We officially know someone with Covid-19. Greyman was in meetings with him just under 2 weeks ago but hasn’t seen him since.
We don’t know when said person was infected so we may have had no exposure, but we’re hunkering down even more than we were before.
Wish I could give you my work. Despite my work-from-home schedule, I am more busy than ever and worked 67 hours last week.
Any interest in writing grants? 
Ha. I couldn’t write a grant if my life depended on it!
My boss decided that while we are of course closed to the public, that one person will work here alone and we will take shifts. We will be getting a few deliveries this week for which the trucks are on the way already, and we will get some phone calls.
I have discovered that I only ever clean the house because people are coming over.
No one is coming over for months, and I am perfectly happy living in my own filth as long as I wash my hands.
Know any resources to teach myself how?
I just know how important and in-demand grant writing can be, and how no one wants to/has time for grant writing.
For some reason watching my governor do his address just now really got to me. One part of me feels like he should have declared shelter in place. They’ve banned gatherings of more than 10 people, and non essential stores have to close if they can’t maintain social distance but like…who is enforcing this? We tried to go for a socially distant walk yesterday to a big park we know of. It seemed like only some people were social distancing. Lots of unattended kids running around in big groups playing. I tried to stay away from people at the grocery store when I had to go and the lady behind me kept getting so close she hit me with her purse, twice. It feels disheartening that people aren’t taking this seriously.
The governor closed school through the end of the year but it honestly feels like that’s the only change. My BFF just officially lost her job and is losing her health insurance on April 1 because of it. My bet is that she’ll marry her fiancé at the courthouse so that she can have insurance before then (her wedding is in October).
Blah, off to go shout into the void.
Oregon has a stay home order effective immediately.
Non essential businesses are mandated to close… what’s essential?
I wish I did. I learned just by doing it a few times. It’s dumb but 50% of grants is relationships (actually talking to the program officers) and about 50% is ACTUALLY WRITING FOR WHAT THEY ASK TO FUND. A lot of nonprofits want to write about what they do rather than why what they do is relevant to what the funder is asking. Actual writing skills are far less important. There are often links to be made - for example I wrote grants for kid’s bike programming.
For kids bike programming were these categories of funders:
Small orgs that write grants often will use the same language for totally different funders. Maybe the funder says “we only fund programs in XYZ county” and yet, the org writes a grant saying “here is our great program in ABC county” Maybe the program is great, but umm… doesn’t matter. They don’t fund that. Or they apply in spring, when the foundation only accepts grants from new applicants in the fall.
Last thing is COLLECT STATISTICS AND QUOTES. So many small orgs have no idea how many people they reach, don’t have quotes from program participants. If you have a bank to pull from, you can write little stories about program participants.
Sorry, that was a bit of a ramble. But I think people spend too much time worrying about how they need someone with “the skill of grant writing”. But while it is a useful skill, it’s more important to actually be able to write coherently and talk to funding officers.
OR orgs apply to grants without EVER TALKING TO THE PROGRAM OFFICER FIRST. Talk to the foundation/funder staff. It is their job to give you guidance and help you figure out if your org is a great fit for their programming. They might even steer you towards a different grant category that’s a better fit. If it’s a gov’t grant, go to the meetings they will have for the grant. They will have meetings. The government loves meetings.
Government grants are a bit harder to explain than foundation grants and a bad place to get experience I will say, and I will say I have 0 experience with academic research grants. But for 501c3/c4 foundation grants, I think the answer is just talk to the program officer and write for what they want to fund.
For us, there’s a big list in the article I linked if you can see it.
Eta:
These businesses may stay open:
Business offices and nonprofits, though employees “shall facilitate” telecommuting “to the maximum extent possible”
Coffee shops
Bars, brew pubs, cafes, restaurants and wine bars and other similar establishments – only for delivery or pick-up orders
Childcare facilities with a limit of 10 children who are the same each day. Priority must be given to children of medical or emergency frontline responders
Doctors offices, health care facilities and emergency services
Food courts
Grocery stores
Pharmacies
Pet store services
The order also calls on retail stores that remain open – other than grocery, pharmacy and health and medical care services – to designate an employee to enforce social distancing policies.
These businesses must close:
Amusement parks
Aquariums
Arcades
Art galleries, which are open without appointments
Boutiques
Bowling alleys
Childcare facilities that cannot limit children to 10 who are the same every day. Order is in place from March 25 through April 28.
Cosmetic shops
Fraternal organizations facilities
Furniture stores
Gyms and fitness studios
Hair salons and barber shops
Hookah bars
Indoor party places, including jumping gyms and laser tag
Jewelry shops and boutiques, unless they use pick-up or delivery services
Malls, both indoor and outdoor
Medical and facial spas, day spas and massage therapy services
Museums
Nail and tanning salons
Non-tribal card rooms
Outdoor sports courts
Playgrounds
Pools
Private and public campgrounds
Senior activity centers
Social and private clubs
Skate parks
Skating rinks
Ski resorts
State executive branch offices and buildings “shall close to the maximum extent possible”
Tattoo and piercing parlors
Tennis clubs
Theaters
Yoga studios
Youth clubs
Our details are “to follow” but I’ll check yours so I dont panic
The pie we made over the weekend is helping. 
And honestly, the work from home routine has been great except when Boyfriend has to take his daily epic shit so I can’t pee.
I guess I feel like there is more in my control than there really is? Like now I’m reading how we need to be sanitizing the packages we receive. So we’ve been doing that, the cat food order just arrived so we spent our lunch break sanitizing that and everything in it. But then I worry, did I miss a spot? What if the spot I missed had the virus on it? Is my carelessness going to get us both sick? I am not the best at cleaning even when it is not life and death, I ALWAYS miss spots. How do I train myself to be more careful?
(ETA: annnnnnnd, after typing that out, I just realized that all my childhood baggage around my parents blaming me for getting sick frequently is hitting me hard. My mother always told me if I’d just stop sucking my thumb/biting my nails/failing to wash my hands thoroughly enough, then I’d never get sick just like she never did, so if I did it was my fault for costing my parents money and making more work for my mom. Jesus, no wonder all of the “wash your hands!” articles and posts are setting me off. Welp. I guess I know what I’m talking about in therapy this week )
Just got another email from the 3rd party company that handles our pre-tax CTA passes (and all passes for all offices). We can cancel May but not April, with them. If we want to cancel April, we have to check with our local service still. I just did that, and they are still refusing refunds. They’re getting eviscerated by some folks on social media but just keep repeating “In accordance with our policy, we will not be issuing refunds.” Even for people who have symptoms. People are basically being told to pound sand.
I’m so angry. So many people out of work who just spent $105 on something they can’t use.
Just came out of a big meeting at the vet school where I work. They are actively looking for people to provide cloth masks. This scares the crap out of me. I was making my masks for my husband’s clinic as a little rinky dink thing. Now to hear our dean talk about the need to galvanize the community into making masks, really brought home how scary this is.
Massage is nonessential under our orders, looks like.
Our hair/tanning/nail salons and massage parlors/spas have all been closed for a few days.
Our college restricted massage therapy to essential cases only ages ago, but irrelevant to my life.
I’m concerned about sizes of baby clothes over the next year. We’re already in 3-6 ,which was as big as I’d prepared for. After this, I have some, but not a comprehensive wardrobe
My assumption is that clothing stores and thrift stores are closed. I’m not sure what you have there, but here some “grocery” stores have clothes. Walmart and Meijer would have them…
Ours has a boutique exception if they offer delivery or drive up service only. A local kids consignment shop switched to that a couple weeks ago, so perhaps something like that will be an option for you?