The use of online applications
is increasing each year, particularly by larger foundations and corporate
philanthropic departments, and once adopted they replace the old paper
submission format. In spite of our electronically connected world, some
nonprofits still prefer the paper submission approach, and avoid online
applications.
Many nonprofits feel that
online applications are cold, remote and remove the passion element from the
equation. That is probably what they are meant to do. Large foundations and
corporations can receive as many as 5,000 applications for one grant. They are
going to eliminate any application that even remotely fails to meet their
criteria, and the online application makes that easier. In some cases, awards don't
come down to whose mission is most deserving, but whose program negotiates the
online application most efficiently.
Foundations, corporations and
government grant opportunities provide up to 50% of all
nonprofit income, so simply crossing online applications off your funding
opportunity list just isn't a smart business decision. Learning to live with
the format is a necessity today.
It should go without saying,
but read the RFP and the grant instructions completely, including any location
limitations. There is no single, standard online application format. Online
applications vary from fillable pdf documents used by small foundations to
various regional so-called "common grant applications", to well designed
and fairly user-friendly custom cybergrant applications. Each requires the
grant writer to adapt your information to the format. You will have to create a
login and password for each organization, and sometimes for each application.
Save your login information in-house,
including passwords. That way if something happens to the person originally
submitting the grant, the new person can access the application. While most
logins will give you the "forgot your password" prompt, not all of
them do. Save the grant ID number as well, since you may apply to more than one
program area. Once submitted, you cannot edit anything or submit further
information unless requested to do so.
Condensing
your information
Online applications normally have
character or word limitations for each question you must answer. Commonly those
limits are 250-, 500-, or 750-words or 500-2,500 characters. The underlined sentence is 105 characters
including spaces using 11-pt Arial. Some applications require the use of
specific fonts, or they will convert whatever font you are using to the
preferred format, usually Arial, Times New Roman or Courier. In general, use
one of these three if there is no requirement stated. This is not the place for
style points. Know the limits in advance, and be prepared to condense your copy
to fit the character limitations. That carefully crafted, board-approved
boilerplate probably will not work. Remember that spaces are characters, and some applications may not indicate
whether they count spaces as characters. Create your responses in a word or
plain text document before you actually fill out the application, and get a
count.
If you just can't reduce your
text to the limit, have a professional editor or grant writer review it. Some
online applications are still simply not providing enough room, but in most
cases, someone who isn't so emotionally involved with the text can still get
the message out there without losing the context.
Unless they specifically say
that spaces are excluded from the count, assume the worst. The Microsoft Word
character/word count function does not always count characters in the same way
as online applications, and you may have to expand the word count box (by
clicking on it) to access the "character with spaces" count. I always
try to err on the side of slightly shorter text instead of pushing it right to
the character limit.
Part Two will discuss specific formatting traps and flow.
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