Grants Final Project: Respond to an RFP

The final project for the class will be to respond to a real RFP (Request for Proposals). You will write a response, although you will not necessarily submit it.

Write a (fictional) proposal to the Fund for Rural America program from AgStar Financial Services. Do not use the online application form; instead, download the PDF of the application form (here) and provide the information in a Word document (so you can could cut & paste your responses into the online application, if you were really going to submit it). Additional review criteria for AgStar are available here . You may “create” any (reasonable) program that would meet the criteria of AgStar.

The procedure for this assignment is as follows:

If you want feedback from your classmates, you may post a draft of your proposal by July13 (if you do not want to post a draft, you must e-mail me the topic of your proposal). This gives them time to read what you wrote and perhaps make suggestions in time for you to incorporate them into your final draft.
You must post the final version of your proposal to D2L by the date assigned in the Course Calendar, July 16. You must post your proposal by that date so the reviewers have time to review your grant. There are no “late penalties” for missing a grant deadline—late proposals are not considered (whether for this class or in the real world).

The grad students in the course will constitute a review panel (or two—no one will review their own grant). I will notify the grad students by e-mail who will be on their review team and what grants they are to review. They may (should) communicate with each other by e-mail, and use the procedure in the “Grant Review Process” link to the Course Calendar. Grant reviews must be posted to D2L by the due date (July 22). Again, there is no such thing as a late review—if it is not done on time, it is not considered (and you don’t get paid for those reviews—or, in this case, you do not earn any points for this assignment).

Finally, you might want to look at a successful grant. An example of a successful proposal (for a large federal grant program) is available here. This proposal is much more elaborate than the one that AgStar is requesting.

MSU