RTOT Grant Application Training Series Session 1-Building a Compelling Narrative and Budget Development_02182026 - Feb 18, 2026

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Loudoun County Administrator 38 min 6 agenda items transcribed 2 days ago official recording ↗

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What is the purpose and agenda of the Grant Application Training Session 1?

Unknown 0:06

And with that we'll get started and if Others join, um That's that's okay. Uh good morning. Thanks for joining. Um if As you come on, if you could put your name and organization in the chat, we'd appreciate it. So welcome uh to Loudon County's grant application training series. As I mentioned, this is session one where we're gonna talk about building a compelling narrative and budget development. The agenda for today. Um we're just gonna talk about the purpose, uh, key elements of a grant narrative. Tips to crafting a winning narrative. budget components. A budget synergy with the narrative, and then we'll have time for questions. If indeed you have a question along the way, either unmute yourself. or raise your hand and we can address a question um at that time.

Unknown 1:04

You can also put a question in the chat. Um, so however you're comfortable, if you have a question, uh please don't hesitate to ask um and we'll go from there. The purpose of today's session is to equip participants with the knowledge and skills to prepare a narrative and budget. for funding opportunities. to increase participant understanding of standard grant proposal components. Um And just a note that the content and structure of this training is tailored for general knowledge of grant applications so that attendees feel comfortable with any kind of grant application submission. not just our restricted tourism occupancy tax, um which I mentioned earlier. Um that will be more focused on session three.

Unknown 1:53

Um and that uh session will be on Wednesday, March fourth. Um And with that, we'll I'm going to turn it over to Christine Powers, who's the county's ARPA coordinator. And also with us today is Andrea Panita, who is our ARPA nonprofit grant specialist.

Which five key components should be included in a compelling grant narrative?

Unknown 2:18

So we'll turn it over to Christine to talk about our narrative. Thank you.

Christine Powers 2:25

Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today. Um, I want to kind of introduce some of the features of a grant and what to look for within the grant opportunity and how to present yourself and your organization in a winning way. Uh your effective grant narrative is kind of your story of your organization. This is Five general components. Now you're going to see each grant is going to ask for specific things, but um in its entirety you're going to see these five themes repeated. So you're going to have organizational backgrounds, your needs statement. project description, project goals and objectives, and an implementation plan. So keep in mind that you wanna look out for any specifics for an application if they're asking for

Christine Powers 3:18

information that is tailored just for your grant opportunity. So, organizational background is your story. This is where you get to introduce yourself as an organization, your history, how you came about, your current mission and your current programs, especially if your organization has a variety of programming within under one umbrella. And then you're going to talk about the impact that you've had on your community or your sector. And then you're also going to want to talk about How You've established your credibility as a foundation and as an organization, kind of your um boasting about yourself. You're going to talk about how you've won certain situations, how you've been successful with other projects and initiatives, and the impact that you've made in the community.

Christine Powers 4:08

And then you're going to just brag about yourself. You're going to give yourself all of the rights you have to get funding and make your Self-attractive to your current funders. Wonderful. But ultimately, you're going to want to lay the foundation of your organization, who you are, how long you've been around. And especially if your organization has multiple programs under one umbrella, you'll want to at least make that known that you don't have just one area of focus, that you might have very diverse offerings. Your needs statement, uh this can vary amongst grant opportunities. Uh what it's going to do is uh uh address the need or address the problem at hand. So you may introduce a problem that you're trying to solve for your organization or for the community, which is why you might need additional funding.