Winning A Competitive Federal Innovation Grant
Client: Regional school consortium / education nonprofit (partnered for a federal innovation competition)
Context & Challenge:
A consortium of schools sought a large, competitive federal award to scale an instructional innovation, but they lacked the internal capacity to navigate the highly technical USDOE application, align a multipartner budget, and build an evaluation plan that met federal rigor requirements.
Studiously’s Solution:
Studiously supported the consortium with a turn-key, end-to-end federal grant strategy:
Grant Research & Viability Assessment: Mapped the funder’s priorities to the consortium’s model and built the case for scale.
Full Proposal Development: Crafted narrative sections, developed a federal-compliant budget, and wrote the evaluation plan tied to measurable outcomes.
Grant Management Readiness: Advised on compliance structures, contract roles, and reporting cadence to ensure the consortium could be a responsible steward of federal dollars.
Execution Highlights:
Convened partner leads to align roles and build a single, cohesive narrative across partners.
Produced a federal-grade evaluation design and logic model to meet DOE review criteria.
Built a defensible, allowable federal budget and a cost-allocation plan to simplify auditability.
Outcomes & Impact:
The engagement is reflected among Studiously’s portfolio of major federal awards: Studiously supported teams won the U.S. Department of Education “Investing in Innovation Fund” award totaling $1.3 million, demonstrating the firm’s capacity to produce fundable federal proposals and manage complex budgets and evaluations. That federal experience was directly applied to the consortium engagement to strengthen technical compliance and evaluator confidence.
Beyond the direct award, the client gained a ready-to-deploy project plan, an evaluation framework for tracking outcomes, and internal processes for grant management — substantially increasing their ability to compete for future federal funding.
Why It Mattered:
Winning federal funding enabled the consortium to pilot and scale a high-impact instructional model with the evaluation and compliance infrastructure required for federal programs. The client left the engagement with systems and templates that lowered the marginal cost of future federal proposals.
Our Achievements & Highlights:
Garnered over $25,000,000 in funding for various organizations to support various projects/initiatives.
Earned a perfect, 100% award rate for the NC School Safety Grant, winning over $3,000,000 for various school districts and charter schools.
Accomplished grant writers who have over 25 years’ combined experience writing various state, federal, and private foundation grants in all areas particularly: crime prevention and safety, mental health, community development, environment, and workforce development.
