Grant Writing & Institutional Work

Robin McGinness teaches grant writing and career skills at the Peabody Institute, and serves as Grant Writer for the Mount Vernon Virtuosi.

Grant Writing

Grant writing is a skill, not a mystery. Robin has done this work firsthand — for ensembles, for individual projects, and as a working performer — and teaches it at Peabody: how to frame a project so it makes sense to a funder, and how to write proposals that get read. The process is learnable, and it doesn't have to be intimidating.

Want hands-on help with a grant or application? Grant-writing coaching lives on the Teaching & Coaching page →

Institutional Work

Robin works at the intersection of performance and administration — the part of institutional life that doesn't show up on a concert program but makes everything else work. Program design, referral systems, structures that help musicians navigate conservatory and professional life. The kind of work that's less visible than a recital and more important than most people realize.

In practice, that's meant building referral systems that connect students to the right resources at the right time, and designing programs that bridge the gap between training and a working career. This work is collaborative by nature. It involves administrators, faculty, and students — and it only functions well when those groups are actually talking to each other. Robin's role has been to build the structures that make that happen.

Open to consulting or collaborative projects at other institutions. If your organization is working on how musicians move through and out of a conservatory, that's a conversation worth having.