Michael Ten Kate is co-owner and CEO of Ten Kate Grant Services. He is a Captain with the City of Cortland Fire Department, where he has worked since 2001. He manages the special operations team of the department, which includes hazardous materials and technical rescue. He volunteers with the Virgil Fire Department, and currently serves as a fire commissioner. He was the department chief for four years. He began his grant-writing career writing grant applications for Virgil in 2007. Early on, he was not very successful with these grant-writing efforts and became determined to learn the ins and outs of grant writing. His success rate improved. In 2009, he took over the grant writing and management for the City of Cortland Fire Department, and was highly successful with these grants. Seeing this success, local departments began to look to Mike for help, and the grant-writing business began.
Nancy Ten Kate is a co-owner and CFO of TKGS. Nancy is the former managing editor of American Demographics magazine, where she wrote and edited articles, negotiated print contracts, supervised editorial and production staff, and managed annual budgets of $500,000. After 16 years with American Demographics, the magazine was sold. Nancy worked the next 11 years with Leathers & Associates, a playground design firm where she was financial officer and personnel manager. She took care of all aspects of finance from cash flow to budgets. She handled human resources, including management, performance reviews and payroll, and she wrote all company literature. In addition to grant writing, she is currently the financial officer and personnel manager for a small community-built playground design firm. She was a volunteer firefighter and EMT-I for many years, serving as EMS captain and receiving several awards from Freeville Rescue and Dryden Ambulance.
Duane Pierce is TKGS’s senior grant writer. Duane is a Captain with the City of Cortland Fire Department and a firefighter with the Greene Fire Department. He has 26 years of fire service experience and 15 years of industrial health and safety experience. Duane began his grant writing experience in 1998 writing industrial safety/health education grants. He then began to apply this knowledge to fire and EMS grants. Prior to working for the City of Cortland, Duane was a Corporate Safety Manager for Crowley Foods and a Health and Safety Representative for Raymond Corporation. He also has over 20 years of experience in adult health/safety education and fire service education.