Over a seven year period, three independent entities (AAGP, GPCI and USF) provided knowledge, data and psychometric expertise to identification and validation the competencies and skills a grant professional should possess in order to fulfill their duties and obligations within the field of grantsmanship. A competency is a broad area of knowledge in a discipline or profession. A skill is the behavior that demonstrates that competency.
More specifically, the process to identify and validate the competencies and skills included the following data collection and validation tasks:
Data Collection
1999 – 2000: Documented conversations with approximately ten experts in the field.
2000: Informal electronic survey completed by the Credentialing Committee in 2000, response rate of 18.
2001: AAGP 2001 Survey of Grant Professionals distributed at the 2001 National AAGP Conference in Orlando Florida, 125 attendees, 50 returned surveys.
2003: “Identifying Professional Competencies” by Deanna Nurnberg (Journal of the AAGP, Spring 2003).
2003-2004: AAGP Professional Growth and Development Committee two-year review of the tasks associated with grantsmanship.
2004: AAGP Credentialing Committee Stakeholder Education Meeting to identify core competencies, a two-day workshop facilitated by the University of South Florida. In attendance 16 content experts.
2004-2005 Presentation of competencies at two AAGP conferences (Kansas City and Boston), along with solicitation and consensus building from workshop presenters (approximately 30 participants).
2005: Literature Review conducted.
2006: Inaugural development team of twelve content experts who met for two days at the University of South Florida. The inaugural team, who represented major regions of the United States, consisted of school district grants office directors, consultants, authors, an educational research consultant, president of a family resource center’s grants section, and policy expert on juvenile justice, among others.
2006: Job Analysis and external validation by approximately 1,300 grant professionals through a survey of AAGP members and grant professionals not associated with AAGP. The survey was also sent to other stakeholders with knowledge of the field and likely impacted by certification. Survey return rate of 40%.
2006: Second internal validation of the external validation by a subject matter team at USF. Four inaugural team members preserved historical perspective, and three new experts contributed significantly to revisions informed by the survey results. The validation team focused their attention on those survey items outside acceptable statistical parameters.
2006: Competencies and skills for a grant professional certification were validated using standard psychometric protocols. These “comps and skills” represent the first step toward the development and adoption of industry-wide standards for the grants community.
2007: Hundreds of grants professions took various forms of a pilot test and provided invaluable feedback on how to improve the questions. Two panels of experts, one in Portland, OR and one in Washington, DC, convened to rewrite, refine and in some cases replace test items. This process culminated in final test items and cutoff scores. Registration for the first examination, scheduled for November 10-11, launched in July.