“When you find that your program has been placed on the DRS list, it is devastating!!! Many emotions and questions go through your mind. Then reality sets in and you know that you need to step up to the plate. You go through several webinars from OHS and other consultants and you receive some guidance. However, when you begin the writing process, you are alone. It is at this time, when an expert such as Dr. Kimberley Seitz can become your partner. In this light, Mrs. Kimberley Seitz, for me, was God sent. I say that because I stumbled into her through Linked-In.

When you partner with Kimberley, you get: 1) an expert in this grant because she is a vetted and trained OHS recompetition grant evaluator; 2) she plans with you the entire writing process; 3) she is available to answer any question you might have; 4) she is a polished writer; 5) she will edit your writing, redirect your writing, and assure that you are answering the evaluation criteria; 6) she will provide suggestions for clarification and for strengthening; 7) finally, she is very professional and highly ethical. Your response to the evaluation criteria is a life/death issue. I highly recommend that you partner with Kimberley. I did!!!”

“While having to go through the Head Start DRS process is never easy, Kimberley at Kaleidoscope Business Coaching & Consulting provided valuable assistance in evaluating our grant against the scoring criteria and strengthening our application.

Kimberley was incredibly responsive and timely in her responses for each section we sent her for review, she met and often exceeded the timeline targets. Her extensive Head Start knowledge and expertise proved to be very valuable. She worked closely with our grant writing team to ensure that we addressed each evaluation criteria fully, as well as helped us to articulate our program strengths to the fullest extent.

I would highly recommend Kaleidoscope Business C&C to any program that is in the DRS system and has to compete for their grant. Kimberley truly delivers on and exceeds her commitments.”

“Kimberley Seitz was certainly the right consultant for our program as we entered the Head Start Designation Renewal System. First, we felt like we knew more about our program than any grant writer, so we ruled out hiring one of those, but we also knew that the stakes for the DRS grant were extremely high and we might need help. Come to find out—we needed a LOT of help—which is what we received from Dr. Seitz. What we appreciated first and foremost was that she genuinely cared about us and our program and she was committed to making sure that what we expressed was true, substantiated and clear. We were pretty good on the “true” part, but we needed tons of guidance on being clear and documenting what we were asserting. She was not only very good at ferreting out the problems that needed correction so we wouldn’t lose points, she was extremely fast on the turn-around time so we didn’t have to wait for her responses. What is it worth to have someone tell you that you need to rip it up and start over? In our case, we believe it will be the difference in a successful competitive grant process! Since we are a delegate agency pulled into DRS through no fault of our own, it took us a while to see the positive effects that would occur if we wrote a successful grant. After all, we’ve done this for almost four decades and we certainly know what we are doing, right? Maybe so. But expressing it so that someone else can see our quality while addressing every teeny-tiny criteria point was harder that we thought it would be. So we hired Kimberley. And we thank her for her expertise, her integrity, her good humor, and oh, my goodness, her patience! You will be lucky if you are one of the few programs she adopts!”

“My team and I thoroughly enjoyed working with Dr. Kimberley Seitz of Kaleidoscope Business Coaching and Consulting in the development of our Round 8 Head Start DRS Funding Application. Dr. Seitz’s professionalism and extensive experience as a reviewer and consultant in previous rounds of the DRS process provided the expertise we were looking for.

The process used by Dr. Seitz was clearly defined from the very beginning. We developed the application and Dr. Seitz provided timely, constructive (yet supportive) critique and feedback. The support provided by Dr. Seitz assisted us in making improvements to our application to include inclusion of information and data that was factual, fully supported, and concise in order to stay within the required page limits of the FOA. The result was a comprehensive and competitive application that we were able to submit well ahead of the deadline.

I would highly recommend the services provided by Dr. Seitz of Kaleidoscope Business Coaching and Consulting.”

“Kimberley’s first-hand knowledge of the recompetition process was immensely helpful to us. She excelled at asking probing questions and helped our agency keep pushing to articulate our program philosophy and helped us better describe exactly what we do (and so often take for granted!). The fact that we established a time-line and kept to it gave us a little bit of breathing room at the end.”

“Upon notification that your organization is in the DRS, I urge you to retain Dr. Seitz without hesitation. Dr. Seitz’s guidance through the application process and insight as a prior federal reviewer are invaluable. We found that her feedback on each section and sub criteria greatly assisted us in developing a stronger proposal. I highly recommend her services.”

“As the Director of Lewis County Head Start I became acquainted with Kimberley as a training and technical assistance consultant assigned to my program in 2009. Though an appreciative inquiry process, Kimberly assisted us in revising our program’s on-going monitoring system. Her vast knowledge of Head Start systems and services were invaluable to me. Our monitoring plan is in compliance with the Office of Head Star standards because of Kimberley’s work with our program.

In February of 2013, the Office of Head Start notified our Grantee that our program would enter recompetition. I immediately contacted Kimberley as a potential grant writer! During that contact she informed me of her work as an Office of Head Start vetted and trained grant reviewer, and how she was contracting with programs such as mine. As a grant reviewer, Kimberley has seen quality program loose their grants because they did not meet all the requirements of their funding opportunity announcement. She wants to help program’s gain a competitive advantage by helping them to strengthen, clarify, and substantiate their grant before they submitted it to the Office of Head Start.

Using her knowledge, expertise, and training Kimberley will compare your grant (line-by-line, section-by-section) against the evaluation criteria before it gets picked apart by other reviewers in this high stakes process. I valued her firm, fair, and friendly approach during the writing and re-writing process. Kimberley is tough, but the open and honest feedback she provided was in our best interest. We felt confident about the application we submitted

I would not hesitate to recommend Kimberley Seitz as a Consultant to assist your program. She truly wants the very best for the individuals and programs she supports.”

“After our first initial telephone conversation with Kimberley, we knew that we had found the person who could provide us the support that we needed to meet the challenge of writing our recompetition grant. Not only did Kimberley share with us her experience as an OHS recompetition grant reviewer and her knowledge of OHS regulation, she answered all of our question and explained the recompetition process. She eased our anxiety and boosted our confidence that we could successfully accomplish the great task before us.

The summary reports and the feedback provided for each criterion helped us to provide clear, concise, strong responses. Having her review our response to each criterion twice helped us to really strengthen our grant. The debriefing calls provided an opportunity for us to ask questions/share our concern. Kimberley complimented us on our areas of strength, however she did not hesitate to address areas that needed more work. This was very helpful because it made us focus and think deeper when writing responses to criteria.

Throughout this grant process, Kimberley was very thorough in her review and very prompt with her feedback. We sincerely appreciate the encouragement and professional guidance that she provided. Her experience as a grant reviewer for the Office of Head Start’s Designation Renewal System, her Head Start experience and her knowledge of OHS regulations enabled Kimberley to provide the highest quality of service to our program. We found Kimberley to be friendly, pleasant and easy to work with. If the need should arise again, we would not hesitate to secure her services.”