Why I Do What I Do
If you’re at all like me, you’ve asked yourself a time or two why it is that you do what you do. I didn’t set out to be a grant writer. In fact, I don’t think I had ever even heard of the term until after I finished college and applied for my first grant writing job straight out of the New York Times classifieds. It had always been a dream of mine to live in New York (hello, everyone in their 20s), and I saw the posting one day while I was eating my lunch at work at The Wilderness Society.
I was finishing up my Master’s degree in Washington, DC, and the job seemed like the perfect opportunity to a.) get to New York, and b.) do something meaningful with my degree. Not that my time at The Wilderness Society wasn’t also meaningful! But I was supporting the development team with admin tasks in between political theory classes, and it seemed like criminal justice grants in New York had the potential to be a pretty interesting adventure.
I had no idea! I was baptized by fire in that office, meeting with medical examiners to learn about cold cases and dental records, attending seminars to better understand the connection between stolen automobiles and organized crime, liaising with the police department to secure data for grant applications, coordinating with nonprofit orgs about their work with juvenile offenders, organizing grant budget talks across five separate DA’s offices, all of them wanting as much of the grant funding for their districts as possible. I cut my hair to seem more serious, which probably went completely unnoticed but helped me feel a little more professional. I worked on my persuasive emails and spent a lot of time coaxing agencies and community partners to find hard copies of receipts for grant reports I was responsible for submitting. I drafted and redrafted budgets that got sliced and diced. I stumbled through state and federal reporting systems, leaned a lot on my colleagues to help decipher acronyms and learn the office politics, and had a hell of a lot of fun along the way.
Not long after I got the job, I realized a pretty fundamental truth about myself: I was never going to be one of the amazing, direct services people, fighting the good fight up close everyday. But I could support those warriors in the background. I could craft compelling narratives to hone their messages, I could secure and manage their grant funds, I could keep their reporting organized and on time. And that’s what I still do today. Although my focus has shifted away from the criminal legal system for many reasons, I see my role as continuing to uplift the direct service providers, the policy advocates, the educators, mentors, and economic development specialists. And I find a lot of meaning in that work.
I owe a huge debt of gratitude to the woman who hired me in Mayor Bloomberg’s office. The job set me on a very fulfilling career path and helped me realize my dream of living in New York. Today, I look back on that time as one of life’s really pivotal moments, and I’m grateful to be able to continue doing something I love.
