Lane Community College Develops Its Grants Strategy with Hanover’s Grants Support

One of the things we struggle with the most is developing a unified, organized grants strategy that supports the college’s priorities and mission. Having this in place would allow us to separate the wheat from the chaff and focus our efforts more keenly. Currently, we pursue many opportunities because they are what land in our laps rather than being more deliberate and building a longer-term vision that grants support.

We decided to partner with Hanover to help us build this vision after recognizing that we needed both bandwidth and specialized knowledge and experience with a variety of federal agencies. Hanover’s reputation and position within the industry, as well as some of our leaders having previous experience with Hanover were also decisive. We will use Hanover to have a more comprehensive ‘finger’ on upcoming federal opportunities in order to anticipate RFPs and build stronger proposals with more lead time. We will additionally work with Hanover to develop an overall strategy and a rolling, multi-year grants schedule, and rely on them to prospect relevant funding opportunities and aid us in crafting strong proposals.

I would advise anyone considering an external partner to think about how the provider’s service model and capacity fits their needs, as well as the fact that it is difficult to find one person who can match the varied skillsets of a team when it comes to working with vastly different federal agencies.