EP:42 - Entrepreneur Inspiration - Crafting Your Grant Funded Future with Libby Hikind

Libby Hikind is the esteemed "Queen of Grants" and visionary behind GrantWatch. She weaves through her illustrious journey and the birth of a platform that revolutionizes how grants connect dreamers to dollars. From nonprofits to individual visionaries, Libby lays out how GrantWatch bridges the gap to a treasure trove of opportunities, with heartwarming tales like her bond with a financial literacy educator, illuminating the human stories behind the funding.

Dive into the artistry of grant writing, a craft that melds passion with precision, as we recount transformative educational experiences and the meteoric rise of technology in the classroom. GrantWatch shines under the spotlight, offering sage advice for novices and pros alike, with a nod to the synergy between a project's aims and a grant writer's prowess. Plus, we tease the upcoming podcast, Grant Talk, hinting at even more guidance for those ready to pen their own success stories.

Three Questions Answered in this Episode
1. What insights does this episode offer about the process of grant writing?
2. How does GrantWatch assist in finding potential grant funding opportunities?
3. How is artificial intelligence, like ChatGPT, being used in the grant writing process?

Join the App: Owwll App | Join Owwll today using referral code CONNECT for a $10 credit!

Email the Show: Feedback@Owwll.com

Connect with the Owwll Community on Social Media (@OwwllApp): Facebook | Join our Facebook Group! | Instagram | LinkedIn | TikTok | Twitter | Clubhouse

Interested in supporting the show? Contact the Owwll Podcast team today!

Contact OceanTree Creative for your FREE podcast episode production. Just mention that you heard this on the Owwll Podcast! We also help you with your social media presence, whether you are a podcaster, or a small business owner/entrepreneur! Let's get your message to your crowd!
http://www.oceantreecreative.com / 763-331-1632

If you're an entrepreneur, interested in startups, funding, marketing, networking, social media, podcasting this podcast is for you!

Transcript

00:00 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Every single day I was at the school district office, I wrote the grant we won and then everything proceeded from there. 

00:13 - Jason Hill (Host)
We are live here on the Owl podcast for another amazing episode. We are going to learn all about grants today. I'm super excited about my guests today because you see this book right here, the Queen of Grants. She just put it out on Amazon and is a top seller, and I am part of the book. It's the first time I've ever been part of the book, so I'm super excited. Before we get into our guest Libby today, I'm joined by my co-host, ellie Santra. Ellie, what is going on? It's Valentine's Day. Love the outfit. Tell us what's happening. 

00:44 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Thank you, I did this just for today. No, I mean, I win. 

00:49 - Jason Hill (Host)
Me too, I have a little bit already. 

00:52 - Ellie Santra (Host)
No, I just realized that it's been a year since I've been doing this podcast, because last year on Valentine's Day I released a single and it was a sad love song and I launched it on the Owl podcast. So it's pretty crazy that it's been a full year here. But enough about me, let's get into our guests today. 

01:12 - Jason Hill (Host)
Okay, Libby, introduce yourself and tell us why are you the Queen of Grants? 

01:18 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I'm Libby Heikend. I'm founder and CEO of GrantWatch. I'm the Queen of Grants because Jason said I am in 2021. Yes, I appeared on Shrimp Tank and that's how he introduced me and the name stuck and everybody's been introducing me since then. That's how we got the title of the book. 

01:40 - Jason Hill (Host)
You know, what's crazy is just things come out of my mouth sometimes and I don't know what sticks. Sometimes it's positive stuff, sometimes it's negative stuff. But I'm so happy because when you reached out to me out of the blue, I was like I'm going to be in a book. I was super excited. I called you. I was like this is great. I'm so honored that I'm in the book. Of course, and more importantly, I believe in your mission. I'm a New Yorker, you're a New Yorker, we both move down here and when I look at what you're doing helping so many nonprofits obviously there's grants also for private companies as well, we know that, but majority of these nonprofits struggle so much. Every week I have a podcast show or two and consistently people need help on this subject. Can you kind of lean into GrantWatch? What is it all about? 

02:28 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
GrantWatch is the website that lets nonprofits, businesses and individuals know what grants are available. It's very easy you subscribe to the website, it's minimal amount and you have full access, and every day we add new grants. There are grants coming up. I just looked at my phone just while I was sitting here and there is a grant for American artists painters, and they have to be 45 and over and submit 10 pieces and jury of their peers. 

03:01 - Ellie Santra (Host)
It's crazy. I didn't know that individual people could get grants. I thought it was all just nonprofits and now, as you're speaking, I'm like I have the perfect person for that grant. I feel like what you've created is similar to OWL, where you are connecting people with the right resources, and that's what we try to do is just connecting other people to the right people. I can really see how you are going to be really influential on our platform. With so many different entrepreneurs, artists, ceos, nonprofits I feel like it's just going to be a beautiful collaboration. 

03:39 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I joined last night and I was having dinner and I just said, okay, let me see what this is really all about, because I'm coming on the podcast. I put it. It asked me how many minutes, I said one minute and all of a sudden my phone rang. There was somebody this woman who teaches financial literacy. 

03:57
I don't remember her name, but she's in my history, yeah, my history, and she wants to do it in the high schools and I was like, the minute I heard that, I said that's exactly what my grandchildren need financial literacy. We spoke about it and because she said, well, there's not really grants for me, I said, yes, but you could be a subcontractor, you can go to the school, you can find a grant for a high school and then you can bring it to them and you can work on the proposal with them and write yourself into the proposal. 

04:29 - Ellie Santra (Host)
And that's the kind of knowledge that normal people don't know, like me, and so when you get on the app, it's amazing. 

04:35 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
The things that you can it's the money that the phone rang and I'm like can I pick it up? What do I do? 

04:39 - Jason Hill (Host)
Yeah, Last week, people were talking about the owl effect or the power of the platform, and it's just that because you make yourself available out of the blue, right, there's no other platform where people literally just see you available and say, okay, this person looks interesting, I want to just chat with her, I want to get to know her, because you have a full profile and you look very interesting. Right, they see CEO, they see GrantWatch and, of course, they're curious. Right, we're humans, we're curious to find out more about these individuals and see if there's ways to collaborate or even do business with them. 

05:12 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Right, a lot of our platform leads to business, of course, and as the CEO, you don't really get to talk to the people that often that are using your services, right, yeah, but here I can just like okay, I'm taking a break from my office, I'm going to just sit on the couch, pick my feet up and I can turn this on and there's somebody to speak. 

05:31 - Jason Hill (Host)
It's so true. Can you give our audience just an overview of GrantWatch? Because, like I see it, like Kayak or hotelscom, it's this database and often people don't understand the full complexity of the platform. So keep it simple. Where, like you log in and then what happens from there? 

05:48 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Okay. So it's much more than all of those, because on the internet you have lots of. There are grants. So if somebody calls me it says, why do I have to pay for this service? I say you don't go and do the searches yourself, we're a service. So what we do is we aggregate the grants, but then we go through them and we look at them, make sure that they're real grants. Occasionally something could slip through our fingers, so no guarantees, but we really work hard, we check that they are real and we then extract all the information in our own proprietary way that you need to decide whether you want to go forward so you don't have to go right away and click into the actual application, skim over what we've done, so you're not going to find what we wrote anyplace else. Oh, that's nice. 

06:35
Human is doing this. This is a human looking at the application, pulling out the information, rewriting it into English language. Not grant, you know grant language. And now you can take it further. So if you're if you're a development director and you want to bring this to your executive director, you have a page and the executive director can take a look at it very quickly and say, yes, no, I'll bring it to the board. It's right there for you and the app it links to the application. So you have that. We have all different search formats on the website because you search in many different ways, of course people, people love defining it and then defining it more and more. 

07:14 - Jason Hill (Host)
Right, you want filters right. 

07:15 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So we have keywords, keyword phrases, we have drop downs as many different ways and sometimes you'll get different searches, you'll get different results. Yeah, we have another way. Since I was on Shrimp Tank, we've added something called the 990 reports. So a nonprofit organization has to file a 990 report. There are different letters after it depending on how large they are and whatever, and that. So a foundation will file a 990 report and some of them will tell us exactly who they funded in the past and why they gave the money. What was the purpose. So that's really important. So if you don't want to let's say you don't see a grant that's available right now for what you want you might go to the 990s and put in the keyword phrase or the keyword, and then it'll pop up foundations that you can then write a letter of intent or inquiry to and ask them will you fund me? So you have both ways to do it. 

08:08 - Jason Hill (Host)
So I'm assuming you even have power users on your website and those power users also would benefit our community to just understand how to leverage grantwatchcom better right Right, Right Right. 

08:20 - Ellie Santra (Host)
So in terms of the membership you mentioned, it's pretty affordable. And again, so say like I wanted to send that artist grant to my friend, Right? So if he just wanted to do you have like a monthly like, can you just join for like one month? 

08:37 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Or join for a week $18, $45 a month, 90 for three months or $199 for the entire month. 

08:43 - Jason Hill (Host)
Also very reasonable yeah. 

08:45 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Very reasonable. If you only want it for a week, turn off your order, renew right afterwards. We keep it on because the nonprofits don't want to get approval every two seconds. 

08:53 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Of course. 

08:53 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So it's there, but turn it off. If you want it for longer, leave it on. It's very, very affordable. Imagine that you have about 25 people searching for grants for you every day and you're only paying $1.99 for the year. 

09:09 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Yeah, that's like a whole management team about all the cuts. I'm curious. We have this beautiful sign behind us. So, from teacher to grant writer to CEO, I wanna hear a little bit about your journey of when you started to where you are now. 

09:27 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I started teaching for the New York City Department of Education after teaching private school and student teaching. And here I was. I got this job as a special ed teacher. I called every single Friday the Board of Ed that summer and they told me the week before school started get down here and you have a job. I didn't even ask what kind of job it was, what grade, anything. I dropped my kids off at the babysitter and I ran downtown Brooklyn to the New York City Department of Education. Once I had the job, I realized why that job was available. 

10:05
I got a job as a teacher for a class which was called classes for emotionally handicapped at that time, not politically correct today. And those children, they were junior high, seventh through ninth grade and no medication in those days, and totally off the wall. There's nothing else I could say about it. If I asked them to make a change on a piece of paper, you know, for any kind of correction, the paper got crumpled up and thrown in my face. There I was myself 10 students and a paraprofessional. That was quite tall, thank God, and that's what I was doing. 

10:42
And then the New York City decided to give certain exams, the same exams that the mainstream students were taking, and these students had to take those exams in order to be promoted. And now how am I gonna teach, how am I gonna teach written communication skills to classes, to a class like this? And how am I gonna have them succeed if they don't wanna hear if something's wrong? So that's how it started, and then I started reading up on it. I was a new teacher. We didn't really have much of the internet at that point, it was just beginning. 

11:17
Well, in the end, I found that word processing would be a very interesting thing to do with them, and the computers couldn't hold it. Big model, tandy Fawze, if you're out there and you're listening and you're my age, you know what I'm talking about. If not, you don't. It was a screen with a keyboard attached, one piece unit, and they couldn't do word processing. So what happened? And it's all in the book, so I just advise you to read it. But what happened was from there then to my special ed supervisor, then to the school district and there was a grant available. I learned how to write a grant. Every single day I was at the school district office, I wrote the grant, we won, and then everything proceeded from there. I became a grant writer and I kept working for the school, then the school district, then my own business, and when I retired from teaching, I opened GrantWatch. 

12:12 - Jason Hill (Host)
Tell us on the grant writing side, because often people come to your website and they're like okay, I know the grant I wanna apply for, but I really I'm not good at writing. That's me right. I would rather just hire someone the best expert out there. So how does that side of the business work? 

12:27 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Well, I don't want you to hire somebody yet. I want you to try your first grant on your own. 

12:33 - Jason Hill (Host)
Okay. 

12:34 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Okay, because that's what these hearts are all about. It's that passion that you have for your business. So somebody just walking in here, like I walked in here, I don't have the same passion for OWL, even though I like it. I really do, and you did a great job with the website, thank you, and the app and everything. But it's not my passion. My passion is grant watch, right, of course. So you need your passion to jump off the page and if you write your first grant yourself, you may be writing the rest of them yourself. Well, you may say, it's not for me, I'm gonna get a grant writer for the next one. But you now have everything that you did. So they have your passion on paper. 

13:13
Why did I write the book was to teach people how to write grants, and in the book I clearly say write your first grant yourself. But we also have another website called grantwriterteamcom or one word, grantwriterteamcom and there you could put up an ad. It's very minimal $25 for a week. Four weeks is $85. Once you put that ad in, you can now see all the information from the grant writers who have listed themselves. So it's kind of like OWL in a way. Yeah, of course you can see their information and now you can call them and you can make your own arrangements with them. 

13:51
We don't vet them. We do ask them to fill in certain information. Now you can ask for them. Their references are listed but they may not display them. You can ask them to release it and you can check their references and see if they match what you wanna write them. Now. Let's say you wanted to write a grant on out timers. Now you're gonna talk to a number of different grant writers. You wanna find somebody who has an out timer's patient in their family or has written grants for out timers in the past because you don't want them to start the whole research business. If you wanna write a grant a pre-K grant, a pre-K application you wanna find somebody who's written grants for pre-K or preschool or anything, young education or something. So that's what that website is all about. 

14:36 - Ellie Santra (Host)
I know we talked a little bit about this before the episode, but I'm curious to hear about we were talking about writing our own grants your take on AI and chat GBT and just how that all plays into grant writing. 

14:51 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Let me just tell you a little story of what happened. I'm also looking to start a podcast, and we bought a domain grant talk, which makes sense here, right? So I have this ad out on Indy. 

15:02 - Jason Hill (Host)
I might have to change the grand queen. I don't know, I'm already naming it already. That's Dairy Queen. Let them have that. 

15:11 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Okay, so I put up this ad on Grand Talk and I'm asking for the techie person to do the video and everything else, and I have three questions and on this website they let you ask for a one-way phone interview, right. So now I get to see the people that are applying and to see how they hold themselves, their mannerisms and do they know what they're talking about. So this one guy answers and I was really interested based on his resume. He had all the top names there that he worked for whatever. And I'm listening. I'm going, wow, he's for such a young person, he's so smart. And then I realized he's reading this is chat GPT answering your questions. 

15:52 - Jason Hill (Host)
That's funny. 

15:53 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So that is the problem with grant writing. You can't do that On the way over. I'm thinking what new mnemonic can I do for you? Okay, because the book is all about passion, maps and folders, which is how I broke up one of the sections in the book so that you could figure out, get grant ready and everything. And then I said I don't know if I'm going to use this in the future or not, but if we think about AAB, we can say audience, activities and budget. 

16:24
So before you go to AI, you need to know that who's your audience? Who is your grant going to serve? What activities do you want to do with through this money? What do you want to accomplish? What do you want to do? And then write your budget, Because now you can go to chat GPT and you can start to use it as a language model, but don't use it to write your program. If you're writing a grant for yourself as a musician, you know what you want to do, right. But what if you're a nonprofit? There's a board of directors, there's an executive director. If it's school, there are teachers. You have to get everybody on board, whatever that program is, whatever those activities are, and you have to figure out the budget before you go and start writing. 

17:13
Now, if you're going to go to chat GPT, you don't want them to write you a program. Nobody's on board for right. So that's where I say chat GPT is great and this is my accounting procedures. You could tell it to chat GPT. You double sign, all checks. It's everything's audited once a year, whatever. You give it all the details and you could say chat GPT. This is the question. Can you answer it with all this information? Yes, you can use that. What do you want chat GPT to make up your accounting situation? 

17:44 - Jason Hill (Host)
I'd love it for grammar too, because I always made little typos here and there. Even our newsletter that goes out, even for OWL, just like the subject line, the titles of text and notifications so helpful. But you still have to really tell it what to do. You have to make it your own, and I think that's what you're really saying is, it's only as good as what you're typing in there, and then everyone knows that everyone else is using it today, so I get emails back all the time on OWL. I'm like time out. I know this isn't the individual writing this. That person doesn't have that in their keyboard strokes Cool box. So it's happening a lot and I just think that you're 100% correct. It's like you utilize it the right way. Otherwise the people on the other end are going to sniff it out and it needs to come right out of the page. If we at OWL want to try to get a grant, they're going to know if it's just coming right from Jack GBT, of course, and I think it's so important what you're talking about. 

18:40 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
But what if everybody sends in the same thing? It says in conclusion or in summary it says there's a tapestry of you know right away. Now, if you want your application to stand out, then you're not going to use Jack GBT or you're just going to use it for small parts. 

19:01 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Yes, and I think that's what we're saying too Like, just the grammar aspects are just a couple. You use your ideas, but just making it sound a little more professional at the end of the day. 

19:14 - Jason Hill (Host)
So can you share with us some stories that you know now doing this for such a long time, like these stories that have just stuck out, like it really touched your heart where some of these companies or nonprofits ended up getting the grant and really making huge impact in this world? 

19:29 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Well, one was parent to parent. Years ago there were parents of children with disabilities. I forget the name of the organization Instant Island, the Institute, for I don't remember this was the parent body. There are disabilities out there that are very unique and you might find one here and then one in India, and then one in China, and one in Ukraine and one in Russia and all over the world, but it's not like a cluster right. So now how can they communicate with other parents? So they wanted to create a parent resource center that would go all over the world and we wrote a grant and we won. So I know that this happened years ago, that these parents were able to reach out to other people with the same disability, because what if they had a therapy that was working, or somebody else had some medication or some surgery and some specialist? So they were able to connect that. You know, a piece of heaven I think I have from that one. 

20:41 - Jason Hill (Host)
It's interesting because a lot of the things that we're always speaking about is just connecting making it easier to connect, right, your website. Easier to connect people to one another. Owl, and same with what you just talked about. So let's put OWL out there for a second. If you would give me advice on what I should do with OWL, like, obviously you know I didn't create OWL for the money element, right, you knew I was successful going down the financial service route. You know, didn't have to do anything different, just keep going on cruise control on the shrimp tank, and I switched gears when COVID did, I say there's got to be a better way to connect people, as simple as that, right. 

21:18
And when I look at what's happening with young professionals, especially when I go to FAU, and I look at the way they use this cell phone, it's all for text messaging and everything's through Instagram and TikTok today. And I'm seeing, you know just, problems right, where children aren't getting the same social skills that we all got at this table. Right. Where you go to in-person meetings, you talk right, think about your job interview talking in person, almost John, when you start on Zoom, or even on an audio call right, and these skills need to be developed. So, you know, obviously we're a for-profit company, right, we're not a nonprofit. 

21:52
But what would you say that we would do? Like would we partner with a nonprofit to then encourage universities to deploy OWL in the classroom so that way students could call professionals like you and, really, you know, get real live experience, but with boundaries, right, because you know we need boundaries around these calls. We can't just let young minds talk to anyone under the sun, right, and OWL provides that because of the Riu mechanism in place. They're different than when Uber started. Everyone's like I'm never getting a car with a stranger. And one day you're like, wow, I don't want to drive, get in a car unless it's an Uber. You know, if I'm going to take a AKA taxi, right, Because you feel more comfortable, and that's what we're seeing with OWL. So what would you do, what type of advice would you provide to OWL if we say that one day, like we do want to get it in the classroom setting and especially, maybe even as early in high school settings and then eventually, of course, college? 

22:47 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I think that Owl should possibly have another arm that becomes a nonprofit. 

22:52
Because while you're thinking about it's start now, it takes about six to eight months to get approval, and that way you don't need to go, and if you do go to a university you're a nonprofit, so you'll do better, but you may just be able to apply on your own what I'm thinking when you talk like this about kids, the thing of a grandson, and I'm saying to myself well, one of my grandchildren had a unique idea, a business idea, and I said I don't know if you can do that or not, because you're you know, it's like a jump off of a main product, okay. And so he said well, you know, like how do I know? So I called my trademark attorney, right, but he could have called somebody on Owl and had a discussion. Maybe he's not even gonna believe me, but you know, that's a great idea, he's really vested in it. And then he needs to talk about packaging his product, so he needs to talk to somebody else about that. And all these people I mean starting out the kids don't have money for their ideas. 

23:56 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Now you search industry on Owl, so whatever, and if it was tech or whatever it was, and then for anyone can get a dollar right, so it's as cheap as a dollar, especially mentorship Mondays. I don't know if you know about that, but we have every Monday where a lot of these bigger professionals, CEOs, lower their price to a dollar. So if they're normally, you know, a hundred dollar like Jason, a hundred dollars talk to a CEO, they lower their price to give students and other people affordable opportunities to chat with them. 

24:30 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So then if you do that, then the way to do that would be to go into a classroom with a professor that comes on your Owl. 

24:38 - Pam (Host)
Yes. 

24:38 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
And then they let everybody have a session where everybody can use their phone to class. 

24:44 - Jason Hill (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and we have done that before, right, yeah what we've done so far with FAU is we've partnered with an entrepreneurship class in the summer. It was really hard for him to get the students paired with entrepreneurs because the class was so short and he had each student call three entrepreneurs on the Owl app and he created. You know, part of their project was to write a report about what they spoke about with each individual and they absolutely loved it, right? Because they would typically fake the reports. They would talk to a family member and then have to write something out, and this was just more realistic. 

25:16 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Yeah, they can really fake the reports with AI. 

25:20 - Jason Hill (Host)
Yeah, good point. 

25:22 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Even Zoom interviews. Now I bet you could like be searching as you're talking to someone like what to say. 

25:27 - Jason Hill (Host)
But one thing that we did notice is that we had to put it part of the curriculum. When we try to say, hey, just use Owl, it'll be great, you'll get to talk to other people, you could get career advice, you know, maybe you think you want to be an accountant, then you talk to other accountants on Owl and then you're like wait, actually I didn't realize that business was really like that After speaking with them or a lawyer, right, you see a lot of people, oh, so good day, yeah. So what we've noticed, though, is because the next generation doesn't use the phone for speaking to people. They use it for messaging people. The only way to get results is to actually put it as an assignment, which then makes it a lot harder to get into other universities. So eventually we see that we did a pilot with one class and now eventually do it a few more times, and then eventually try to amplify this, because if it's working at FAU, it's going to work at every university and then think about that impact one day, where we're helping the next generation really choose the right careers and then also just build better communication skills. 

26:27
So that first interview they go on. They don't have that same stage right, no different than when we were forced to speak in front of a classroom for a presentation. Well, now we're a little bit more confident. If we go on a podcast right In our first podcast interview, well then, the third one is a little easier. So I just look at it as like there could be such impact with our platform, but most importantly because the boundaries it creates so that way everyone feels comfortable the college feels comfortable, you, the entrepreneur, feels comfortable and the student does as well. 

26:54 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I still remember my career day in sixth grade. I decided I was going to be a commercial advertiser. Oh wow, Didn't happen. But now, if you think about it, here I am and I developed the website. Every mark on the website came from me. I code it, but I designed it, the book cover. You know the artist did the book cover. Yeah, there it is. I'm supervising every single part, so I came full circle. And how did that happen? I guess I must have met somebody at some point. 

27:25 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Sure, I heard what they Well even like internships. That was really big at my school and, like everyone, I went to school in DC and like everyone was interning, especially like in politics, that they were into that and all we had was the internet and I wish that, like we would have had a tool like Owl just to even learn about careers that we didn't even know existed. Because I feel like a lot of the internships I had were just so general, like marketing, and I would have loved to have something more specific, more unique, or even like calling someone on Owl a CEO that wouldn't even have thought to have. Maybe it's a smaller company like Owl that wouldn't even have thought to have to have an intern, and then when you just get a conversation going, so even those kinds of opportunities, I don't know if I would let the kids connect on their phones. 

28:16 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I think I'd want to have a set of phones. 

28:19 - Jason Hill (Host)
Oh, interesting yeah at the actual class. 

28:21 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Yeah, right you bring the phones, and then you have a video, a short video, where everybody's your mentor. Monday. 

28:29 - Jason Hill (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, of course. 

28:30 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Introduces themselves, and then everybody can pick while they're sitting there and talk to a few different people. 

28:36 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Yeah. 

28:36 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So they're not really into your Owl right. 

28:39 - Jason Hill (Host)
They're not in the database, but we have these phones with different accounts and student accounts. 

28:44 - Ellie Santra (Host)
It could just say student and there's disclosure. 

28:46 - Jason Hill (Host)
So real, simply, it was like the that's that yeah, yeah because then everyone's getting incoming call, there's disclaimers, and they know there's a student on the other eye and they know there's a professor there. So the experts you know are aware there's they can't the calls recorded yeah nothing nothing happening. 

29:05 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Explain to the professor the, all the mentors. 

29:08 - Jason Hill (Host)
Sure. 

29:08 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Nobody, do not get out of phone number, whatever. 

29:10 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Something a former teacher would think. 

29:13 - Jason Hill (Host)
No, it's great, it's a great idea. 

29:15 - Ellie Santra (Host)
I'm curious, I guess, what is one of the biggest challenges that you faced, going from teacher to entrepreneur, like business owner, Well, you know, you miss standing in front of a classroom. Yeah. 

29:31 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
That's really something I miss reading to children. 

29:34 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Yeah. 

29:34 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
That's something. But I took a break in between. After I retired I started doing oil painting and stained glass. Ok, my kids say, yeah, that lasted about a minute, a little bit longer. 

29:51
We have beautiful things that I accomplished during that time. And then, you know, the technology was just starting to be there at that point we're talking about. I retired in 2009. We took our first dollar in 2010. So that's you know, a long time ago and it was. We started out with NYC Grants Watch that's what we were called and we grew to New York state. We started adding states and growing. The challenge was that I did not know how to code. I knew a little basic programming. That was a programming language. I knew logo, but we started coding in PHP right away. 

30:32 - Ellie Santra (Host)
I just want to go through the book quickly with you. 

30:35 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
It's in the beginning of the book, A Table of Contents. 

30:37 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Oh OK. 

30:38 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So it will tell you here how it all began for me. It'll go through everything from my life, from writing grants to running for city council oh wow, Working for Project Liberty and all the way to the website. And then your questions answered. Oh, perfect. Every question that you might be wanting to ask me is probably answered here. Ok, because we took the questions that keep coming across and then I divided the book up again and I tell you how to get grant ready. 

31:13 - Ellie Santra (Host)
OK. 

31:14 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
And we go through my eligibility following directions, passion, maps and folders and what you should have in your folders. And then we take it into sustainability, dissemination, replicability and from there I model successful grants. Hmm so super helpful, and then the future of AI. So that's how I broke it up. I'm hoping that people find it very helpful. 

31:40 - Jason Hill (Host)
Oh, it will be very helpful, absolutely, yeah, I love it. First timers like myself yeah. 

31:45 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
And then, of course, see your name in the book Of course, Pam. 

31:48 - Jason Hill (Host)
welcome to the OWL podcast. Do you have a question for Libby? 

31:53 - Conny (Host)
Hi Pam, yes, I do. First of all, hi Libby, Thank you so much for getting tons of value. I wanted to ask what strategies do you use to tailor grant proposals to fit specific requirements of some and priorities of funders? 

32:09 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Well, the first thing is you have to match what the funders looking for and what you want to do. You have to figure out how to spin it. Years ago I always like to use this example Got it. We had these giant photocopy machines and you had to lease them for a year and it was such a large expense for a school, but you couldn't apply for a grant to lease a photocopy machine, but you could apply for a grant to send home parent newsletters to print them out. 

32:42
So if you needed this photocopy machine for office work but you wanted to send its parent newsletter, it's how, if the grant was for parenting, you could then write your whole proposal that way that you'd include the parents. This way, this is part of your parenting program, and then you could get your supply, your equipment. 

33:02 - Ellie Santra (Host)
I actually recognize Pam's voice because I called her yesterday on owl. 

33:06 - Jason Hill (Host)
Thank you, so much, she's there. She's there. There's things with owl, like people are on the go Pam. 

33:12 - Ellie Santra (Host)
it's Ellie. We talked yesterday. You helped me with some marketing questions that I had. Actually, I don't know. 

33:18 - Conny (Host)
Hi Ellie, how are you? 

33:20 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Good, good. How are you? 

33:21 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So, pam, you are a marketer. 

33:25 - Conny (Host)
Yes, yes, ma'am, I do business coaching. I do business coaching and brand strategy, and one of the ways that I help my clients is through funding, whether that be business credit or grants or grant writing or just finding different ways for funding. 

33:42
So I was asking that and you answered a lot of the questions that I had with the world of the eye, because you know, I know that so many people think that that is the only way to do it or one of the easiest ways to do it, but it takes away the authenticity and uniqueness, I would say, of the grant writer and the actual mission of the company. What happened to yourself? 

34:05 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Right. Thank you so much for the value that you added. If you use AI, you might end up with a program that you don't even want. You committed yourself to something and some people you know also the same person that is kind of lazy enough to let AI write their proposal might not read their proposal and submit it. 

34:25 - Jason Hill (Host)
Oh yeah, I'm getting that alive. I'm getting emails back with the blocks Like it came right from chat GBT, because they don't realize how to copy and paste it the proper way, and I'm like, oh geez, I'm like the point that you made earlier about like plagiarism to with chat GBT and how like you could. 

34:43 - Ellie Santra (Host)
I was talking about having it write a song and it just takes all the information from the internet. 

34:48 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So it's like you have to be careful you could have a line in your song that really yeah or if someone's applying for the same grant as you and you guys both use chat. 

34:58 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Gbt, you know, could be very, very similar. 

35:01 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So might not get the same application from chat GBT the same completed application, but the reader is going to look at the one that wasn't written with chat. I say if you are going to use it, use it for parts. If all the information is you know to chat GBT, let them give you that piece and then rewrite it. 

35:24 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Yeah, awesome. 

35:27 - Jason Hill (Host)
Absolutely, Pam. Thank you for joining us on our podcast you catch your entire clip. It's up on our website. We're live right now and cut this little segment out, of course, and share with the world. Thank you for joining us today. 

35:38 - Conny (Host)
Thank you so much for having me, Jason. 

35:40 - Jason Hill (Host)
Absolutely Okay. There's one other person that I have in mind, so while I'm searching for her, you guys could chat. Gotta, leave a Pam, a review, of course. Get to the next, the next individual. But isn't this cool? You could just call people on here and even for your podcast. We're starting to see people test with their podcast calling experts live right through the platform and plug them into the show, because we have a pool of experts and sometimes you, you want a specific type to join you on your show to just talk about a certain subject. 

36:13 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So well, what we're hoping to do is talk to people that actually got grants and hear from them about the collaboration that went on in their organization, how the application was formulated. I don't want to hear that they copied it from chat. 

36:29 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I know. No, I already have three people that I'm like going to send your website right after this. Yeah, Just, I know a lot of artists and you know other other entrepreneurs just through OWL and you know also, grant Watts has staff customer support staff and they're all based in the United States. So great. 

36:49 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
And so you get to talk to real people who've been with us for quite a while. 

36:54 - Jason Hill (Host)
Connie, welcome to the OWL podcast. I am so excited to have Connie on here. Connie is going to impact millions of lives. Can, connie, you share how you're going to impact millions of lives and why? And then ask Libby a question. 

37:08 - Pam (Host)
Absolutely Well. I was a female inspector and trainer for about seven years and my goal was always to help people be better prepared. So my goal with the nonprofit is is to help 30 million people be better prepared, more sustainable, and we're going to do that through something called kits for kids, where we put a kit in the kids backpack, their everyday backpack. It has a safety kit, it has a tracker on it, it has safety bandages, mylar blanks, all that kind of stuff, and our goal is to do that through many different outlets, including realtors and professionals that want to help their communities and build their communities into being more secure and more sustainable. 

37:52 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
It's great. Years ago I remember taking my children to be fingerprinted. Yeah, that was a big thing. And now they just visited recently and I took out this envelope and I said here are your fingerprints. 

38:03 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Here are your fingerprints I don't need them anymore. 

38:09 - Pam (Host)
Your husband can have them in case you get lost. 

38:11 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Well, I can tell you right now Are the children going to know that they have a tracker in their backpack. 

38:18 - Pam (Host)
Oh yes, they'll be trained for the purpose for it. The difference today as compared to that because my kids were kids that is that 76% of parents are worried about their kids. Anxiety, fears and depression. Kids are actually afraid. A lot of kids are afraid. Over 78% of kids now have some kind of fear of going to school or what's going to happen to them. So it's a little bit different situation. I mean, fingerprinting is still a good idea. We have to take it way beyond that to be able to reduce that fear and anxiety. And that's really what the Go Kid is all about is to help provide just a little bit of protection and to be able to give us a little bit of things of the kids, a little bit safer when they go off to school. And it goes wherever the backpack goes it goes to playground, the school, any activities they take it to, and they're well trained on it. Our Kids for Kids campaign is going to be out there looking for kids, folks, people, because one of the best ways to activate our kids to be at the activists and be out there in their community. So we're going to hold your whole kids folks for some campaign around it. 

39:29
I do have a question for you. We are new. We're a new nonprofit. I got my 501c3 in November of 2021. And we're just to the point now where the initiatives are the greatest start initiative. We've launched it. What is the best way for a new nonprofit to get the most out of their searching for grants? 

39:54 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Buy for smaller grants. Start building it up so that each time you win a grant, the next grant, you can say and we've managed X number of federal dollars or foundation dollars successfully, we met all our objectives. The evaluation came out great. Just keep building yourself up and listen. You may get lucky. You might look for a grant and see something that fits what you do and it's a lot of money. But don't pass up the $500 ones, the thousand, the 10,000, go for them and just keep building it and everything you write can be recycled and used again, because it's your passion that's going to be in there. And just keep going. Go from strength to strength. 

40:43 - Pam (Host)
Thank you. I just that's a good advice, because I was looking at some of these people that are getting a million dollars. I'm like, well, there's no way they're going to give us a million dollars at this point. However, I do have an amazing board, of which Jason is part of, and I think how much do they look at the people that are already participating with the grants or with the non-profit? 

41:04 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Well, it depends how large the application is. If it's just a one pager on a website that you have to fill in, they may not be able to list your board members. But you might want to include that in some of your narrative that we have these high quality board members that have experience in this and this one has experience in that. We have an attorney, we have an accountant, we have an educator. You might want to list it if you have room. But if it's a larger proposal, they're going to ask who your key staff are and you want to have all those. You want to have the board members CVs. You want to have your principals principal people in the program. You want their CVs. You want the job descriptions, everything like that. So just get it ready. In my book I list everything that should be in your different folders so you can start getting yourself organized. That's why I call it the Mimonic Passion Maps and Folders. 

42:03 - Pam (Host)
That's awesome. I just ordered it so thank you. 

42:06 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Thank you. I wish somebody would order the hardcover. 

42:11 - Jason Hill (Host)
I was going to. It's actually funny, but I wanted to get it for today's episode and it was like three weeks. So then I was like the other one was coming the next day. So I was like I don't want the paperbacker. I wanted that one, but I wanted you to autograph it. 

42:25 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So I think the difference is four dollars. 

42:27 - Jason Hill (Host)
No, it was no difference practically, it was just more. You know, we all were all entitled, right? If something comes one day versus two, three weeks, we all jump to one day. 

42:36 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I have to tell you the reception has been phenomenal. We released the book February 1st and before I left I checked we sold 91 copies and I didn't buy any of them. 

42:48 - Pam (Host)
Congratulations, that's wonderful. 

42:50 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I only bought the author copies, which don't count in the numbers. So that's great. Yeah, I'm hoping I get back there in this 100. It's just nice to know that I'm reaching so many people and I don't even know who they are. 

43:04 - Ellie Santra (Host)
So, guys, Owl community if you want to speak to Libby on Owl, it's going to sound better. If you already bought her book and have researched your edit times, you can go on Amazon right now. 

43:15 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Just write a review. Yeah, yeah, I have your review. That's Fred Blum. I have your review on Amazon. 

43:20 - Jason Hill (Host)
Right, because you can't you already have one? 

43:22 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Oh, I have, oh yeah, I sent you the manuscript before it was published. 

43:27 - Jason Hill (Host)
But on Amazon you can't leave a review unless you made the purchase Right, Because some people just try to spam review, so they make sure that you have to actually buy. 

43:35 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Yeah, you have an editorial review, which is different, under your name and that was really nice to get. 

43:41 - Jason Hill (Host)
Absolutely Well, Connie. Thank you for joining us on the Owl podcast and, of course, continue the conversation one-on-one on Owl. When you see Libby go live, Follow her. Of course you get a notification. 

43:50 - Pam (Host)
I will definitely reach you out, libby, thank you. Thank you, jason, thanks for participating. 

43:55 - Jason Hill (Host)
Okay, bye-bye. Okay, you know what time it is, ellie. 

43:57 - Ellie Santra (Host)
It's bedtime. It's bedtime. I wish you had a button. 

44:02 - Jason Hill (Host)
Okay. So with that time, the way this works is you know, we just started about eight, nine episodes. This is what we don't talk about. This is a surprise. This is a fun thing, and every, every guest gets a bet and then if we win, we get something. If you win, you get something, right. So earlier in the show you said you are talking about starting a podcast, right, right. Well, obviously I have a lot of expertise. I failed a lot and now I've learned a lot with the lighting in here, the camera, three different cameras, soundboards, microphones. I'll let you kick off your new podcast right here in this studio. So that's what I will provide. 

44:38 - Ellie Santra (Host)
I'll give you Wait, wait. 

44:40 - Jason Hill (Host)
Where we start. 

44:41 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Now, just because I know what she wants, which she had mentioned that she would want someone I'm assuming you're doing this at your house the podcast that she would want someone to help her set up her podcast at her house. So she was like, do you know anyone that I could pay to like help run my podcast and do all the technicals that I said I'm sure Jason knows someone, but maybe we could offer her like a free session to set up her. I think that would be. I mean, you can choose what would be of more value to you, but it sounds like this is a bit oh yeah. 

45:14
So so well. So what so that's? I got too excited. 

45:17 - Jason Hill (Host)
I just jumped right into it. 

45:18 - Ellie Santra (Host)
So that's what we would offer you, but essentially we make a bet. So how many calls do you think? 

45:24 - Jason Hill (Host)
I think we, we, we keep her to in the next seven days. 

45:29 - Ellie Santra (Host)
10 calls 10 taken pound, or take okay, taken, I think. 

45:32 - Jason Hill (Host)
I think taken in her case because so many people on our platform need help on this subject. It's always in the chat forum and people are always asking me do you know someone that could do this? Yeah, and I've even been telling her for so long. I asked you I'm like we need to get you on out. Yeah, because everyone wants to pick your brain. 

45:49 - Ellie Santra (Host)
So I think it's calls to see but her phone's going to ring immediately and it's easy phone calls. And, basically, if in the next seven days you take 10 calls on our platform which we can easily track, then you will get your choice If you want to launch your first episode here or if you want us to give you someone for a session, to set you up at your house, give you tips that's an option too and an equipment list. 

46:14 - Jason Hill (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I can't. I can't with their fee. I could just introduce her some people Okay, yeah, yeah, of course, Because they're. 

46:19 - Ellie Santra (Host)
these are professionals that want to get paid to come out the room? Yes, and they'll introduce you to the right person for that. So that's, those are your options. 

46:27 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
I don't know what it will think that you could think about what I want. But the question is what? What happens if I don't have 10? 

46:34 - Jason Hill (Host)
Well, I, I would, I would like her. We just started a new initiative at OWL that every two weeks we do a tutorial meeting and also we're going to start something out where it's just about networking One big, massive meeting that we sent to the entire community. Would you like to join? And we want a featured expert to really talk during the meeting. So I think we want you there. 

46:57
I think what we want to do is we want to launch that initiative with you, because we know so many people need support, and you're our featured individual and we're going to talk about how to utilize OWL and turn relationships into bigger opportunities for your business. And then we'll we'll have you come on as the featured expert and you'll share, because we'll we'll, of course, drive more people that need help on on these subjects that that you're the queen of the grand. 

47:24 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
So if I have 10 calls, then I get. 

47:26 - Jason Hill (Host)
And you get the podcast whatever, but if you don't, you have to join us, for it's going to be a one hour session and obviously it's actually better that you guys yeah. 

47:36 - Ellie Santra (Host)
People are going to want to buy your book. You want to buy your book. 

47:38 - Jason Hill (Host)
It's kind of a win-win If you lose you win, if you win you lose. 

47:42 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
It's kind of a or I might do it anyway, you might want to do that one anyway. 

47:46 - Ellie Santra (Host)
And you saw, though, like the biggest thing if you want to get these calls is just making yourself available on the app, because you saw you said in the first minute someone called you. So I don't think you have to worry about getting those 10 calls. It's just a matter of taking the time to actually go live on the app and the first 10 calls, so everyone knows when. Whoever you are, when you sign up to be an expert, they are always set at a dollar, and we do that. One because we want people to use the platform and understand it, and two because you see how you know if your price is at a dollar versus $20, you're going to make more connections that way, so we like to show people that in the first, you know 10 calls. So that's yeah, it's pretty much it. That's the bet. You guys heard it here, okay. 

48:40 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Do we have a deal? We always have a deal. 

48:42 - Jason Hill (Host)
Oh, there it is. We shook on it, so call her. She's a dollar. Get this opportunity to chat about anything we spoke about during the show. That's everything for our audience listening. If they want to learn more, it's grantwatchcom. Is there other sites that they should go to, on social media, for example? That's the main spot. 

49:02 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Well, we have GrantWatch, and on the top of GrantWatch are all our social media buttons. If you are not going to write your own grant or you're a grant writer, if you're a grant writer and you want to sign up, you can go to grantwriterteamcom, put up your profile and let other nonprofits look for you. If you need a grant writer and you've already decided you're not going that route, you're writing it yourself, you can put up a classified ad there. So you have GrantWatch, you have GrantWriterTeam, you have Amazon. Just type in my name, Libby Hike, and you'll find the book. It's also here's an easier way grantwatchcom slash book. 

49:42 - Conny (Host)
Okay. 

49:43 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
Okay, grantwatchcom slash book. The book is there. Click the link. You'll end up in the right place on Amazon. 

49:48 - Jason Hill (Host)
Even our newsletter. We put her in today and there's a link right there as well and anybody. 

49:55 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
You know we have hearts on there, so if you want to give something to a teacher, yeah, a late Valentine's Day present, and yeah. I just want to remind you that when you write a grant, your passion needs to be in that grant, needs to jump off the page, and that's why we have hearts. 

50:13 - Ellie Santra (Host)
Love it. 

50:13 - Jason Hill (Host)
Makes sense. Well, thank you all for tuning in. If you're listening to audio, you're always watching on video as well. We're on YouTube, Take care everybody. 

50:22 - Libby Hikind (Guest)
And I want to say goodbye to my staff. Thank you. 

50:25 - Jason Hill (Host)
See you, bye Post. Production for the Owl podcast is done with care by Brian at Ocean Tree Creative. Reach out to Brian via the link in the show notes.