For the Bridgestone Grant, my job was to answer the question: “What method(s) would you use to evaluate the program’s success?” In the Scarlett Family Foundation sample grant, I found where NICE had answered a similar question: “What are the anticipated outcomes and how will you measure results?” NICE’s response to this question utilized professional, active prose throughout the majority of the response and became the model for my answer. At first, fearing the possibility of plagiarizing, I tried to re-write all of NICE’s response in my own words. I found some of it difficult to revise simply because much of the response was already well crafted. My dilemma was resolved when Cindy White came to talk to our class about grants. During her talk she assured us that we would not be plagiarizing if we borrowed their language. This was good news, and provided me with more prose to work with in my Bridgestone answer.
My task then became revising NICE’s answer from the Scarlett Family Foundation grant to better appeal to our Bridgestone audience and follow a more concise, professional genre of writing. I did so by applying Dr. Overall and Cathy’s suggestions to my draft. One change I made was omitting NICE’s claim that they access student’s grades for evaluation. This is illegal and reflects poorly on NICE as a non-profit organization. Instead of saying “student grades will be accessed,” I wrote, “student’s educational level will be assessed.” I also revised NICE’s prose so that the focus would be on the action, especially in the statistics section of the grant response. For example, the first statistic reads: “85% of elementary and middle school students who participate for the duration of the summer program demonstrate increased fluency (accuracy or speed) on leveled passages using the Reading A-Z curriculum.” At the suggestion of Dr. Overall, I revised this and the following statements so that action words such as "increase" would be in the first words of the sentence. The beginning of the revised statement became, “85% increased fluency...” This change draws the focus to the action. After applying all necessary edits, my Bridgestone response became extremely concise and to the point. The Bridgestone board members who read through piles of grants will hopefully appreciate this.