Daniella Zalcman
SEASON 2, EPISODE 4:
Grants are an incredible and often-underused way to fund ambitious creative projects, especially if you're pitching to a publication that may not be able to cover your travel or research expenses. This week, we're diving into the world of grants, including how to pick which grants and fellowships to apply to, and the best ways to craft a successful application. In service of this topic, we brought on our first photojournalist, Daniella Zalcman. She's based between New York and Paris and her work has been supported by many grantors including the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting, National Geographic Society, International Womens’ Media Foundation, and more. She is also the founder of Women Photograph, a nonprofit that elevates the voices and work of female and non-binary visual journalists. Along with this episode, our Co-op members get access to Daniella’s five guiding questions for crafting a solid grant application; her business plan for 2020; and a spreadsheet for you to log and track grants, fellowships or residencies Follow Daniella's work on Instagram and Twitter.
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Full Transcript Below:
W- Hello, and welcome to the writers. Co-op
J- We are your co-hosts I'm Jenni Gritters.
W- And I'm Wudan Yan.
J- Welcome back to another week of freelance business stuff.
W- What did we say in our last newsletter? Another Monday, another The Writers' Co-op episode.
J- Yes, we are still here.
W- We are still making the thing
J- We totally are. So before we get into this particular thing that we are making, we want to plug another thing, which is a show that we think you might like. It is a podcast it's called the Deliberate Freelancer, and it's hosted by Melanie Padgett Powers. Like us, Melanie tries to drill into your head that you are a freelance business owner. So we love her stuff. She is a freelance writer and editor and her podcast provides listeners with inspiration as well as concrete advice and tactics. So she has recently covered lots of things that we touch on as well. So things like imposter syndrome, pricing projects, finding new clients, branding, pandemic anxiety, all sorts of things. So we think it's a really good accompaniment to our podcast because she gets to a lot of the details that we don't really have time for. So you can find the Deliberate Freelancer wherever you podcast or at deliberatefreelancer.com
W- It's really good stuff. I have sent at least a dozen people specifically to Melanie's episode about pricing projects, because that is such a big and hard question.
J- Yes. That episode was so good. And I also loved the one about freelancers and how they can fight back against the PRO act. I didn't know a lot about that. And the episode is super pragmatic, so highly, highly recommend
W-Definitely lots of goodies, indeed.
J- So this week we are talking to another freelancer. Wudan, want to tell me about your guest?
W-Yes. I am really excited about this episode. This week, we have on a photo journalist.
J- Oh, big deal. I mean, I think mostly writers listen to our show, but we also know there is a ton of crossover with other freelance creatives. So I am really excited about this very, very slight detour.
W- I totally agree. And I think there's so much that writers can learn from photographers too.
J- Yes. I love the cross-pollination of ideas and philosophies between fields. I think we totally have more in common than not.
W- Totally. So, all that being said, joining us this week is Daniella Zalcman. Full disclosure, I've known of Daniella since before I was a journalist and she is a force. Actually, when I was starting my career as a journalist and wanted to learn to how to apply for grants, she was the one I asked actually.
J- Oh, I didn't know that. That's awesome.
W- Yeah. She's just a pro. Daniella is a documentary photographer and a self-described "Western imperialism, correspondent" who splits time between Paris and New York. Her work has been supported by the national geographic society, the Pulitzer center on crisis reporting the international women's media foundation and open society foundations. She is also the founder and executive director of Women Photograph, a nonprofit that elevates the work of women and non-binary visual journalists.
J- Writers, and editors: If you're listening to this right now and you need to hire a photographer, you no longer have an excuse, not to hire someone off of Women Photograph
W- Yeah. 10 out of 10 endorse. I asked Daniella to come on because she runs a tight ship. She gets a ton of grants to support her work. We talked about that, her money mindset, how she stays organized, her best freelance business advice and so much more. Here is that interview.
W- Hi, Daniella, and welcome to The Writers Co-op.
D- Thank you so much for having me.
W- Yeah. It's lovely to have you on here. I've been following your adventures during the pandemic. To start off, want to tell us what you're working on right now?
D- Sure. I mean, I think the answer is for once in my life, not that much, just because so much of my work is predicated on intimate contact with humans. And a lot of that is just not safe right now, but I did just get back from a month in the Arctic looking at climate change and the sea ice minimum. And that was really exciting. And then sort of in the background of all of my work, I'm constantly working on the nonprofit that I founded a few years ago called Women Photograph. And we've got our annual workshop coming up next week, which is really exciting. Except unfortunately this year for the first time, it'll be a virtual version. So exciting and different, and we're trying some new things out and we'll see how it goes.
W- Yeah, I think 2020 is the year of pivoting experimentation. That's where we're at. So Daniella, I want to start because Jenni and I talk a lot about, you know, when we think about the shape of our freelance business and how we run a freelance business, our upbringing more or less shapes our relationship with money. So I'm curious, what was that like for you and how do those experiences shape your relationship with money and ultimately what impact did that have on how you run your freelance business?
D- You know, my experience was one of growing up in significant comfort and financial privilege, but within both my parents and grandparents generation sort of experienced the entire span of poverty to wealth. And so I think that very much translated into how I was brought up, how I was raised. You know, my dad grew up in a very working class home in Kansas city, Missouri. His mom was a seamstress. His dad owned and ran grocery stores and liquor stores. They themselves are both Eastern European Jewish immigrants who were fleeing pogroms and the persecution of Jews in Eastern Europe. And then my mother herself is an immigrant who came from Vietnam in the 1960s. And she grew up in a pretty affluent well-to-do Vietnamese family, but she left it all behind and came to America with absolutely nothing and worked three jobs to make her way through undergrad and grad school and law school. And then, you know, my parents ended up a doctor and a lawyer. So my own upbringing was very comfortable, but I think I was never allowed to take that comfort for granted just because both of my parents had really experienced what it was like to not have any money at all and to fight through that. So I have been lucky, but I also, I think I've had maybe more perspective than someone in my position might otherwise have had. My mother was a federal prosecutor at the department of justice and she decided that she wanted to quit her job and become a full-time mom when she had me and because of who she is and because of her personality, she decided that she needed something else to do. And so she became a professional investor in the stock market essentially.
W- Oh, wow.
D- I mean, she's incredibly good at it. She's very financially savvy. And so my entire life, my mother has been teaching me about how to save and how to invest. And every single Sunday morning she would sit down with a newspaper and cut coupons. And so, you know, that that is very much my understanding of money through the lens of what she taught me as a kid. So, you know, I'm in many ways — which is maybe ironic for someone who is a professional freelancer and has been a freelancer my entire career, I am quite conservative with the ways in which I budget. I think I am extremely focused on making sure that I'm always saving and always setting money aside. But it's an interesting thing to balance with an extremely erratic way of making a living. So, you know, I try to be safe and try to be cautious, but every once in a while I can think to myself, "Oh my God, my mother would freak out if she knew this is how I live my life".
W- Yeah. What would my mother do is, uh, a way to think about saving for me, for sure. I definitely relate to that. Daniella let's take a step back because a lot of our audience is writers and you are our first photographer on the show. Why don't we back up for a second and explain how photographers or photo journalists make monies. How do you sustain a freelance career as a photographer or a photo journalist?
D- So, I suspect the answer is similar for writers, although maybe not in quite the same diverse range of ways, but the truth is there is no one set path for photo journalists and documentary photographers and professional photographers. I think because of the way the editorial industry has gone, even though I consider myself first and foremost, a photojournalist, there are so many ways you can diversify your business as a photographer. And so for me, I have sort of three main avenues in which I do that, but there are so many options and I think it is kind of necessary at this point for photo journalists to be able to diversify, whether your side hustle is in weddings or in commercial gigs and advertising, or in being a stills photographer on movie sets or teaching, which is the case for me, there are so many different ways you can have secondary income that is related to, and maybe even sort of bolsters, your practice as a journalist. But increasingly it's becoming really tough to make your living just off of editorial assignments alone.
D- Maybe at the beginning of my career, that was my, my intent was to do that. And it never really happened and I've always had some form of secondary income. As a college student I was a bartender and I also designed websites. I've always had something. And it's just been a matter for me of crafting what to me is the most enriching and fulfilling sort of secondary side hustle. I should probably stop calling it that. But you know, secondary source of income or tertiary source of income. And so now I'm at a place where they're things that I think really compliment and strengthen the work that I do in the field that I'm most passionate about. But I think all working photographers have those secondary things that they work on and are necessary if you want to be able to pay your bills.
W- That makes a lot of sense. You're right. It is really similar in writing and that diversification of income is something that we really stress in terms of running a freelance business. So what are your three buckets right now and how did you figure those buckets out?
D- For me it was partially predicated by how I wanted to work. So, you know, I started out, I wanted to be a journalist since I was about 12 or so, and for me, journalism meant newspapers. And so when I started, I was a freelance photo journalist for the New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times. And that initially was sort of the be all end all to me of being a photo journalist. And then after a few years, I started to realize, you know, my strength as a photo journalist, and the thing that I love most is the fact that I'm deeply empathetic. I'm very good at connecting to people. And because of that, I want to actually take time with the stories that I work on. And I realized that, you know, it was, it was becoming sort of emotionally exhausting to me to have an average newspaper assignment that gave me maybe three hours with a story when I really wanted to spend weeks or months, or maybe even years on a story instead.
And so in thinking about how to design a job for myself, a career for myself, that would allow me to do that, I realized that grants were kind of the only way. There are fewer than five publications, I think, in the world anymore that allow for you to go out into the field for months at a time in a real supported way. So without being able to just immediately start working for one of those outlets as a 22 year old, I realized that I needed another system. And so I started applying for grants. I started trying to figure out, okay, what do I need to do to get to the point where I can be given grants and trusted by organizations that are grant makers? And then this will give me the funding, and most importantly, the luxury of time to work on the stories that I care most about. And then sort of with that coincidentally, because with the organizations I was working with came teaching, and I fell in love with teaching and also fell in love with the way it made me actually explain myself over and over again. And that kind of engagement, especially with teenagers, just worked out to be sort of perfect. Those three things, editorial assignments, grants, and teaching just worked out for me to be the sort of the ideal practice.
W- I love that. And I really like what you said about how it's so hard to have dedicated time and the resources, especially money to compensate you for those long-term projects. How do photographers usually make money?
D- There's a huge range. And I think for people who are really focused on editorial work, you absolutely can hustle and work five day shifts a week. And if you're working for the right publications where, you know, maybe now the day rates have gone up to somewhere in the 450 to 650 range, it's possible. You can absolutely live in New York City, work five days a week as a freelancer and pay your bills and be okay. But it's a huge grind. And so I think there are some people who are really cut out for hard daily news and that's great. And I know a lot of people who do that really well. For me, I wanted a bit of a slower pace. So for me, grants really allow for that. And the problem with grants sort of earlier on is that I was getting grants that really only paid for the hard cost of reporting. And that was still great. And that was still a huge step for me, but it meant that while my travel expenses were covered, I wasn't actually being paid for my time. And so my overhead expenses at home, my rent, you know, my phone bill, all these other costs that I was incurring just by existing and being away from home, those weren't being taken care of. So, you know, I think A) grant making organizations have become more proactive about saying, "Oh, we will also fund the cost of your creative fee. We will also fund childcare. We will also fund, you know, all of these secondary things that are very real for freelance creatives." Especially freelance creatives who do not have existing financial privilege. I think there's been a much better shift towards creating infrastructure for that.
W- And then at the end of all those long-term projects, are you getting paid a project fee for what you ultimately publish? How does that work?
D- Yes. It depends who you're working with. So, you know, for the first five or six grants I got were from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting based in DC. And so for them, they cover the hard cost of reporting, but they have no claim to the work. They both want and expect you to place that work in an editorial outlet. So those editorial outlets are then paying me to license the work. And, you know, as I progressed in my career, I got better at figuring out how to market the work, how to sell it to the right publications, how to actually earn enough off of those pieces that essentially constituted a fair creative rate. If you work for other outlets like National Geographic Society, for instance, that's not necessarily guaranteed, because part of the National Geographic Society contract is if they give you a grant, then NGP the magazine, the channel, they have the editorial, right to any work you produce, but NGS will also allow you to write into your grant application your creative fee. So there are all these different negotiations and you really have to be aware of what you can bill into your budget. You know, what you have the right to ask for. And you also need to know what money are you going to be able to make down the road from your work?
W- Yeah, this makes a lot of sense. So your incredible success in getting grants for a huge portion of your freelance career is why I asked you to come on in the first place. So how did you get started? How did you put yourself on the grant cycle?
D- Something that I stress to all early career photographers and anyone really applying for grants is that, you know, it's a numbers game and there are tons of extremely talented, very deserving potential grantees. And so if you're not getting them, it doesn't mean that your work is not good. It doesn't mean that your application is not good. You just need to keep workshopping it. You just need to keep asking for feedback, either from the grantmakers themselves, from colleagues, from peers, you trust. And also you just, you know, once you throw enough darts at the dartboard, one of them will stick. And so that was definitely my attitude. And I think the other problem is when you're at the very beginning of your career, you don't have an established track record. You don't have a way of proving to a grantmaker: I can do this. You can trust me. I will be a reliable journalist who will deliver on the things I say I will deliver. And so for my first ever project, you know, when I was still a press photographer in New York city, I would usually save up money from editorial assignments and then take a month off a year and go work on a project elsewhere that I really cared about, but that usually put me in the hole several thousand dollars because I was too young. I wasn't an amazing photographer yet. I couldn't sell the work. Outlets thought the projects I was working on were too obscure. But through blind luck, more or less, in 2011, I went to South Sudan with a colleague who's actually a mutual friend of ours, how we met kind of, because South Sudan was becoming the newest country in the world. And that seemed important and momentous from a news standpoint. So the two of us who were both freelance press photographers in New York city decided, okay, we're, we're going to do this. We're going to figure out how to do it. And we went, and I think for both of us, the trip was kind of a dud in terms of the actual coverage of South Sudan, because America really had a very brief attention span when it came to that country, even though we were deeply involved in its politics. That's another talk. But while I was there, while we were in the process of waiting for our visas we were in Uganda and I ended up stumbling across the story of the LGBTQ community in Kampala and all of these things they were going through with an anti-gay bill and with their sort of first LGBTQ rights activist who'd been murdered relatively recently. And so I ended working on a separate story and then a year later, Uganda actually ended up passing this anti-gay law that I had just started learning about. And I think it was that — it was the fact that I had already been there. I'd already done some of the work. I had established contacts with people in this community who then trusted me, that allowed me to go to the Pulitzer Center and say, hey, there's this urgent newsworthy thing that I really think I need to return to continue to document. Would you please give me $3,000 to spend a month in Uganda? And that was the first time that I grantor said yes.
W- So once you get the first one, what does it take to keep that going?
D- Most of all, it's really just, you deliver the things that grantmakers are asking you to deliver. And again, every single grantor is different. So with the Pulitzer Center, it's editorial placement. You credit them, you do a couple in the field transmissions, essentially blog posts for them. But you know, those requirements, those deliverables change for every single organization. And I think just being communicative, being reliable, delivering the things you say you'll deliver. I think it's much less about, you know, is the work brilliant? Does it transcend some sort of, you know, human understanding and journalism? I think more than anything, if you are reliable and diligent, I think that matters most.
W- Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. It's like same thing with writing. File the story at the word, count by the deadline, follow the rules. And you'll probably get another assignment from that client. How many grants are you applying for in a given year these days?
D- It really depends. You know, I think in the beginning I was applying for sort of those micro grants, especially from the Pulitzer Center. So usually I think that $3,000 to $7,000 a pop, usually that would keep me in the field about four to six weeks, depending on where in the world I was reporting. That worked really well for me. I would apply for multiple grants for an individual project. So it would allow me to sort of go back into the field for the same story. But my timeline's always expanding of how long I want to work on projects. And particularly for this project I've been working on for the past six years called Signs of Your Identity. I started to want to spend a year in the field working in one specific region. And so that's sort of has escalated both the amount of funding that I need and also, I just want to be able to apply for one chunk of money that sustains me for a much longer period of time, instead of having to sort of chase down these smaller amounts. So I think for 2018, I secured $60,000 in funding from National Geographic and Open Society foundations. And that was incredible because it just allowed me to work for a year without having to worry. And I also ended up getting my first National Geographic Magazine assignment that year. And so it was sort of when it rains, it pours and I had more than I could really handle in a year maybe. But having that year that I could allocate to just focusing on a project without having to worry, to scramble, to worry about overhead costs, to worry about anything like that, that was a huge amount of editorial freedom.
W- Are you now deliberately more seeking out grants that will also give you a stipend or some equivalent of a salary?
D- Yeah, absolutely. And sometimes that can be in how you sort of piece together grants. So when I say $60,000, that was actually two $30,000 grants. And, you know, both institutions knew that I had secured a grant from the other institution and they were totally okay with there being overlap. That's not always the case, but somehow, sometimes that also gives you the freedom to sort of piece together a proper living wage. If one outlet is looking to cover, for instance, just hard costs of reporting, but another is okay with covering expenses that are, you know, a little more to do with living expenses, then you can sort of cobble together a few overlapping grants. And I sometimes do that as well .
W- More about this math, right? Because it sounds like, and maybe I'm putting words in your mouth, but does the work like you have an idea in your mind of how much money you need to make every year. And then you basically look at that number and kind of ask yourself what projects do you want to work on? How do you add the values of the grants up to that target income? And how do you think about that process?
D- I don't know if that's true. I think it's maybe the opposite of that. I see what I can get. And then based on that, I then know how much time I can spend out in the field on what projects. And so it's a combination of sometimes I go straight to an editorial outlet. Like I have this project I've worked on for about five years, documenting a Syrian family who went on the refugee trail. They were from Morocco and they were scattered across Europe. And that has been an editorial partnership first. And so every time I have another chapter of that story I want to work with, I go to my editor at Mashable and say: Hey, Majid now has residency in Norway. I I'd like to go there. And so that amount will get approved. It's this very complicated sort of financial Tetris of this is the thing I want to work on; Can I get editorial backing? Which I think in some regards can be the best because it's, it's the most fluid, right? If, if the situation changes, if you have expenses that come up unexpectedly, you're more likely to be able to submit extra receipts and get that covered. So sometimes that's better. And if that doesn't work, then can you secure grants to get you a month of time, essentially to go work on a project? And if that doesn't work okay, how can I make secondary income from a different source that I can then save and put that towards the project that I really am most passionate about? So it's Frogger with money and work.
W- Yeah. Financial Tetris is a great way to describe how I think about all of this as well. Can you say a little bit more about money? How much do grants currently contribute to your income? Right now?
D- It has ranged dramatically from year to year. So the first grant I got from the Pulitzer Center we think was in 2013. I think there have been years where it has constituted as much as 70% of my income. There have been years where it has constituted closer to 20 to 25% of my income. 2018 is the best year I've had to date. And I think you're going to ask me about this figure anyway. So I want to share it. I made $120,000 in that year.
W- Hell yeah.
D- My income has ranged in the past five years from I think probably $60-120,000. So obviously there's a huge amount of sort of erratic back and forth within that. Like I mentioned, the year that I got the $60,000 in grants and I also got a National Geographic Magazine assignment, a lot of that grant funding I just set aside and it gave me about another five months in the field, the subsequent year when I wasn't making nearly as much money, but I still had sort of the, the time and the freedom to go and pursue my projects.
W- What is your system of keeping all of these grants in mind? How are you organizing it? I think people who get started usually want to ask me, where's the database of all the grants, and I'm curious how you keep it straight for yourself.
D- So I'm not actually very good at, you know, I think there are some photographers who were just absolute pros and hunting out hunting for grant funding, especially in unexpected places. I kind of have like five usual suspects I go to. And I think I'm lucky in that some of them are organizations that like having return grantees and like sort of facilitating that kind of relationship. So I haven't maybe needed to branch out as much, but I probably also should. So for me, it's really the Pulitzer Center, Magnum Foundation, National Geographic Society, Open Society Foundations. That has constituted a huge percent of the grant funding that I've secured, but there are also a ton of resources out there. So, you know, like Women Photograph, the nonprofit that I run, we maintain our own database of deadlines for upcoming grants and awards and contests, because I think it is really important, especially for early career photographers. Not all of this information is necessarily obvious or immediately accessible if you haven't heard of some of these organizations before, if you're not connected to someone who works at one of them. So we do try to make that information transparent becauseI feel like I kind of had to figure it out on my own, and as much as possible I like to share that information with other people.
W- What advice do you have for writers, photographers, freelancers who want to make grants a part of their freelance career in business? What advice do you have for people starting out?
D- Well, I think writers are in a much easier position because you're writers. And so you understand the power and the importance of being a succinct, compelling writer. I think photographers don't always understand that. And sometimes it's because of the way photographic and photojournalistic education is structured, that it is deemphasized. And unfortunately I do see occasionally some photojournalists who believe that writing is not a part of their job description and should not be a part of their practice, which I really question. Being able to write compellingly about your own projects and why they matter, not just to you, but also to your broader audience. You know, what is the historical context? How do you root it in both existing work and the way you envision the storytelling of this particular history and narrative, being able to speak clearly and concisely about the work that you are doing or that you hope to do is vital. Especially if you're looking for, you know, third party, foundational nonprofit funding. So the only way to really learn how to do that is just by doing it and getting it wrong and trying again, and reaching out to people. I give a lot of talks about grant writing and I make old grant applications available to people because I think that's the best way for us to learn is to see examples. And I think the most important resources are our friends and colleagues and having them sit down and say, look, does this make sense? I've been staring at this word document for five days and it doesn't make sense to me anymore, but is this clear? Do you understand it? Does it feel compelling to you? Do you understand what it is that I'm talking about and why I care about it? And do you care about it? And figuring out how to collectively workshop those ideas together, I think is a really solid way of advancing your grant writing techniques.
W- I love that. I think Jenni and I do a lot of workshops on pitches and we give feedback all the time on people's pitches. And my first question is always, so why do we care? And I think that's a critical question to ask, you know, as we're writing a story, as we're writing a grant application, why should somebody else care? How do I convince them to give money to fund this thing that I care about? That's the, the forever question.
D- And I think it's also, I think it's useful to think about it both in terms of why do I, the journalist, care? Because it's partially an issue of what is my relationship and positionality to the story? What is my relationship to the community or the history? And then, yeah, how do you broaden it out into a much bigger context? How do you make other people care about it once you've established why you are so important to telling this story specifically? So I think being able to strike that balance is also critical
W- And knowing what the funder wants to in a way.
D- That's maybe the most important thing. And sometimes that's hard to suss out and again, that's why community is really important. So you can ask someone: Hey, like what does this organization care most about? And, you know, the answer is not always obvious. And so, you know, having people who have experienced and who have gone through the process, I think is really helpful.
W- Definitely last question for you, Daniella, what is the best business decision that you've made?
D- I've been thinking about this and I don't know. I think this is something you've done recently too —I think the best business decision I've ever made, and because of my mother, I am generally an extremely frugal person, but I think the first time in my career, I decided to hire an assistant. I realized, Oh my God, this frees me up to think about so many other things, because I'm not scanning my receipts. I'm not like uploading all of my notes. I'm not scanning all of my film. I'm not like spending 30 hours this week doing things that I can very easily have this very nice young photographer do for me — paid, obviously. So I think learning to manage my time as sort of the number of things on my plate has kind of exploded. It seems counterintuitive because sometimes I think, God, do I need to spend this money on this? But no, I do. It's actually very helpful for my mental health and my productivity. So I think learning when I need to just pay for help has been a big business decision.
W- You're right. I did recently hire an assistant. I've had one for over a year and I think I wrestled with that same question as well of I have experienced training scientists and I know it's always a deal to train somebody up, right? So you want to make sure that investment is worthwhile, but once you get into a groove, I find it really productive. And for people like us who are normally on the road, many months of the year, it frees up so much more space and time for us to stay focused. I think that's the big one for me.
D- Yeah, absolutely. You can really. And you just have more room in your headspace, right? To, to think about the story that you're currently trying to write or the planning for that project that's coming up and that's really critical. Creative people need some of that extra room to do their thing passively. And I think it's really easy for us to forget that sometimes, especially when we're a little more right-brained
W- Daniella, it's been lovely and I'm so glad we got to chat about this. Thank you so much for coming on to talk to us. This was a pleasure.
D- Yeah, for me too. Thank you so much for having me.
J- That was super great to hear about Daniella's work.
W- She's amazing. I mean, go take a look at her work. It's beautiful. Her webpage is in the show notes. I really appreciated her candor about making grants work and the reality, especially the financial reality of what it takes to get them off the ground.
J- For sure. And I also think it's important to point out that it's really hard work to get to a point where grants help you feel creatively fulfilled and help you make a living. Yes, exactly. Nobody's going to hand you that grant. You have to go and work for it. I'm going to put a caveat on this whole episode and say that I think there are actually more opportunities to fund specifically non-fiction and non memoir writing right now.
J- Yeah. And because of COVID, I think it's really important to check what funders are looking to prioritize. Wudan is really good at this, but when we apply for grants, we really try to speak to their asks.
W- Yeah. Daniella and I even talked about that. It's about kind of what the funder's priorities are as well. So for this episode, if you're a Patreon, we are going to include some resources on grant writing. We have a template that you can use to track grants and writing residencies, a bundle of Daniella's successful grant applications and her top tips on crafting grant applications.
J- I love it. That sounds like great stuff.
W- Well, I think that's it for this week. Next episode is our members' questions and our answers.
J- That is one of my favorite episodes each season. So I can't wait. Wudan, I will see you soon on the internet.
W- Bye Jenni.
W- Season two of The Writers' Co-op is made possible by a grant from the International Women's Media Foundation. Susan Valot is our editor and Jen Monnier handles research, admin and more as our producer. The Writers' Co-op is hosted by me, Wudan Yan and Jenni Gritters.
