Proposals, Inc.
English's Richard Freed develops innovative grant and proposal writing
program.
For more than 15 years, Richard Freed has consulted for some of
the nation’s leading management consulting firms.
Firms like A.T. Kearney, for whom he developed tutorial writing programs.
And KPMG Peat Marwick, the world's largest accounting firm.
His consulting has taken him to more than 20 countries on five continents,
delivering his programs in proposal writing and recommending corporate-wide
changes to the firms' boards of directors.
For one of these firms, Freed, professor of English and one of the nation's
leading experts on grant/proposal writing, developed a software program
that structured proposal writers’' thinking and produced the first
drafts of their proposals.
" I had expected to be able to use the software in my undergraduate
and graduate proposal-writing classes at Iowa State," Freed said.
But after spending $1 million to develop the software and realizing that
the consultants using it had win rates double those of the consultants
who didn't, the consulting firm would not allow the software to be used
outside the company.
So in July 2000, Freed taught himself how to develop web pages, reduced
his level of effort at Iowa State to two-fifths time, and spent 10 months
creating the prototype of the Grants Workbench. In May 2001, Freed convinced
a computer consulting firm in Chicago to invest in the project.
"It took eight people over eight months, full time, to design the
architecture and complete the coding," Freed said.
To have the beta version ready for his fall-semester proposal-writing
course, the programmers often worked 18-hour days, including weekends.
The result became WinningProposal.com's Grants Workbench, the first fully
automated web-based application that organizes grant writers' thinking
and produces the first drafts of their proposals. The software is specifically
designed for the kinds of proposals written by non-profits: social service
agencies, schools, museums, and the like.
"Unfortunately, most non-profits don't have the resources or expertise
to write a solid grant proposal," Freed said. "My hope is that
the Grants Workbench will allow them to be more successful in obtaining
the external funding so vital for the good work they do.
"The software asks all the right questions that any funding agency
will want answered. It forces you to answer those questions in a logical
way and then assembles the answers into a first draft."
Users of Grants Workbench answer a few basic questions about the proposal
they are preparing.
"Last night, for example, my graduate class and I spent two hours
aligning a proposed project's overriding problem, goal, and objectives,
a total of three sentences," Freed said. "I mentioned that this
was absolutely the opposite of rocket science. It's really so simple,
and yet few grant writers know how to do it. Someone once said that I've
cracked the code for proposals, and I suppose I have. Like any code, it's
just a matter of identifying the constituent elements, phrasing them well,
and re-assembling them into a persuasive argument."
The response to the Grants Workbench has been excellent. Freed estimates
that several hundred individuals and non-profits have used the software
since it was introduced last May at www.winningproposal.com. Freed is
using the Grants Workbench in a graduate course (English 509) in proposal
writing, and a colleague is using it in her undergraduate course
(English 309) as well.
WinningProposal.com has also won a national contract to offer 10-12 two-day
programs per year through Iowa State's Continuing Education and Communication
Services. The training programs will help Iowa non-profits and other organizations
secure funding for their projects.
The Grants Workbench and his consulting programs aren't Freed’s
only excursions into this area. His book on proposal writers and writing,
The Variables of Composition: Process and Product in a Business Setting,
won the National Council of Teachers of English award for the best research
book in technical communication.
The second edition of his Writing Winning Business Proposals (McGraw-Hill)
will be published early next year. That book has been called "the
most comprehensive treatment we've seen" by Consultant's News.
