If I could give no stars, or negative stars, I would have. The course and the organization are totally unprofessional. The materials sent are filled with outdated information, formatting, grammatical, and spelling errors aplenty. It’s like they just tossed something out without reviewed. The “instructors” are also unprofessional, I didn’t learn the name of one until I asked at the third lesson. Feedback is poor, it takes them time to respond, and you’re lucky if you get a coherent sentence to review. The test at the end is a joke, filled with trivial matters such as International Grant Writers Day that are used multiple times, and worse, you’re timed for each section. In that way, you’ll have to retake the section not passed, but I was so frustrated by how the test was poorly prepared, I just use this example to be more careful next time. And if you need a professional organization, choose Grant Professionals Association (GPA), the polar opposite of AGWA. Don5 make the same mistake I and others did; run, don’t walk away from AGWA!
I believe the Grant Writer Certification course may be referred to something just short of a scam. The instructors do not respond in a timely manner - and their courses are time-bound, meaning you must complete in a certain amount of time or PAY for an extension. When the instructors do not respond in a timely manner, it makes it so that it is almost impossible to complete the course within the timeframe (especially if you have a full-time job, family, regular responsibilities, etc.). Then, when you do receive feedback, it is unhelpful, rude, and incorrect. This is all on top of the course materials being extremely dated, disorganized, rife with errors, and irrelevant. How do I know? I am a grant maker of nearly ten years and modern-day philanthropy simply does not operate the way they present it in the course materials. They may consider pausing the program and doing a complete revamp.
HORRIBLE
DO NOT USE THIS PROGRAM
The instructors are terrible, they never answer questions
The materials are outdated and in formats that do not open
The instructors do not respond to emails timely
The phone numbers do not work
I hope this business is shut down because we all got our money back
The teachers are incompetent and condescending, not to mention they only check their email once a day and it's otherwise impossible to reach them. The experience is truly miserable and the teachers show no interest in teaching whatsoever. They don't care if you don't get it and have a "figure it out yourself and stop bothering me" attitude. They treat you like an annoyance. When you do get feedback, it's curt, lacks necessary detail, and doesn't sufficiently teach you how to get it right. You'll often be asking for clarity in their feedback...which you also have to wait for for days at a time.
Good luck finishing in 90 days. Virtually the entire time is spent waiting for feedback or clarification on their comments.
The course materials are riddled with inaccuracies, contradictions, and typos. They're clearly outdated, presented in a confusing way, have tons of extraneous information that isn't relevant and lacks necessary information that is relevant.
Because the teachers are unavailable and unhelpful, you'll mostly be figuring it out yourself. But that's very hard to do when the materials are so poorly written.
I'm assuming you can get far better education elsewhere, if you can even call the AGWA education in any meaningful sense.
First, I have to suggest you read the owner's responses to complaints on the BBB website to truly understand how awful this business is. He responds to the claims in the most pedantic manner and clearly, since I am writing this in 2023 and similar complaints occurred in 2021, he has no intent to update his course material. It is simply a money making scheme disguised as helpful.
Most of the course content was not logically consistent and almost all of it was not current. The "rule" he created for refunds is 8 days, or no refund. I didn't receive the material or feedback for my assignments in 8 days, so how could I possibly assume it would be as bad as it was?
In the second section, it asked for some information based on of a federal regulation that has not existed since 2017. I had to do a deep dive into the archives just to find the regulation and when I did, it still did not cover the information that was being requested. I asked for clarification from my instructor and simply got the regulation copied and pasted in a response. Not helpful.
On section 3 of my course I had to submit 4 revisions because I got conflicting feedback in each response. I think there were several different instructors responding without context. That or the same instructor has too many "students" to keep them straight? I don't know what's worse.
When you receive such terrible course material and such awful feedback, you should be able to request a refund. the business did not deliver.
Please learn from my experience and DO NOT BUY THIS STUFF. You can learn more from googling how to write a grant.
This is an ethical, stable, experienced organization in the world of grants. I was able to earn my Certified Grant Writer® professional credential in less than 90 days - unlike some other reviewers, I found the whole experience to be amazing, and the instructor was extremely helpful in developing my grant writing prowess. I've moved on to incorporate a grants consulting business, which is growing by leaps and bounds. I find a lot of value in the AGWA membership, even savings on my Grant Station subscription. The grant conferences held are excellent - I haven't missed one since 2015.
My school has been wanting me to become part of their grant writing team since I was hired over a year ago. Through many different choices, it was decided that I would pursue AGWA and CGW certification because of the ease of a self-paced class. Thank goodness we got the CGW program at a sale price since it was a terrible experience all around. But we are also going to fight for a refund. My only highlight was my instructor who answered my questions, but all the meaningless tasks to "practice" grant writing skills were pointless.
The reading assignments had no organization to them and were often formatted terribly. For an organization who stresses the use of Sans Serif fonts for writing grant proposals, their readings and assignments were often in a variety of fonts and sizes with varying margins. Often the reading assignments were simply to help you complete the following assignment especially in the later readings. My assignments that I submitted were often "lost" amongst trails of emails. There were typos all throughout everything I received including emails, the website, the readings, assignments, the exam review, and even the exam itself. I attached two photos as an example of the final exam.
Homework assignments were often simply copy and paste numbers from the assignment page into excel spreadsheets and word documents. All homework seemed like rote tasks without much thinking or processing.
The refund policy for this program is way too quick for anyone who really needs one. A student has a week from date of purchase to request a refund. However, it took 48 hours for me to even receive my course materials after purchase. Since each lesson is not released to the student until the previous is completed, a student cannot look at the entire course to see if it fits their needs. By the time the allowed week was up, I had barely gotten through the first lesson.
In the final exam of the course, there are 5 sections. Each is allotted a time limit. However, the questions frequently had typos, and often the terminology that was used throughout the course was not the same as the test questions. There were also topics in the test questions that were never covered in the course.
Upon completion of the coursework, I was told to email the customer service to let them know I was ready for the review and completion certificate. I got the instructions for the review in another email with typos, and no link to the actual review. After waiting for five days, I emailed again to try to get the review. I also had to re-email customer service to get my course completion certificate which arrived via email as a Word document that I could have created in less than 10 minutes. There is also no mention on the certificate for the number of hours of the course, so I can't use it for Continuing Education credits.
When asked by my employers how I would feel today about writing a grant proposal, I said that I felt like I was only 10 percent confident in my skills which is not far from where I started! This program is terrible. I would not recommend this to anyone. Ever.
I would absolutely NOT recommend this organization. Not only were the instructors and Executive Director rude and condescending, the course material was out of date and incorrect. The instructors don't answer your questions, instead they say things like "I'm shocked you don't understand this." How is this helpful and educational? In fact, the actual exam was incorrect. There were multiple questions where the correct answer was not an option. I reached out to the Director who told me that the correct answer was there. What he didn't know was that I was looking at the question while on the phone with him and in fact, the correct answer was NOT there. Do not waste your time and money on these rude and condescending people.
I won't outright say that this organization is a scam.
It does seem to be rather shoddily ran.
After submitting my first assignment, I received no notification. A week later, when I asked, they asked me to resubmit it. They then didn't send my second assignment until I asked them about it, with no explanation. The e-Mails back were short and obscure. Since this is a time sensitive course (you are given 90 days), a delay of one to two weeks, with no explanation given, in giving assignments, is quite detrimental.
This course was actually recommended to me, and paid for, by a family member. So after my negative experience, I went and checked the website, seeing if there was something that I was missing.
This was my first exposure to the website, which is full of typos, bad formatting, and generally bad design. In some cases, we shouldn't "judge a book by its cover", but with an organization that is based a presentation-heavy field, like grant writing, having a bad website is a pretty negative sign right off the bat. Although the organization claims to be prominent, there is no biography listed for the staff or board, and no alumni recommendations.
I gave this two stars, instead of one star, because there is a chance that they are trying their best, and I was just one of the people who didn't get much out of it. Maybe some people do benefit from it. But to me, it was very negative.
Caveat emptor.
The professor is very condescending and rude. At 58 and previously certified, i have gotten million dollar grants but here made to feel incompetent Printouts given and not a book to refer to samples of what they want. Have to guess. Put in many long hours outside of my professional career and it is too stressful just to receive certification from this company. I doubt they have lots of graduates. If so, they should post them like they did 10 years ago.
The American Grant Writers Association (AGWA) is a member based 501c6 that provides Grant Writing and Grant Management training to hundreds of gratified students each year. AGWA provides the opportunity to earn the "Certified Grant Writer®" designation. AGWA does not write grant proposals for any client; our members write grant proposals.
This is an ethical and honest organization. Great service and great prices.
We were able to receive our grant award to help grow our non-profit.
I took an online course in grant writing through this company, and it was awful. The course materials contained many typos, and, to complete the homework assignments, I had to follow links to webpages in pursuit of information, yet the pages had changed since the assignments had been created. Instead of offering what the homework assignment expected, the online information was different or located on other pages that I was forced to seek through a search of a very extensive, multi-layered website. I spent many extra hours of time stressing over it and feeling confused, wondering what I was doing wrong. When I finally realized that the homework itself was the problem, I contacted the professor to request an updated assignment and to express my disappointment in having spent so many wasted hours on the endeavor. He denied that there was a problem and seemed offended and even a little rude. Then I contacted the company who said they knew there was an issue with my course and that they were updating the first assignment and getting ready to send it to the students who had been impacted. Apparently, they weren't going to alert anyone but simply let them struggle in the mean-time. I also explained that the professor had been a little rude to me, but the woman on the phone didn't offer any sort of apology, nor did she apologize for the inconvenience that I had incurred over the non-revised homework assignment, despite that I had a full-time job and had wasted my spare time in a wild goose chase for elusive information. In fact, one homework assignment directed me to download a certain document from a website, and, if I couldn't download it, I was supposed to follow the directions for troubleshooting the technical difficulties. Of course, I couldn't download the document, so I spent many, many hours troubleshooting, only to learn that the website itself had an issue and that my computer was absolutely fine. AGWA hadn't bothered to check the page before sending the homework, yet, when I called to explain what had happened (so they could prevent other students from having the same experience), the woman on the phone already knew about it. Again, no apology and no warning. Imagine my frustration.
Another weakness of the course was that the homework questions often required nothing more than a simple copying and pasting of information (verbatim) from class notes that had been distributed, so unless a student is highly self-motivated, it would be easy for someone to copy information without learning much. For people whose workplaces might need them to take this course (or who might be paying for it), that seems problematic to me.
There were many other issues as well that I won't mention, but I will say that the course was a source of stress for me and that I had some difficulties with the professor until I had to grovel to him for reasonable grading. I was an A student in school, so I would never have produced anything through less than my best effort. I will say, though, that when I pleaded my case and showed that I was open to feedback and a critical review of my work, the professor was willing to work with me in a reasonable way, which gained my respect. It was upsetting, though, to be initially told to completely rewrite a paper for what I interpreted to be ridiculous reasons.
Then when I didn't receive my certificate for completing the course, I called AGWA, and the same woman from previous conversations indicated that they had sent it to another address. When I provided the correct the address, the woman said that she would have to charge me for sending a duplicate certificate. Whether or not the mistake was mine or theirs, considering how bad my experience had been and how many errors they had made in the assignments, I should never have been charged for a duplicate. This was terrible customer service and a sure way to damage their reputation and alienate potential repeat-customers. The woman was actually a little rude to me on the phone, saying that it was my fault that the certificate went to the wrong place (instead of just saying, "It's a shame that something went wrong, but I would be happy to help make it right).
I would not recommend this course or company for grant writing instruction.