Planning a Grant Writing Course with Wordsworkers
Ellenor Day, a grant writer and course builder from Wordsworkers, a regional South Australian business, reached out to Unashamedly Creative for coaching to develop a grant writing course. Ellenor’s goal was to create a course that could help individuals and organisations in the not-for-profit, sporting, and arts sectors. She wanted to design a course that delivered great results without a big-ticket price to reach for a broad range of students without sacrificing long-term sustainability or inviting burnout.
Unashamedly Creative worked with Ellenor over three sessions via the Creative Change Coaching Program to develop her grant writing course.
Objectives
To help Ellenor develop and prepare to test a robust, practical, and accessible grant writing course. Together, we addressed such as planning, mindset, pricing, and student engagement.
This included looking at:
- Course Scope: Defining the length, depth, and breadth of the course to ensure it was practical and manageable.
- Target Market Drivers: Defining the target market for the course and tailoring the scope and user experience, as well as marketing messaging, to suit.
- Beta Testing Management: Planning for beta testing of the grants course and crafting a strategy to launch, effectively recruit beta testers, and run a time sensitive, appealing first test of the course material.
- Developing the Course From Beta to Scale: Removing potential issues with product development by ensuring that what can be taught for one can scale to 100.
- Mindset Support: Encouraging confidence during course creation, maintaining focus on priorities, and avoiding overdevelopment to please potential students.
- Pricing Strategy: Balancing affordability with a sustainable pricing model that compensates Ellenor effectively. Including options for accessible pricing and other pricing mechanisms.
- Sales Copy: Reviewing the copy to ensure that the target market’s needs are met and the right opportunities within sales copy are leveraged.
- IP and Revenue Protection: Addressing bundling opportunities, intellectual property safeguards, and sales management.
- Student Engagement: Planning strategies for enrolment, communication, and ongoing student support without inviting unreasonable standards of customer service.
- Timetabling: Organising a realistic schedule for course development, beta testing, and eventual launch. As well as how to timetable subsequent releases in a calendar year.
Results
Ellenor is now fully equipped with a clear roadmap to bring their course to market in early 2025. They have a well-defined curriculum, well written sales page, and a beta testing plan to refine the offering. Plus, they’ve walked away with sound strategies for pricing, IP protection, and systems for managing student engagement.
Even though the course hasn’t debuted, Ellenor’s meticulous planning gives her the assurance that it will be a sustainable, influential, and successful learning experience. By focusing on student accessibility and achievable outcomes, this approach balances the needs of future learners with the course creator’s time, energy, and resources.
What Ellenor had to say:
I really enjoyed my sessions with Bek as part of her Creative Change Coaching program. I’ve got a grant-writing course in progress for about 6 years. It’s one of those personal projects that, with no real deadline, has always been put on the backburner while I busily work on projects for my clients instead.
With Bek’s help, I have made more progress in the past 6 weeks than I ever have before. I will be launching my course in February. I’m also more clear about the type of work I want to do (and what I don’t want to do) in the future so that I can work smarter and scale my business.
Thanks Bek!
Want to try the grant writer’s course for yourself? Find out more about Ellenor Day and her grant writing course, you can meet her in her grant-getter Facebook group or via the Wordsworkers website.