There is no guarantee that hiring a grant writer will lead a school district or city to receive large amounts of state or federal dollars but the odds are good with someone with a proven track record.
At its meeting of July 24, the Ceres City Council voted to hire a Washington, D.C. based consultant, Capitol Advocacy Partners to begin attempting to snag more grant money for the city.
The contract with the Washington, D.C. based company costs $5,600 per month, or $67,200 for the year.
City Manager Doug Dunford recommended the action from his past experience with Dana DeBeaumont with her company. He said that over past decade DeBeaumont has written and received numerous substantial grants for Central Valley cities through the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) Program and FEMA. Examples of the grants the firm has been skilled at winning for cities were $2.5 million for a city water tank, $1.58 million for an aerial fire truck, and COPS grants that funded police officers for approximately $180,000 annually.
“Their success rate is around 95 percent for federal grants and she’s 100 percent so far on state grants since she started writing,” said Dunford.
He explained that DeBeaumont also sends out a newsletter about all the upcoming grant opportunities for which Ceres could take advantage.
Dunford said she only takes a select number of cities and would be focusing on snagging grants for police, recreation, water and sewer infrastructure and operations. Clients include the cities of Gustine and California City – where Dunford previously worked – as well as the cities of Hayward and Vallejo.
In addition to the $5,600 monthly fee, DeBeaumont charges an additional fee for grant writing, such as a flat fee of $7,500 for a grant application based on a narrative of 10 pages, or $12,500 for 10-19 pages. Her services call for meeting with department heads to determine priorities and needs and then recommending various grants.
“We have been in business for 10 years and in that 10 years we’ve only lost one client ever,” DeBeaumont told the council last week on Zoom. She said that a new client has received $3.4 million in one year in two programs. Another client in Puerto Rico has been awarded $86 million in five years.”
The company has only 15 clients with 10 who are client and grant managers and support personnel “so that’s a pretty good hands-on ratio.”
She told the council that the company will “go in deep and help you build the programs before the applications even come out so we kind of plan what we’re going to apply for.”
DeBeaumont added: “I feel pretty confident in the first year you should win a couple of grants.”
Councilmembers Rosalinda Vierra and James Casey expressed concerns about the costs. Casey wanted to know how soon the city could see a return on its investment, to which Dunford said the federal government doesn’t start its fiscal year until Oct. 1.
All five councilmembers supported the contract.