Funding opportunities for infrastructure investment abound. The Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) present opportunities for U.S. regions, states, and local governments to partner with industry to dramatically improve our nation’s infrastructure.

Finding the right funding opportunity, building a team, and submitting a winning proposal doesn’t have to be hard. Check out these top tips from Beam Reach Consulting Group’s staff of grant and government funding experts.

Pick your strategy early

You have identified an opportunity to pursue that aligns with the goals of the funding organization and your company. The government is going to have one perspective on what is important about the work to be done, and you likely have another set of priorities. The first key task is to define an approach to the project that will ensure achievement of your company’s goals while emphasizing the priorities of the funding agency. Strategy tips.

Build your team

Assembling a team can be a delicate and frustrating process. You need to balance recruiting organizations that seem best suited to fulfill the required criteria with those you can trust to be good partners. It is often hard to anticipate in advance who among the team will be collegial and conscientious versus those who may be mercurial. Team building tips.

Define your win themes

Your win themes comprise the core of your “sales pitch” for why your team and your project plan are best suited to meet the goals of the FOA with unique benefits and lasting value for the investment. As such, you need to take the time to define and refine them before you begin work on the response. All messaging in the response should emphasize these themes while addressing the needs outlined in the FOA. Win theme tips.

Develop a winning proposal

Once you have defined the overarching argument at the core of your response, you need to delegate the research, collection, and creation of materials to the members of the team best suited to each topic or skill. While some team members may assert willingness to assume tasks out of their area of expertise (e.g., engineers offering to edit, writers offering to draft technical plans, managers offering to draft graphics), the most efficient approach is to have those with specialties focus on those skills. This begins with breaking apart the FOA to examine what products need to be created, identifying the optimal division of labor among the personnel and their skills, and scheduling and holding reviews that critique different dimensions of the response to ensure the final product is complete, compliant, and compelling. Proposal tips.

Stay on Task

Keeping a team focused and driven through a response effort is a significant challenge. Rarely are the members of the response team dedicated solely to the response effort, so you are often competing with conflicting priorities that may come from more direct supervisory authority. Organizations on the team may have different expectations of the level of development of material required or parties responsible, and come with different organizational cultures of how response efforts are run (if they have indeed engaged in response efforts. Careful consideration of tasks, delegation of work, frequent and clear communication of expectations and progress, and tools that can help manage these moving parts comprise a thorough approach for aligning efforts. Tips for staying on task.

Grant Management and Compliance

Addressing the intricacies of grant management and compliance is a multifaceted task. Organizations undertaking grant-funded projects often have diverse funding sources and varying grant sizes, making alignment with regulatory standards a complex endeavor. Beam Reach Consulting Group's Grant Management and Compliance services are designed to untangle these complexities and ensure successful project execution. Through a careful analysis of the grant agreement and a deep understanding of compliance requirements, our services provide essential insights for effective project planning and management. In addition, our services establish a clear compliance framework and reporting process, simplifying financial obligation fulfillment, and preventing compliance issues, while also guiding the management of unallowable costs to avoid funding conflicts. Grant Management and Compliance services.

Look for new opportunities

Once you have met the deadline with your best effort, the fate of your response is out of your hands. However, that does not mean that the fate of the project plan is out of your hands. Clients often ask if we think their proposal will win. That is impossible to answer. While we might be proud of the response and followed all the steps to ensure a complete, compliant, and compelling response, we can’t control other teams’ submissions or decisions of the funding agency. There might be a strategy dictating who receives awards of which people outside the funding agency are not aware. You simply have to do your best, and hope that it meets the criteria, but know that even the best you can do might not be what is needed to win. So that means you lost, right? Wrong. You were only turned down for funding from this opportunity, not rejected based on the merits of the project. Tips for finding more opportunities.