All of this talk about reader-centric, writer-centric, and writing to a lay audience has been really helpful. Not that I understand in great depth the rhetoric behind it all, but the surface information that makes the most sense to me is pretty solid information.

At first, I did not think that most of it would apply to what I am doing, but as it turns out, as I continue to add the finishing details, I am including more and more tactics. I feel comfortable with the information I have researched and I am pleased with my product so far. The hardest part to write thus far has been the introduction, so that is constantly being revised and critiqued.

Throughout this process I find myself in the awkward position of not being anything of a true expert on the matter, and that fact that I am an undergraduate student, and not say a master's student, I think is kind of a snag in the credibility issue. I only say this because I don't have that "real world" experience and I'm trying really hard to find that level ground so that my paper comes across as resourceful tool for them and that it was created for the intended purpose of assisting in making the process easier. I think I have achieved that in a lot of aspects, but I know there are few places throughout that need some re-editing.

In all honesty, I am so excited that I took this class. I see the potential of this document and how it could later benefit me, and the experience has been outstanding. I almost considered dropping the course in the beginning because I wasn't sure if technical writing was my thing, or even something that interested me, but I am so glad I didn't make such a foolish decision. At any rate it has improved my writing skills and I have learned a great deal of information that I know will be useful. It also got me interested in technical and business writing and I wouldn't mind exploring it a bit further.

Progress Report #2

Date: 11/09/2006
To: Dr. Homlevick
From: Katie Goergen

Introduction
I am writing two references guides for the Anderson Family Connection. These two manuals will cover what a grant proposal is and how to locate potential grants, as well as address the process of grant writing itself. Both of these manuals are made for the same audience.

Work Completed
At this point I have completed my expert paper. The research and information is finished, and I have all of the information I will need. I have finished this paper early so that I can go back and proof read and change any errors within the document.

I have started my lay paper at this time. Again, I have all the research I will require to complete this portion, now it is a matter of typing it into the document. By the start of next week this portion will also be completed.

Next Steps
Upon finishing typing the lay paper, I will then need to complete the attachments and create the index page. The next steps will be organizing both of the papers into one complete document. I am confident that it will be completed ahead of schedule, but I am still determining which program to use in creating the document in the essence of time and my own availability to certain software.

Conclusion
This is a relativley short progress report, but I have a good handle on the project and it is coming together nicely. I am very confident that this project will be completed fully at the end of this month. This will allow me to once again look over my project and make any last adjustments and/or corrections.

Progress Report # 1

Date: 10/17/2006
To: Dr. Homlevick
From: Katie Goergen

Introduction
I am writing two references guides for the Anderson Family Connection. These two manuals will cover what a grant proposal is and how to locate potential grants, as well as address the process of grant writing itself. Both of these manuals are made for the same audience.

Work Completed
As of now, I have completed most of my research. There are two other women I would like to contact, one who works in the Anderson library, and another that writes grants for the Greenville Family Connection. Beyond these two sources, most of my research has concluded. I have started a very rough outline of how to go about starting my manuals. I am starting with the expert manual first, the one that explains the writing process because it will be in depth and the most time consuming. I feel by starting and completing this one first, if I set reasonable deadlines than I will be done with it ahead of schedule. This will leave more time to complete the manual about grant writing.

I need to sit down with it one more time to get a better sense of the deadlines I would like to achieve. This however can and will be done this week. My next progress report will have dates that I would like certain components completed. The better organized I am and the more goals I have to accomplish in a short amount of time the more motivated I become to complete all of the tasks at hand.

Next Steps
I will contact my last two sources which will fully complete my research for the reference guide conerning what a grant proposal is and where to locate one. I will continue drafting out the sections for the expert manual. I had started at the beginning, but I think I will more than likely skip around because the way in which it is divided, the different "chapters" can be approached differently. I had gotten stuck at first, but I think by skipping around I will find that I am completing the chapters a lot more quickly than if I tried to start at the beginning.

Conclusion
I feel very comfortable with what I am doing. I would appreciate any feedback on my proposals because they are the foundation for which I will create these papers. I feel confident that they will serve as a guiding tool for me and enable me to stay on task and follow through with my goals. I am ready to start these papers full force and feel confident that I can finish them in a timely manner and produce a solid project.

All of the workshops we have been doing in class I find to be extremely helpful. It is nice to have a second and third opinion to review my proposal and offer suggestions that could make it clearer. I know that just because what I write makes sense to me doesn't always resonate with others, so it is a good way of judging how well I am conveying my thoughts and ideas.

As of now I feel as though I know exactly what I need to do. I have started preparing my documents. I will type out the pages first, than create the table of contents and begin formatting the layout. With time being a huge factor in all of this I may just use Microsoft Word and Publisher to create the booklets. If I am able to produce the pages in a reasonable amount of time I will try to work on the overall apperance by using InDesign to create the different pages. I have already started to draft out certain sections of the booklet and will continue to refine this process.

I have done a complete 180 in regards to where I was just a couple of weeks ago. I think my problem was that I just didn't get it. I had this very broad idea and was having a very difficult time narrowing it down. My original idea was to write an actual grant proposal for Family Connections...yeah, kind of not good. I didn't get very far with this idea because I felt as though this was a lofty goal and sure, I could write a grant proposal, but I would have no way of measuring whether or not it was any good because lets face it, grants are only so good as their success. So, I thought maybe if I picked a topic, like an event, that it would make it easier to narrow down what it was I was trying to accomplish. I figured if I create an event the two audiences I could target would be the general public (residents of Anderson) and the potential review board for the grant proposal. All I did in constructing this was create more work than could be done within the remaining weeks; it was too lofty of a goal.

I initially struggled with narrowing this field down. I knew it would be broad and that I could let it spiral out of control. However, after several conversations I finally realized what I needed to do. This didn't have to be rocket science and it didn't have to be some elaborately planned out phantom event that's entire existence rested on the shoulders of some phony grant, so I got realistic. What could I do to learn about grant proposals, and how could I go from there to a finalized product that would appeal to a lay and expert audience while helping the organization at the same time?

Having an order and some sort of structure is a comfort to me and simplifying things I have come to learn makes life so much easier, so I looked in that general direction. A lot of loose ends were tied when I finally talked to Sherry Fields. As it turns out, the organization doesn't write their own grants, their main hub in Columbia, SC does, but they want to start writing their own. Aha! There we go, two audiences, the same people, but at different stages. After my interview with Sherry, this is what I had to work with: Family Connection members prior to knowing anything about grants, to Family Connection members attempting to write them. I finally had a set direction.

So, all the way from planning an event that would only be possible based on the successfulness of a grant I would write and submit, a rather lofty and impossible thing to accomplish in say oh, about 10 weeks, my project has evolved into two reference guides that will address the needs of the members of Family Connections. But what will the two reference guides address, specifically? These are the details I am still fine tuning and will probably develop as I compile more and more research on the matter and find those things that matter most.

But since the research process is underway and I am far from knowing much about anything concerning grants I have decided to focus on the following:
For the Lay Audience:
- explain how grant proposals can provide essential funding
- where the members can look for grants which they can apply for;

For the Expert Audience:
- explain how to read the instructions
- explain how to write a proposal according to the instructions
- explain how to write the proposal using the proper syntax with regards to the audience.

These bulleted points may change or be fine-tuned as more information is brought to light, but as of now, I at least have a foundation on which to start building.

Although it took me quite a while to get here, I finally feel as though I know what I need to do, and more importantly, I know how to go about doing it. From this point forward I will continue researching grants, as well as the grant writing process, and I will use the additional contact names Sherry passed along to acquire more information. I feel as though I have a vast amount of resources to utilize and I am looking forward to seeing the final product because at this point, I haven't exactly determined what "reference guide" means. I figured the more ambiguous it is in that sense the more options I am allotted in that I can put it on a website, create a pamphlet a brochure, etc. I'll know better as I continue to talk to Sherry because I might also assist them in setting up a website for their local office. Those talks are in the work so it might shape what I eventually do, but more to come on that later...

In regards to last week's reading I think one important factor was over-looked and that was that was the different changes that each scientist had to make to improve his chances of receiving the grant, and a lot of these changes were based solely on who they were. Crews is a well known scientist who was reapplying for a grant he had won before, Boles was a relatively new scientist trying to impose his own theories outside of the established discipline. For sure, grant proposals are tedious and cumbersome things, but essential to anyone who requires funding to do his/her job, so it is expected that the grant writer must be clear, concise, and follow procedures accordingly.

Here's my take on the situation. Crews had very few changes to make. All he was asked to do was further explain how his studies would be beneficial in the future, and aside from changing Passive to Active voice within the proposal itself, the tour of his lab pretty much secured the grant. Why? Because he was an established and known scientist in his field who was contributing something directly to his discipline, which is exactly what the grant funders wanted, but he was able to conduct the study he wanted.

Bole's was unsuccessful in his attempt because the changes he had to make were methodological, not grammatical or something as simple as further explaining something that has already been proven as in Crew's case. He was a new name to his discipline and instead of trying to contribute something to it directly, he was too honed in on pursuing a study that was based solely on his interests but did not have enough critical references to support it. Bole's proposal had to be restructured to meet the criteria of the grant funders.

A lot of people get discouraged about grant writing thinking that it is such a limited and rigid structure that receiving a grant is incredibly difficult and receiving the actual funding requested is almost unheard of, but yet, there are success stories, and a lot of them. The way in which grants are organized ensures that different disciplines are studied and explored, that the money given is not wasted, that the research will serve a greater good, and that there is a strict guideline to follow so that the money is allocated properly and monitored accordingly.

I just thought it was interesting the way in which these two scientists approached their grants in different ways; especially Bole's who at the end realized that his initial reasons for applying for the grant were not very good and he himself had to restructure his own research methods because the grants exposed the flaws he might have never seen. So in a way, grants also prevent researchers from wasting hundreds of thousands of dollars and exorbitant amounts of time by finding potential flaws beforehand.

Okay, so for the umpteenth time I have revised what I am going to do. In a nutshell, here it is:
1) create a refrence guide that clearly and easily explains what grants are and how and why they are beneficial to a non-profit organization; 2) use that guide to locate a specific grant; 3) create another reference guide that focuses on the actual steps that are needed to write a grant proposal, as well as some tips for doing so; and 4) write a successful grant using the guides. In doing this I will have created two guides that Family Connections could use to train someone who knew nothing about grants into someone who was a proficient grant writer.

Sticking around after class was by far the best thing I could have done because I feel as though I have finally pin-pointed exactly what I want to do and I suppose more importantly, how I want to do it. I have already started researching grants using a variety of sources and I will continue to do so to compile the tips section. I now need to start focusing on grant writing for not-for-profit organizations, locating grants, and other such materials that I now need to start organizing in some fashion. I am excited to finally have figured out what it is I am going to do.