I agree with Chick. The one thing to remember though is that it is against the law to undly influence a government official to acquire a grant so you can't take them to lunch or dinner or take gifts.

And the actual grant decisions are made by impartial panels made up of individuals outside the office to which you are applying.

That said, however, here's what I learned while working in a grant making office in D.C.

First of all we had this incredibly ambiguous legislation that basically said, "Go forth and do good things." The wording of most actual laws is something like that.

Then we had these even more ambiguous regulations that basically said "good things" are... Hmmmm. Well, they're "good, excellent, fabulous, and fantastic." (I wrote some of those and was instructed to make them as ambiguous as possible)

Neither we nor the panels that made the decisions had a clue which grants actually were "good, excellent, fabulous and fantastic," but if a grant came in with those words in it and the applicant said the project was "good, excellent, fabulous and fantastic," the panel approved that grant and we sent them millions of dollars.
It was a lot like the old Groucho Marx program and "good, excellent, fabulous and fantastic," were the secret words. If you said the secret words, you won the million dollars.

So when I am applying for a grant, I too try to make a friend in the grant making office and I ask about the legislation and the regulations and while I'm talking to them, I make notes of any buzz words they use. Be sure to ask them what their grants are for and listen carefully to the buzz words are and write them down then use them in your proposal.

If you say the secret words, you may just win the million dollars.

Worked for me.
smile