Professional development is key to an individual’s success in their position. It can teach new skills, best practices, build confidence, improve efficiency, give feedback on current work, build a network, and energize participants. Professional development can take a variety of forms – books/blogs, webinars, master classes, trainings, conferences, twitter chats, discussion communities, and mentoring. I’m sure I’ve missed some.
Grant Professionals need professional development just as much as any other position, but often times in tough financial times professional development is one of the first things to be cut from the budget. So I am including both free and paid grant professional development opportunities in this list to accommodate any budget.
Grant Professional Development Opportunities:
- Webinars:
- CharityHowTo: CharityHowTo offers both free and paid webinars on a variety of nonprofit topics.
- GrantHub: GrantHub offers free monthly webinars from a host of grant professional experts.
- Grant Professional Association: GPA offers both live and recorded webinars free to GPA members.
- Books: These are three books I think should be on every Grant Professional’s Bookshelf.
- #GrantChat: #GrantChat is a weekly Twitter chat on Tuesdays at noon 12 pm ET about all things grants.
- GrantZone: GrantZone is a discussion community free for GPA members. It is an incredible resource with over 2,000 grant professionals who share your challenges and successes.
- Blogs:
- GPA National Conference: It’s where the grant people meet. This year #GPAConf17 is taking place in San Diego on November 8-11, 2017. I’ll be there.
I wholeheartedly believe in professional development. I wouldn’t be a Grant Professional Certified without it. When I first started out as a grant professional, I had no professional development budget, so I took every free webinar on grant development I could. I read lots and lots of blogs. I started participating in #GrantChat every week. Over time through lots of practice, I learned how to be a grant professional. One of the benefits my clients receive when they hire me as their grant consultant is that I participate in over 6 hours of professional development a month at no cost to them.
What are your favorite grant professional development opportunities?
