Sara Terry

I’ve got some questions that I was asked to talked about. The first is what kinds of research can you do to make sure your application is going to stand out. A really, really important thing in doing a successful grant proposal is to first research the grant organization itself. You would be amazed at how many proposals we get for the Aftermath Project about the environment or other topics that don’t meet our specific definition of “conflict”. One of things you can do with any responsible granting organization is to reach out and say “Does this meet your criteria?” And I recommend reaching out early— not waiting until the last 72 hours — because you’ll be much less likely to get a thoughtful response at the last minute.

You also research who has won. At the Aftermath Project, we’re a very small granting organization, we just did our 10th grant. Especially early on, I’d be amazed how many people would submit things with no consciousness of who won the grant the previous year. Very rarely is any organization going to give a grant on the same subject matter two years running. So you really need to know the history of the granting organization. There was a period of time where if you looked carefully at the Dorothea Lange–Paul Taylor Prize that comes out of Duke University grants they had given, one year it would be a grant for an American project, and the next year, it would be a grant for an international project for about ten years in a row. So you knew that if it was national grant one year, the next year would be an international grant and if you submitted a national grant, you didn’t really stand a chance. I think they’ve changed that now, it’s hard to tell, but that’s part of the information you can tell from researching past recipients.

When I won an Alicia Patterson Grant for “Aftermath: Bosnia’s Long Road to Peace” at one point the grant went mostly to print journalists, there would be one photographer every once and a while. And I applied once with my Bosnia work and didn’t get it so I went back to apply again and I thought “you know I’m going to read this more carefully this time.” At that point, they said they specifically wanted to support projects that would make a difference in the way that news is reported, since the Alicia Patterson Grant came out of a newspaper woman’s background. So I went back to my proposal and I proposed four specific stories and wrote about how this story is meeting a need that isn’t being covered in the news — and that was the year I won the grant. It obviously also has to do with the strength of your photographs but if your proposal is really good, it’ll get you to the finalist stage.

The way it works for the Aftermath Project is first we cut you if your photographs aren’t very good. Then we still move forward a bit on the strength of the photographs and then when we get down to about 40 or 50, it’s really about the strength of the proposal. And then when you’re in that final 10–15, it’s really neck and neck between the quality of your proposal, your understanding of an Aftermath post-conflict story, and who we recognized in past years.

Also, don’t give up on applying for grants. Legend has it that Mary Ellen Mark didn’t get her Guggenheim until her fourteenth time. I know people who give up after once and I’m like “no, no, no! Keep going!” I applied once with my Bosnia work, didn’t get it. And then I applied once at the beginning with my Africa work and didn’t get it and then I came back one more time with my Africa work after I was partway through and that’s when I won the Guggenheim. And what I’ve noticed about tone of voice is with the Guggenheim, they look for confidence. They want to see that you’re at a turning point in your work and your career and you have to be able to write about why it matters. There’s a confidence they look for.

Another question I was asked was whether to talk to judges: Never approach the judges. But you can talk to other photographers, especially other photographers who have won in the past.