- May 4, 2024
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When Howard Tipton started as Longboat Key’s town manager, he realized that every department was handling grant applications on its own. This gave him an idea — hire a grants coordinator.
In July, Kalee Shaberts started as Longboat Key’s first grants coordinator. Two weeks into the job, Shaberts has already made progress. She began by researching what grants are possible for the town to pursue and created a grant review process.
Tipton believes this position will be of great value to the town, and said the goal is for Shabert’s position to pay for itself 10 times over in fiscal year 2024.
“If you look at the grant environment with all the dollars out there, it’s more than I’ve ever seen,” Tipton said.
Beyond the actual grant applications, Shaberts will perform two crucial functions for town grants: hunting for potential grants and correspondence after a grant is received, Tipton said.
Before Shaberts, Tipton said departments would search for grants themselves, which usually meant applying for them on their own. If a grant is secured, it’s a heavy lift to do all the necessary reporting and correspondence. The departments receiving the grants would often be too busy to keep up with this, so the responsibility fell on the town’s finance department.
If an agency like the town of Longboat Key fails to keep up with the proper post-grant reporting, it’s possible the organization that gave the grant could ask for the money back. It’s something Tipton has seen in the past with other agencies.
“The worst thing that could happen is to give the money back,” Tipton said.
With the new grants coordinator, Tipton hopes this won't happen.
Originally from Indiana, Shaberts has bachelor’s degrees in criminal justice and sociology from the University of Southern Indiana. At the start of her career Shaberts worked in child welfare, where she said she gained crucial skills in reporting and documentation.
“It teaches you work ethic because you have to be on top of things because people's lives are at stake,” Shaberts said.
She continued to hone her skills, doing court reports and familiarizing herself with laws and regulations. When Shaberts moved to Florida, she continued in the child welfare field until landing a grant position. She worked within grants and contract management for local county governments for five years before coming to Longboat Key.
Shaberts had been looking for a smaller-scale government job, and found the job posting at Longboat Key.
Her first day was July 17, and Shaberts said she and other town employees shared excitement and optimism about her new role. So far, she has enjoyed the positive people and environment of the town government.
“I’m excited to be in a community where people are just happy to work here,” Shaberts said. “I’m excited to be in a new role where I get to define what those tasks are and create a baseline of things that we can continue for years to come.”
Right away, Shaberts got to work looking for grants that would be a good fit for the town to apply for, and already has several she’s working on. But before jumping in, Shaberts said it’s important to organize all the information and deadlines.
For this, she developed a one-page form that she fills out whenever a department finds an attractive grant opportunity. This way, she can fill out all the relevant information, like the due date and requirements, and send the form up the chain of command to get approval to pursue.
Her day-to-day work varies depending on the tasks at hand, but she always stresses the need to check deadlines. Overall, Shaberts said having a grant manager will be most beneficial in that it creates a centralized way to apply for grants. Instead of all the departments tackling grants as free time arises, Shaberts will be the full-time employee seeking the grants and getting the funding for the town.
“I like being busy,” Shaberts said. “And I like having deadlines. I would say my strongest suit is organizational skills and task management.”
