Page 6 - Access Magazine 2023

GRANTS
BY DOUGLAS HOAGLAND
Stone Soup to Rapid Boil
May Gnia Her found a teacher, a mentor and a building renovator – all in one person – when she took a grant writing course at Fresno State from instructor Dr. Daniel Griffin. Their connection has stretched over many years.
"I always wanted to help people”
~ Griffin
“The course was fantastic, but our long-term relationship is just as important,” Her says. “It’s having the ability to say to Dr. Griffin, ‘Does this grant application make sense?’ and him sometimes saying, ‘This grant isn’t the right fit for you’ and encourages me to keep working.”
Griffin – who retired from the Office of Re- search and Sponsored Programs at Fresno State – teaches the grant writing course through the Division of Continuing and Glob- al Education. It’s taught over two weekends, and most of the students are officials from nonprofit organizations and government agencies.
Her took the course 15 years ago when she worked for United Way of Fresno and Madera Counties. “I’d heard about grant writing but had never done it, and I went in with a super open mind.” After finishing, she wrote her first grant application, and it ran more than 40 pages. Griffin took time to make edits and suggestions on every page, and Her ended up securing the grant. “I don’t know how he does it, but Dr. Griffin makes himself avail- able to everyone.”
Their relationship continued to grow when Her became executive director of Stone Soup Fresno, a nonprofit organization that began as a refugee resettlement agency for Hmong families. Stone Soup Fresno runs a licensed preschool and provides job development, ac- ademic enrichment and youth mentoring to the wider community. Her lays out numbers
that make clear how important grants are to Stone Soup Fresno: with a budget of $1.5 million, 80 percent comes from government and philanthropic grants. Given that reliance, it’s serendipitous that Griffin has served on the organization’s board from its beginning, and thus been able to lend his expertise.
Griffin himself has taken numerous grant-writing courses, and he’s also written many successful grant applications for Fres- no State. With that experience, he developed a systematic approach to grant applications:
ÌGet to the point on how the grant money would be used. Too many people ramble in their applications, he says.
ÌUSE BULLET POINTS. They make applications easier to read.
ÌKnow how an application is scored and allocate preparation time to each section accordingly.
strategize, and he made sure we understood the parent-child engagement we already had in Play Group was an important element to highlight.” That strategy worked, and Stone Soup Fresno received a $150,000 grant. “A lot of the work we do is because Griffin has helped us locate the needed funding,” Her says.
Griffin’s help has extended to major reno- vations such as leading the installation of new siding and 75 new windows on three buildings at the Stone Soup Fresno campus near Fresno State. He and volunteers also in- stalled a new kitchen to serve the preschool.
Griffin does it because Stone Soup Fresno makes a difference, and the same can be said of him. “What are you trying to do with your life if not something positive? I always wanted to help people. That’s why I got into education.”
“I have a system, and I
now what will – and what
k
won’t – work,” Griffin says.
Her drew on that experience when she applied for a grant to expand Stone Soup Fresno’s Play Group, a teacher-led parent engagement program. “Dr. Griffin helped me
6 California State University, FRESNO