September can be an important marker for a lot of yearly transitions - students from kindergarten to graduate school return to the classroom, Fall begins, Monday night Football returns. However, for public agencies and nonprofit organizations, it should also herald the start to a new season of grantseeking.

Regina Renaldi is the Executive Director of Priority Programs at St. Vrain Valley School District in Colorado. St. Vrain received the highest scoring application in the Investing in Innovation (i3) grant competition. Ms. Renaldi was generous enough to sit down and discuss with us the i3 grant and St. Vrain's grantseeking in general. This is our conversation.

As many of us know, the release of a grant program’s guidance document usually occurs roughly six weeks before the grant’s application deadline date. In the event that a current deadline is missed, common practice indicates that a would-be applicant should be targeting a submission to the next available offering.
Don’t approach this “down time” with idle hands–understand that there is always important work to be done with the next submission in mind.