public agencies struggle to balance their budgets in an effort to meet an ever-increasing demand for technology. With the public screaming for text to 911 services, in addition to multimedia pictures and videos, how is the IT manager for a public safety agency going to keep up with the technology creep that's occurring every day.

"New every two" is a popular term with cellular providers, and this brings forth new capabilities and functionality in the endpoint devices. In public safety you're lucky if you get "new every 22". Financing critical investments required to keep public safety operating and in sync with the public that it serves is difficult, and often impossible when relying on budgets that are constantly cut, or even worse raided for another purpose.

One area that's often overlooked our grant programs provided by the federal and state governments. But in order to take advantage of grants that are appropriate or available to you, as an agency, it may be time to start a grant seeking plan to identify and pursue the $400 billion+ that's available in federal and state grants as well as private foundation funding that is available each year.

I asked Esta dirección electrónica esta protegida contra spambots. Es necesario activar Javascript para visualizarla , business development director for the Avaya public safety team, to find a way to assist agencies in capturing some of these grant monies. What Gavin came back with, is the Avaya Grant Assistance Program. In a nutshell, Avaya has teamed up with the experts At Grants Office, LLC to help its clients and prospects navigate the grants landscape.

Avaya offers this no fee assistance to nonprofit government, educational, or healthcare groups to:

• Research and identify grants that are aligned with your projects
• Provide consultation to answer your grants related questions
• Provide a grant seeking strategy to track future grant and deadlines

How do you take advantage of this? Simple.

• You first need to start the process by contacting your Avaya representative.
• You then submit a simple Information Collection Tool (ICT) where you can articulate and capture the details of your project or need, and describe how your organization benefits from the project and what measurable outcomes you wish to achieve.
• Within about a week after the ICT is submitted, you'll receive a free Grants Research Report from our grant consultant that describes in detail the available grant opportunities.

After this point, if internal resources aren't an option for grant writing within your agency, we can help provide a list of proven grant writers who you can contract for their grant writing services.

Now I'm not to put the suit jacket on with all the question marks, and start dancing around Washington DC, but you get the idea. $400 billion each year is available at the federal state and private foundation level. If you're not at least investigating, at no charge mind you, the possibility of capturing some of that money to upgrade your agency in the next generation 911 and beyond, you're missing the boat on what potentially could be a significant resource for additional funding on your project.

If you need more information, go the Avaya Grants Assistance link to get help in identifying grant opportunities that are available to you.

 

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