Arts Grant Acquittal
Sigh... what is more annoying than applying for grants? Well... I would say that doing the grant acquittal at the end after the event is right up there!
Sure, getting the extra grant money is really really really nice! But as a musician, when the concert is done... the concert is DONE! And for most of my musician life... well, that means that you walk off stage and move on to the next project!
But since founding a small music ensemble and arts organisation with my wife... well, the concert is the most pleasurable part of the whole experience... but it is not finished with the concert. There is the administrative, financial, and logistical wrap up of everything... to mention the last trails of publicity... reviews, donor contacts, and audience and volunteer thank you emails.
It usually takes about a week to finally wrap everything up completely... and to get it all out of our heads.
... and the bulk of that work has fallen to me, but my wife handles a good chunk of the prep publicity... and she is starting to learn the post-concert wrapping as well.
But the grant acquittals is still on my plate... as I'm the one who generally does the complete submission (with input from my wife... ) and so, I'm the most familiar with the whole process... and especially the budgeting side of things, which my wife is really not so good at!
And what I hate about the acquittal process is trying to state and present all the outcomes in the manner that addresses the funding priorities from the funding body... and quite often, I will have written the application several months ago... and I honestly won't remember what I have written, and so I have to re-read and re-familiarise myself with all of that before starting the acquittal proper.
... and I sort of know that pretty much everything won't be read at all... but I like to be comprehensive about it and do it properly. And thankfully, learning how to write on HIVE has given me so much practice in trying to order my thoughts into a coherent written piece... although, given the state of this particular post... you probably wouldn't know it! On the other hand, we have had the very enviable record of 4 from 6 grant applications being successful... so, something seems to have stuck, even if I don't know what it is!
Anyway, I'm hoping to have tied this one up in a day or two... in between other concerts.
... and then we can move to the financial wrapping and reconciliation of the past two weeks of concerts and mini-festival! These are definitely NOT skills that we were taught in the music conservatorium...

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Ahh the business side of running the business. I hated it so much I quit my business XD If you don't mind doing it or the concert part of things is more than enough to offset then all is well and good but if you're finding it a bit of a grind it might not be the worst idea to hire someone to do the bits you particularly hate if you have the budget for it :)
It's fine this is the fun writing XD Important thing is doing it "properly" for the grants and whatever else you need to write properly for right XD
Well they're teaching you how to play music there right? I only know vaguely what they involve from the descriptions but TAFE has music performance and music production courses (Youngest chose to do performance) and I don't know if production teaches you how to do all that nonsense or if it's literally just the studio stuff, but a unit on specifically that coupled with some business units probably wouldn't hurt as part of the course unless it's the kind of thing that needs a whole thing of its own.
Haha... my grant writing looks like a slightly more formal version of my HIVE writing! It has more complete sentences and more finished thoughts, but otherwise... it is still a touch chatty!
Yeah, the conservatorium does teach music... well, after a fashion... but given that a tiny percentage of students will ever perform, it is critical to teach other skills as well... which they don't bother with. Something about purity of art?
I donno I've never done a pure arts degree XD The one that I did which was technically an arts degree but we did learn some stuff about writing proposals and doing pitches and by the time sibling dearest landed on the same course there were even more practical things involved.
Will be interesting to see how much of this stuff comes up when Youngest starts his music course O_O
I'd say getting denied for stupid reasons is probably the worst part of applying for grants! :)
Yep... we've been denied for reasons that we didn't include or justify something... which was right there in the explaination/budget...
... and then we were told that the peers (artists) find it difficult to open and read Excel sheets and get freaked out by numbers.
... sigh... like the numbers and words that belong in a budget?
Ugh, that's too bad. People are just so dumb sometimes.