A Great Experience

The grants meeting was productive. It had to be, we were only meeting for one day. It was so long, though. Eight and a half hours of grant overview. Sheesh. I can't be specific but I will say I wish we had more money to give away. It was really hard deciding how much money, if any, a project could get. And even after all that, we had to cut almost every amount given because there just wasn't enough money to go around. We had to get pretty pragmatic (our administrator said we were getting heartless but what were we supposed to do?) in the end.

Next year I am going to have a totally different approach to the grants approval process. My group approached our grant appropriation with the idea that we were going to fight each amount grant by grant but the committee didn't do that until the end. Other groups had more of a solid number to give and a more solid recommendation. Now that I know how to break it down I think next year will be even better and perhaps go smoother. I think we had a lot of newbies like me this year.

When it all comes down to it, on a personal level, I had a great time. It was so much fun talking about various arts projects and groups in the area. I now have a bunch of groups and activities that I would like to check out. I wish we could've talked more to each other about non grant stuff. There was a musician, some dance people, a lot of visual artists and some community members who know grant writing. It was really refreshing! I'm looking forward to auditing these events next year. I think it will be so great!