Sometimes A Project Just Won’t Be Approved

Sometimes even the best applications are not successful. One example that illustrates this beautifully is a story I heard about a municipality who was applying to the state government for funds to rehabilitate a street that was in imminent danger of collapse. There was a very real need here and the only solution was a costly (four hundred thousand dollars) complete rehabilitation of the street. This town had a population of only 750 people, and only about 50 residents on the street would benefit most directly. The application was turned down the first year it was submitted. The funding agency was good enough to make a regular practice of letting the applicants who did not get funded know the reason for that decision. In that case, they mentioned a few minor issues with the narrative which were easily corrected. However, their main problem seemed to be centered on the fact that no other funding sources were being sought. It was obvious that they did not feel comfortable making a grant of that size and being the only funding agency involved in the project.

Unfortunately, grant sources for municipal street work are not plentiful in that part of the country. The town reapplied the next year and made the requested narrative changes. An attempt was made to find other sources to leverage, or match, the state monies. The town was able to show that it had at least tried to find other funds. However, the town itself, with its budget of only $375,000 per year, could not afford to put any money into it. The application was turned down for the second time even though the town did everything that the state asked for with the exception of contributing its own money to the project. This was a very unfortunate case as the project really needed to be done and there was no other place to turn. However, this just goes to show that the best written project can be turned down because of situations beyond the grant writer’s control.