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Get Grant Ready & Project Pitch Fest

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Heart of the Rockies Initiative and Outdoor Community Partners are celebrating the fifth year of our Get Grant Ready Workshop and Project Pitch Fest Program this October! 

Get Grant Ready, open to anyone in the Heart of the Rockies Initiative service area, is a training and template tool that helps transform any idea into a clear, goal-oriented project or initiative with defined deliverables and benefits to to attract funding. Get Grant Ready is a helpful resource for community members, volunteers, land trusts, and locally-driven organizations wanting to engage their communities, as well as anyone who serves in grant writing or management, project development and implementation, and communications roles. 

Specifically, the workshop will:

  • Offer a deep dive into how to use the Get Grant Ready template and tailor it to your project needs
  • Share how this template can be tailored to grant writing, fundraising outreach, and project visioning/planning for your community
  • Provide the Get Grant Ready template and guidelines for you to keep and use to shape your project messaging and build it into a grant ready proposal

 

Participants from Montana communities with fewer than 5,000 residents may also be eligible to participate in Project Pitch Fest, which builds on Get Grant Ready by providing curated one-on-one technical assistance to work through the Get Grant Ready template, and the opportunity to practice pitching a project to a panel of fundraising advisors who will provide additional support and suggestions to get your project into grant ready shape. One-on-one technical assistance is provided by Heart of the Rockies Initiative’s Rural Initiatives program and Diane Conradi of Outdoor Community Partners. The Project Pitch Fest advisory panel consists of government and private granting partners. Matching funds are available to communities that are accepted into Project Pitch Fest!

Register for the Get Grant Ready Workshop & Apply to Project Pitch Fest
When a project like this feels so big that you aren't sure what to do next or if you can be successful, breaking it down into simpler concepts and steps can make it feel much more realistic. The slide deck we created during Project Pitch Fest has helped us continually to have something organized to come back to for funding asks, public presentations, and coordination with partners. It is because of the experience in Project Pitch Fest that we have been able to continually take small steps toward completing this monumental project.”
Kayla Mosher, Kaniksu Land Trust
Kayla Mosher, Kaniksu Land Trust 2022 Participant
“Rural communities can be easily overlooked and many times don't have residents with the necessary technical support needed at certain times, but we are the lifeblood of Montana and we need help to keep them vibrant and alive.”
Jeanna Leary, Big Timber Trails Network
Jeanna Leary, Big Timber Trails Network 2024 Participant

Thank You! We are grateful for our program sponsors: Trust for Public Land, Institute for Tourism & Recreation Research, and First Security Bank. 

Questions? Reach out to Rural Initiatives Manager, Kara Maplethorpe (kara@heart-of-rockies.org).

Need more proof on how impactful this program can be? Be sure to check out the lovely video (above) that highlights the impact of the program over the past four years, courtesy of videographer extraordinaire, Joel DeMay.

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