Grants that are meant to produce tangible outcomes

Those who follow me, both here and on my other blog know that I am a supporter of a diversified educational strategy.  STEM is great, but someone has to build and run the machinery and use the stuff engineers dream up!

It won't do a lot of good to get more manufacturing and assembly jobs back into this country if  we don't have anyone trained to do them. Not to mention the fact that working with your hands as well as your brain is good for the economy, good for your personal financial situation, and may give workers a reason to pursue other education to progress up the career ladder.

Today's manufacturing jobs are not those of the mid-20th century, and often blend in well with more formal STEM educational goals.

Personally, I find that payng for a kid to go to college to "find themselves and their life work" is both fiscally and socially irresponsible, particularly given the dismal report of the emotional readiness of students to enter college.

If I had my way, every person would have to work for two years before they even considered college.

That's just me, but hey...I'm entitled to my opinion too.

To that end, I highlight grant opportunities that fall into that arena, and here is one that fits. To give credit where is is due, this came to my attention through Grant Gopher, and the lead paragraph reads like this:

"Nuts, Bolts & Thingamajigs awards grants annually to trade schools and community or technical colleges capable of hosting a summer camp program for girls and/or boys ages 12-16. Summer camps have been a successful way of introducing middle- and high-school students to the fascinating, high-tech career choices available to them in today's automated manufacturing industry."

The website is http://www.nutsandboltsfoundation.org.  It doesn't offer tons of money, but it could be a good fit for their target partner demographic. The closing date is November 15, 2015. You can visit their grants page at: http://www.nutsandboltsfoundation.org/camps/grants/

Five tips to increase your grant funding success

There are a number of things that determine whether your mission will be adequately funded.  Here are five things you can do today to bring in more dollars.

1. Match your organization to the right grantor prospect.

All grantors have a specific mission focus.  For instance, while the grantor may generally support programs for low-income women, they may actually only support a single facet of that group.  There's no use in applying for funds for heating cost support if the grantor is only funding breast pumps to allow working mothers to stay in the job market. Read all of the information you can find on the organization and decide if it is a good fit for your nonprofit.

2.  Refine your focus to emphasize grantor/grantee alignment.

 

Don't rely on a one-size-fits-all application.  If you have a general emphasis on a specific client profile, emphasize the portions that have direct alignment to the prospective grantor.  Each grantor and their mission focus is different and should be developed as such.

3.  Match your grant development costs to the potential award.

If the grantor specifically states that their maximum grant is $1,000, and it's going to cost $500 for your staff or your contracted grant professional to produce the grant application and administer the funds, that might not be cost effective. All grants have non-reimbursable costs, and you want to get the most return for your investment of time and/or money.

4.  Be sure you meet the minimum requirements to apply

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Most grants stipulate that you must be a 501(c)(3) to apply, and may include time in business, minimum existing revenue amounts, ability to show matching fund potential, formal organization and program budgets, audited financial statements or other qualifiers as well. If you can't meet ALL of the requirements, your application is likely to be discarded without even being considered.

5.  Document your results to date before you apply

Grantors want to know that your program is effective and/or sustainable.  Even if you are currently seeking funding for a one-time event, such as the coming year's holiday turkey giveaway, show how you will reach the maximum number of intended recipients and why your program is using the funds to the best possible advantage (things like getting wholesale pricing for the birds, for example).  Long-term existing programs need to show that they have made a lasting positive impact and have a good chance of continuing to do so.

None of these things will guarantee an award, but doing them well will greatly improve your success rate. 

Grantmaker Research

Sometimes I get lists from clients that were obviously compiled from some website like the Foundation Center. Not too long ago I actually got a list printed directly from that website of over 100 "youth-oriented" foundations from a prospective client.

  

I have a subscription to that resource and several more just like it.  If grantor research was that easy, no one would need professional funding consultants and/or grant writers. The reality is, that list is simply a baby step in finding prospective funding.

There are many steps that go into approaching and qualifying a viable funding partner. Does the grantmaker ever support NPOs in your geographical area? What do they mean when they say they make grants nationally?  What makes them choose one nonprofit over another? Does their controlling philosophy match yours? Are you looking for a one-shot funding source, or is a continuing relationship important? What other nonprofit or ideological themes do their individual board members support away from that particular foundation?

There are dozens of things that can influence acceptance of a grant application. Not too long ago, I researched a large family foundation in the eastern U.S. for an Idaho client. I felt that the client's program might fit in with the foundation's underlying interests, but according to their public face, it looked like a stretch.

I literally built a profile for the board members and the history of their involvement in Idaho.  And I mean every consequential board member, all 22 of them. In the end, I was able to help the client craft a customized proposal that stayed true to the client's mission, but still appealed personally to the foundation's board members. This is the first three sentences of the acceptance letter from that foundation:

"Thank you for making our board aware of your program. We have been interested in this type of highly targeted program for many years. Normally, the program would not fit our giving parameters, but we are making an exception due to our personal interest in (the program). We are pleased to inform you that we are funding (the specific area of the program) in the amount of $10,000 for each of the next three years."

This was a highly targeted, well documented and very personal appeal to the specific interests of three of the board members as evidenced by their personal participation in similar projects. I spent almost a month, off and on doing that.

Very large nonprofits may have the resources to do that type of in-depth relationship building, but often they rely on actual personal contacts.  They know the board members they are trying to court. They go to dinner with them, attend the same functions, and often the actual application is simply a formality.

If you don't rub elbows on a personal basis with your target funding source, consider hiring out the research, and acting on it with something more than stale boilerplate copy. It could be profitable.   

When you need a big grant

Your small nonprofit has a three-year plan to create, manage and expand services for a program. Your estimate is that it will require $500,000 to fund the program for three years. Your average annual revenue is about $100,000. What's next?

The first place most nonprofits turn to for funding is THE GRANT. You know, that single-source, highly committed funding partner that can make this program a reality. I work with quite a few organizations that start out with the idea that one grant is the only acceptable outcome.  About 1% of the time it actually works out that way.

 

There are definitely big foundations out there that can fund at this level, and some of them actually will spread the funding out over three years. The trick is to make them want to support your program.

The hardest part of expanding from a small nonprofit to a bigger nonprofit is funding. Big foundations tend to support big nonprofits, and they almost never want to be your sole source of funding. So the first step is to give up. No really…you have to give up the idea that one grantor is going to be your angel investor. You are going to have to approach several possible partners, and you may have to fund your program in phases.

The first thing you have to do is have a rock-solid program strategy. Big foundations didn't get that way by chasing rainbows. They have great name recognition because the programs they support get results, the uses of the funds are well documented, and the outcomes are measurable.

If you haven't done a feasibility study on the program you must start there, and all the data needs to be verifiable. Who or what will the program benefit, how will it benefit them, what kind of reports or research will you employ  to measure effectiveness, what resources do you already have to get started (including human resources)?  Start by proving your statement of need and detailing your method to measure outcomes. When I am working with an organization, this seems to be the part that causes the most heartburn. What's good enough for your board meeting is probably not going to measure up with a major grantor. 

You have to have realistic budget figures. If you say that you need $100,000 for equipment, list it with price estimates in detail. In construction or manufacturing, they call this a bill of materials. What do you need, what benefit is it to the program, when do you need it, and what will it cost? Is it a consumable (paper, ink, food)  or is it a depreciable acquisition (building, racking, vehicle, server)?  Is it a subcontracted service?  Is any of it potentially or actually going to retained past the life of the funding cycle?  Even if the initial grant application or LOI doesn't request this much detail at first, you will have to produce it eventually, and it will be useful during the program as well.

   

How much of your own existing funding are you going to invest in this program?  Don't forget that volunteers can often be used as matching capital. They have a monetary value.

Don't try to hide normal operating costs in the program. If you are expecting some of the money to be used for program-related additional daily costs (such as an increase in utility costs, fuel or supplies) be sure that you keep the two classifications separate. It is perfectly fine to include things such as utility costs in a grant request, as long as they are program-related. It is not OK to expect the grant to pay your normal operating costs unless you disclose that up front.

It should go without saying, but if you are already operating in the red, you don't stand a ghost of a chance of  getting funding. Audited financials that show enough existing income to keep the doors open are a must.

Along with that premise, if you are a truly tiny organization, with revenue under $50,000, there is little chance that you will receive major funding for a big program. You would be far better off to scale back your plans to something that local foundations can get on board with, succeed with those and build your revenues and donor relations to the point that you can move up to bigger programs. Many foundations do not even accept the e-postcard as a valid 990 filing, because they know that means you don't have a lot of capital to invest in a big program.

A major funding campaign is a lot of work. It will cost money up front. Be sure that you can sustain the effort before you invest too much time or money into it. Some very large foundations will tell you right on their website that they can only fund about 10 or 20 percent of the requests they receive. Do your homework, qualify the foundation as a viable candidate to approach, and don't assume that because your program is worthy it will be funded. Sometimes, the best outcome will only be getting on that particular foundation's radar for a future year. 

Measuring outcomes means more money for you.

If you have been in the nonprofit field for even a short length of time, you have probably had at least one grant turned down for "failure to provide sufficient outcome measurements". So what is different in reporting results today versus say, ten years ago?

There is considerably more emphasis being placed on verifiable results now. If the recession did nothing else, it made everyone aware that there isn't any money to waste. Grantors not only want to hear a good story, but they want to know they got the best possible results for their investment in your mission.

 Let's do a hypothetical study of the difference between then and now, using a remedial tutoring program as an example. The "old" way of reporting program results was more about how many people you served than what long term gains were achieved by the participants. This is sometimes referred to as "head count" results.

 

The old way might have been to present some figures related to how many children in say grades three through six in a certain school system were not reading at grade level. This was the basis of the statement of need.

Two case studies of results reporting

The goal of the program might be stated like this. "The XYZ Reading Improvement program will teach 40 children how to read more effectively by incorporating phonics into a remedial reading program."

To "prove the results" the old way,  the organization might say something like " In FY 20xx we presented the program to  40 children at risk of failing a class due to poor reading skills. By the end of the program the children  reported that they enjoyed reading more and were able to sound out new words themselves without asking for assistance. Report cards showed improvement in reading comprehension by every student, and grade equivalency improved at least one grade level for all students."   Sounds pretty good, right? 

Wrong, at least when measured against today's standards for judging success.

   

Today, you need to be much more precise in documenting both the before and after results, and ideally you will do some sort of follow-up to see if the  student improvement was maintained one, two or three years into the future.

Your new outcome-based success explanation might look like this.

Our program enrolled 40 fifth-grade students in January of 20xx. The children were selected through referrals from the (County) District case worker from county-wide fifth grade classes. Upon enrollment we tested the children's reading comprehension based on the (state) reading equivalency test as used by the (county) school district. The test was administered by Mrs Doe, who is a state-certified testing moderator.

Our initial results as shown in the accompanying table showed that 13 children were reading at a third-grade level, 22 were reading at a first semester fourth-grade level, and 5 were reading at a second-grade level. The children were divided into five eight-person groups with one group meeting on each weekday for one hour in the school library conference room.

In addition, we conducted interviews with each child separately and asked them to tell us what part of reading was the hardest for them. All of them commented that the words were hard, and they just skipped over the words they didn't know. When asked if they asked for help to pronounce the words 80% said they preferred not to ask so they wouldn't "look stupid". All of them said they hated to read out loud. The beginning test results are shown as Part One of Exhibit B.

During the ten-week session, we started with phonics, helping the children to understand how letters sound, why sometimes they sound different, and how to sound out the letters when they are combined into a word. Each week we tested the children with a list of ten words that they had never seen before(see representative sample). Every child had to read out loud at least five minutes a week.

In addition, all of the children showed poor comprehension levels, and this was confirmed by asking the parents to provide comments as shown on student report cards or during parent-teacher conferences. These were compared with the student's teacher evaluations for the purpose of understanding whether parents were able to understand the challenges the children faced. In short, because the children were skipping words they couldn't read, they did not understand what information was being presented.

Following the lesson plan (exhibit A) we tested the children again at the end of the ten weekly sessions. 37 had improved their reading skills by at least one grade level, and all of the children had improved their comprehension skills by 38 to 64 per cent, as shown by the graph in Exhibit B, Part 2.

Using interviews and class discussions, we asked the children to tell us whether reading was any easier for them now. Their collected responses are shown in Exhibit C.

In December of 20xx at the end of the first semester of the next school year,  36 out of the original 40 students were contacted (four children had left the county and could not be contacted) and retested to see if they had retained the material and techniques taught the previous year. All of the children were testing at their grade level, and all reported that they now either enjoyed reading or that reading wasn't as hard as before they took the class. See Exhibit D for the one-year test results. 

The Obvious Differences

Example one is a general statement not backed up with facts. At best it presents anecdotal  commentary, and basically says "we got paid to teach 40 children and we did that."

Example two presents a clear view of not only why the program was needed, but statistical evidence based on testing that can be used to both justify the need and prove that the program had a positive impact on the children not just during the program, but on into the next school year. The qualifications of the test administrator show that the tests were standardized, relative to the actual school environment, and not subject to being designed to make the nonprofit look good. Note the constant references to charts and graphs. While not absolutely necessary, presenting complex information in graphical formats makes it very easy for the grantor to see that they invested their money wisely, and that means this nonprofit may very well receive support again.

Does method two require a lot more investment of time and probably money?  Absolutely. The problem has to better defined, the methods more detailed, and above all the results must show some degree of real ongoing change in a condition. Nonprofits that can't step up and embrace better outcome reporting are the ones that will be out of business very quickly.

Every program can have provable results. Think about what you want to accomplish, and then design a way to prove the results and preferably, show that the results provided some sort of ongoing improvement in the problem. No one wants to  keep throwing good money after bad, and it's your job to show grantors that their money was not wasted.