My first grant.

It seems like only yesterday I was hand-delivering my grant proposal to the Middletown Community Foundation's Youth Advisory Council. And today, just two months later, I accepted a $4,500 check on behalf of the Butler County School Supply Coalition at the Youth Advisory Council Celebration Luncheon.

This luncheon was memorable for a few reasons:
1) Carrot cake with cream cheese frosting.
2) Tina Osso's wonderful presence at our table.
3) The check for the first grant I ever wrote.

When I applied for this position, I listed grant-writing skills on my application. This statement was somewhat accurate. In college I wrote a couple of funding requests for a Disability Studies conference I attended with Taylor in NYC back in 2008. We had worked to increase accessibility on campus, and we wanted to present our work at this international conference. I submitted a few loose grant requests to help us get to NYC, and amazingly, some of our "proposals" were accepted. It's difficult to recall exactly how much money we needed, but I know we didn't get enough. Taylor and I stayed in a miserable youth hostel, and we ate hot dogs and pizza from street vendors all week. For every meal. Including breakfast.

So when I realized that I would be responsible for the nearly $100,000 Kits for Kids campaign, I was understandably nervous. I had no real experience in grant-writing or budgeting, unless you count my measly little proposals to the Miami University Parents' Club for a few hundred dollars. (And those weren't even all that successful!) Thank goodness for a crash course in grant-seeking at the Cincinnati Library and Tina's patient guidance and proof-reading along the way.

Maybe that's why it was so fun to accept our check today--my first official grant and I had finally come full circle. Thank you, Tina and the rest of the coalition, for trusting me to write requests for thousands of dollars for this important project. Although it was a stressful process, I have enjoyed learning the basics of grant-writing, and I look forward to legitimately adding this skill to my resume.

(Speaking of my resume, if any employers out there would like to see my grant-writing skills in action, please don't hesitate to hire me. I am available to begin work on Monday, June 21st. Seriously.)