theory, it’s important to determine ownership and accountability within the collaboration. Who is responsible for managing the project on a daily basis? If there isn’t a dedicated champion on the external partner’s side, it can be challenging to get the necessary engagement and support to make the partnership successful.

Ms. Wyatt: I'll also try and give a little guidance and what motivated us. So first of all, I mean, I think it is exciting. This model follows the tenets of what matter to us in our division of the university, which is being very intentional about recognizing and pursuing opportunities that serve as force multipliers, you know, that allow you to leverage what you have to work with.

We're a small rural community. We could have a scarcity mindset and say there's nothing here to work with. But we are a small rural community with an amazing university that has high quality faculty and staff and excellent students. This gave us the opportunity to bring those components together to work in unison and achieve greater things.

We have our staff that supports the administrative and bureaucratic parts of getting this grant to occur as well as our expanded capacity force multipliers! We were able to include active alumni like the professional consulting services provided through Dr. DeLeo-Allen's business, DKB Solutions, and were able to engage the services of another local and alum-owned enterprise to help provide the technical component of delivering this project for these small businesses. And we were able to bring in students who gain some additional skill that can help supplement and improve their academic experience, while also, again, increasing our capacity by having a student perform work that they're perfectly capable of doing. From our perspective, it's a wonderful opportunity to engage our community, to help come up with a really good community solution and to do so in a way where everybody gains and benefits. 

So we did not view our share of the pie as being limited. We wanted to take the share of the pie that we received and figure out how do we produce the greatest potential impact to our community out of these dollars that we've been entrusted with using to help expand services and benefit to our community. And I believe that this program has allowed us to do that very well. And we thank you, Alicia, for actually being one of the thought leaders that helped us come up with a way to do this, using your Complete Grant System to train people who did not have this experience going into the grant writing process. So you're another great alum that contributed to this. Thank you!

Dr. DeLeo-Allen: To add on, I encourage others to look for the gaps at your university, in your community. How can you help fill those gaps? How can you employ students to not only contribute, but to gain professional experience? That's something unique that I don't think many undergraduate students get to experience in their higher education career. Right? Applying for grants, bringing in $1.5 million in one year. That's outstanding! So just trying to see where you can leverage your resources while also offering a valuable learning experience for students. 

Ms. Cortez: I believe this is a project that a lot of people can gain valuable experience from as an undergraduate. I feel like I've grown as a person through this experience and I think touching upon these facts and these things to cater to other students would be amazing. People don't truly understand. Well, I didn't even truly understand the level of change that this project is actually creating. Once things are put into perspective and you realize that these life skills will lead you forward to a better future, you find the merit in doing good for the community. I think a lot of other people would be very excited to try this once they realize the level of personal growth and societal advancement this project offers.

I love it. Well thank you all for your time today. I appreciate working with people like you, who see big things and want to make them happen. And I agree with Kathy, there's enough for everyone. Let’s maximize those opportunities for each other and for our communities. Thank you all!

Want to try a student grant program at your university?

You provide the guidance, I’ll provide the curriculum! Just reply, and we can talk more.

I had another post planned for today, and it's going to have to wait.

Because there's a lot going on with grants right now.

Specifically in the United States. Federal grants are on pause, and of course the impacts are making their way down to state, local, and personal levels.

I want to acknowledge the shake-up and feelings of anxiety among our grant community. What does everything mean? Will this change our lives and work as we know it? What will we do in 2025?

We will do what we have always done.

Complete Grant System's steps to finding and writing successful grants remain the same. As you reconsider each of these steps, you can figure out what's changing vs. what's staying the same in your situation:

1. Identify your strategic PRIORITIES - what you and your organization need most, what you can negotiate, and what you can’t.

2. Find people and organizations with money who care about the SAME STUFF you care about.

3. READ their requests for proposals (RFPs) and RESPOND with "magic words."

4. Build in strong evaluations to ensure accountability and efficiency - this is a good thing! And it will become MORE IMPORTANT than ever.

Maybe nothing changes for you and your grant projects. Or you may encounter a hard transition period with your processes, partners, or funding agencies. But this remains:

Grants support good people doing good work for great communities.

Whatever happens next, let's keep hold of that!

Photo by Will Porada on Unsplash

As we enter this holiday season, I find myself needing a little extra rest. Anyone else?!

I am pausing monthly blogs for the rest of the year, so I wanted to share my holiday hopes for this grant community:

I hope you get time to rest and reflect during this season.

I hope you have a "lightning bolt idea" while you are away from the daily grind. Write it down!

And more than anything, I hope you cherish time with people who love you no matter how your work is going.

I am thankful for you. See you in 2025!

Alicia

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Photo by Zach Reiner on Unsplash

I recently sat down with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Danielle Williams, to glean some of her wisdom about grant projects.

Dr. Williams is an Assistant Professor and Endowed Professor at Grambling State University in addition to the Vice President of the Lincoln Parish School Board.

She is passionate about education and a leader in our community. I continue to learn from her.

Welcome to our conversation.

Can you give me a brief history of your work, especially related to grant projects?

My work has been surrounded in education. I'm very passionate about leveling a playing field for all students, so that's why a lot of my work has been focused on education. 

Ok great. What do you like about working on grant projects? 

It's very rewarding to work on grant projects because it's not just trying to kick the can down the road. It's living in that present moment and then looking at your goals and seeing where you’re trying to head and doing something about it. You tell your story, and grants make it reality.

What is the smallest grant you've been awarded, and can you tell me about it? 

So the smallest grant I've been awarded was $5,000 from the Louisiana education system. Around the time of COVID, I was given the opportunity to lead a team of university faculty in professional development during a summer institute. I've been blessed in different situations I've been in, like working as an adjunct professor at a Texas university globally recognized in online learning. So I was able to use those experiences online to help Louisiana instructors deal with COVID and transition to online teaching. I was selected to lead the team and integrate more technology.

What is the largest grant you've been awarded, and can you tell me about it? 

The largest grant I've been awarded was $25 million through the Texas Education Agency. It was a very innovative “school system within the school system” that we created. And what I really loved about it is we were able to create bylaws. It's like you're building a brand new utopia school of everything that you wanted. And the focus was not on the child that comes to you from the two-parent home and has all the resources. Everything was focused on that student that might be sitting in the back of the classroom who has exceptionalities or disabilities. And you take their situation and you build a school that makes them successful. And so you give them all the different resources. You individualize instruction. 

I mean, it was a great opportunity. And so I think that's what really drives my work. Every time I write a grant in education, I always think about not that child that's coming to us with all the different resources, that child that the society has built, and they're successful. I always look at that student coming in without the parental involvement. They might be a couple of grade levels behind. They might not have a foundation as far as reading and traveling and different things like that. I always think about that student that's in the room. And so that's what a lot of my work is always focused on. 

What has been your favorite grant project, and why? 

So that was probably my favorite grant project. I got the autonomy to be creative. And that's the part that sometimes bothers me in education because now everything has moved to a lot of scripted things. I live, breathe, and think education. Like I'm always looking at stuff globally. I'm always looking at national trends, even state trends. And I always try to make sure that my work is surrounded around making sure our students are globally prepared. Not just national, not just state, but they can go into another country and they'll be at the forefront. And so that education project in Texas probably was my favorite project because it inspired me to really push.

It sounds like you had not only creativity for yourself, but being able to pass that on to the students and give them the freedom to really thrive and be creative themselves. 

Exactly. My parents have this saying that they always talk about as a family. You're just not on earth about yourself. It's not always about you. It's about how you can help the next person and serve. But it's also, what is your legacy that you always want to leave. There will come a day where you leave this earth. You want to leave it better than what was given to you. And so I always think about that - what was given to me, and how can I make this situation better for the next generation? And open up doors for them. Because I've been in situations where people have opened up doors for me, and when I have conversations with them, I always say, I can never repay you. And they're like, how you repay me is that you open up doors for the next person. And so we continue to do that in life. I mean, the world will be a better place. And that's what I always think about. 

What a great attitude and grounding.

Ok so next question, how have you changed as a PI? What is the biggest thing you've learned?

One thing I can say about how I've changed is my mind has shifted, continuing to be very creative in projects, but also I want to get more into the grant managing side of it, like the administration side of it. Because normally what happens is I can bring the funding in, be very creative with some things because I always look at statistics and things going on around the country and knowing the goal. But the management part, that's one of the parts that I really want a dive deep in and just really trying to perfect that part of it. 

And when I say management, like the administration, paperwork, budgets. I always have someone that's helping and they handle that. And because I'm a big picture thinker, I kind of like that. But that's one of the things that I need to work on, one of my opportunities. I think that if you can, be holistically well rounded; and that's why I try to be well rounded in education.

What is your advice for up-and-coming PIs? 

I would say don't try to reinvent the wheel. Use your resources around you, and lean on experts in the field. Networking is really big. I'm grateful for you because that's what you're really big on - scheduling meetings with the right people. We know our mission, our vision, but still seeing how we fit. And I think that's the big thing, being okay with surrounding yourself with people smarter than you. I see a lot of challenges where people are struggling because they get intimidated when someone is smarter than them. You can bring something to the table in your own unique way, but be okay with having people that have strengths in other areas and feeding off of that.

That's so good. Anything else you want to share about? 

I'm just blessed and grateful to work on a team. Every individual has different strengths and all of us bring just very unique talents. One of our team members made a statement - If you feel uncomfortable with something or you have a chip on your shoulder about something, be okay to talk about it and don't hold it in. And that's what I have loved about working on this team is that all of us are very transparent. We live our own lives, and we do our own things. But when we come together, we're very transparent. We're very vulnerable with each other. And I love it. 

It's a safe space for me. It's hard sometimes when you work in environments where people don't have your best interests. My dad tells me all the time, in order for you to grow, you have to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. And so he always tells me if you're comfortable, you're not growing. And I always think about that. And that's when I see I'm growing in different areas because I feel uncomfortable. But then I know that I'm going to get where I want to.

Yeah, I love it. Thank you for sharing all of this today. 

Thank you for this opportunity.

Have you ever gone digging for diamonds?

A few hours north of me in Arkansas, people do it all the time. Sounds like a fun Saturday!

I do enjoy uncovering valuable things, which is why I love evaluating grant projects.

Here are 4 diamonds uncovered by evaluation:

1) Evaluation uncovers your capabilities.

YOU are the diamond! Evaluation reveals to funding agencies and other stakeholders the real results of you and your team's work. This helps you in the “long game” of external funding, growing relationships so you can keep your great work going.

2) Evaluation uncovers if you’re on track.

You want to know how your project is going long before the annual report is due. Evaluation shows you if you are accomplishing what you want to accomplish all along the way.

3) Evaluation uncovers process improvements.

Data systems, paperwork, communication channels, team member roles. Evaluation can provide helpful recommendations to streamline all of these areas, especially valuable when you are leading a large-scale project.

4) Evaluation uncovers new partners.

An evaluator external to your project brings all of their past experience on similar projects, plus their own network of contacts. You can learn of new ideas, peers, partners, and funders for future projects.

Which of these diamonds is most important on your projects today? Whether you do your own evaluation, choose an internal colleague to take this role, or call an external evaluator like me, I hope you'll find the diamonds you're looking for.

Photo by Amsterdam City Archives on Unsplash