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/

Good procedures improve scalability

This question comes up often on grant applications. "How does your organization demonstrate scalability?" and it drives small businesses and newer nonprofits crazy.

In simple terms, scalability refers to the ability to manage growth. For a very small entity, the first private reaction is usually "I don't know…give us the funds to grow and we'll figure it out!"

A natural but fatal flaw in understanding what the grantor is asking.

What the grantor wants to know is that you have a plan and procedures to facilitate growth. The larger the grant sought, the more formal the procedure becomes.

When I work with a very new organization, I often call this developing a what-if strategy.

What if you actually won a million-dollar grant?

What procedures do you have in place that even a brand-new employee could understand?

For instance, let's take Human Resources.  What procedures do you have (beyond advertising to fill job openings) to assure grantors that the people you hire have qualifications that fit their roles?

A hiring procedure manual will outline what educational and experience profile new hires have to meet. It will cover things like job descriptions,  who conducts background and reference  checks, where they look for that information and what they should do with it when they obtain it.

On the grant application you might summarize this by saying "Our  hiring procedure manual clearly outlines the number of new employees needed for expansion, who can place the order for new hires, and defines the step-by-step procedures needed to verify applicants to ensure they meet the standards required."

BTW…I have seen more than one grantor that required actual copies of procedures at the time of the award decision. There's nothing scarier than receiving a letter that says "You have been selected as a grant recipient, contingent upon receiving documentation within three working days of _________ as stated in your application" and realizing you don't have hard copy.

Believe me, you usually can't create that kind of document out of thin air and get the appropriate board approvals and/or management signatures in 72 hours.

Notice that I said board approval.  Any document that sets policy for an organization should be reviewed by the board and carry a signature page showing it was approved, and that approval should be read into the minutes of the board meeting.

The usual procedure for all that is to introduce the policy at one meeting, have it reviewed by the appropriate legal and financial staff, and then approve it at the next board meeting.

Of course a $500 grant from your local big box retailer or community foundation  isn't going to require all that, but part of growth is thinking beyond the moment.

In short…plan ahead to get ahead.

Need a policy manual?  I can help.  Contact me at rightwords@ida.net for more information.

The politics of funding – Is your program relevant to grantors?

The reality of nonprofit funding is that sometimes your mission isn't trendy enough to attract support.

Take the current interest of increasing participation in post-secondary education, and contrast it with the goal of helping low-income people get jobs.

One the one side you have millions being poured into missions supporting STEM education, such as instruction in how to access financial aid for college.

On the other hand you have more local nonprofits struggling to get enough funding to do things like improving access to the workplace for people who just need a steady paycheck.

One group with the latter mission focuses on providing decent clothes for interviewees and training to improve interviewing skills and focuses primarily on workers aged 40 and up, displaced from the job market during the recession. Typically they purchased clothing from local retailers and made it available to interviewees. The program budget was in the low five-figure range annually.

This group is starting to find that even jobs which shouldn't require any sort of post-secondary degree are suddenly being restricted or at least are preferential to college grads only.

An example of this is seen in an advertisement for seasonal employees for a major home improvement supplies retailer. The specific opening was for a seasonal week-end position assisting customers in the lumber department.

The ad reads as follows:

"Preferred Qualifications:  Associate's Degree in Business, Retail Management, Specialty related to department (e.g., design, appliances) or related field OR Certification in trade related occupation required."

Most potential applicant's never get past that sentence, although much further on in the ad it does say a minimum of one years experience is also acceptable.

The low-income-focused nonprofit had several people available who had actually done the job for other employers, or who have experience in other types of sales, but they don't have any of the paperwork required. No degrees, no certifications, just decades in the building material or building trades. Several of their people applied, but none were even interviewed.

That matters, because it lowers the impact, i.e. the provable results of their program, making their program appear less effective.

The aforementioned NPO working with the older jobseekers stated that most of their previous funding sources had switched over to what the frustrated ED called "more media-attractive" support. Their funding has dropped by over 50% since 2010, due to grantor mission realignment.

I suggested that perhaps they needed to incorporate programs that were more, shall we say, "funding-friendly" such as programs to get their people into some type of educational setting or training to make a complete career change.

His answer was that maybe funders need to start looking at the world his people lived in today.

He said "These are people with an excellent work ethic and fully marketable and useful skills, who have from another 15 to 25 years left in the labor force. They have families to support NOW. They have household expenses NOW. They haven't done a thing wrong except to become politically and socially irrelevant. Maybe by the time they can retire or die, we will all be replaced by robots, but that time isn't NOW"

Unfortunately that conundrum is the reality of funding. Sometimes, no matter how worthy or timely the cause, it doesn't resonate with grantors.

That reality will eventually impact your results, so getting a handle on a solution will definitely affect your future.

The answer is to either pursue a shift in your own focus or seek out new funding streams and new supporters, and continue to educate the public on the value and relevance of your mission.

In the end, we designed a campaign to appeal directly to individual donors, utilizing both direct clothing donations and a crowdfunding appeal that ultimately raised enough money to meet goal. Longer term, the NPO is seeking to develop relationships with new grantors.

If I can help you with funding solutions, drop me a line at rightwords@ida.net. 

Donor Development and the Entrepreneurial Mindset

The word entrepreneur conjures up a vision of a person who plans to start and run a for-profit business. Actually, the definition in Webster’s is “one who organizes, manages and assumes the risk of a business or enterprise”. (italics added)

The skills and vision needed to start and manage a successful nonprofit are not very different from those needed to start any business.

You need a goal (mission and vision), a market niche (statement of need), product or service (program), a business plan (strategic plan) and  investors (donors)  for you to stay around long enough to succeed.

So why is it that most fledgling nonprofits can’t accept the idea that they have to have good planning and sound structure to succeed? Why do they approach donors with a vision but no way to make it happen?

There seems to be a sort of “build it and they( the donors) will come” mentality among nonprofit start-ups. Sometimes that works in business…the first personal computer was conceived of and  built long before the investors arrived. More often though, new nonprofits are more like some of the ill-conceived niche carmakers. The DeLorean was a good marketing  concept but it was a lousy car mechanically, and it didn’t capture the market share needed to survive.

Taking your nonprofit from concept to functioning entity requires so much more than just a passion to help someone or something.

Chickens don’t come out of the egg fully feathered and ready to lay eggs, small businesses don’t begin as multi-million dollar corporations and nonprofits don’t attract millions in donations in the first few years, if ever.

In “Climbing the Ladder to Nonprofit Success” I try to prepare new nonprofits for the realities of becoming the next successful  local,  national or global nonprofit. I get a lot of nice feedback from people, but I also get a lot of “you don’t understand the mentality of a nonprofit founder”.

Oh yes, Virginia, I do. That’s why I wrote the darn thing. Every person that strikes out on their own has a dream, but not all of them realize it. The difference is that at some point,  the successful ones learn to borrow from or assimilate existing knowledge to succeed.

There is a “reality” show on TV about prospective small businesses competing to win backing from a group of investors. Yeah, it’s dramatized, but in many ways it is very much like the donor development environment. There has to be value in it for both sides.

For instance, both donors and investors (including social impact investors)  look hard at your team. For nonprofits, that’s your board, your CEO, your CFO, and your program administrators. Let’s face it, there are tens of thousands of nonprofits all targeting exactly the same problems. Donors are going to pick the organization with the best chance to have an impact and the quality of the team is what determines that, not how much money you have.

Telling or showing  donors  that you are the only working and involved member of the team is the kiss of death for your grant application or donor recruitment.

Donors want to know that you have a solid path to success. They want to be a part of that success, but they don’t want to own your nonprofit. On your side, you need to be able to use donations to build your organization’s impact, not just keep the lights on.

Thinking like an entrepreneur isn’t counter-intuitive to achieving mission success. The skills needed to succeed can be learned and developed. Marketing, publicity, planning, results reporting, program design and financial controls translate very well from the for-profit to the nonprofit world.

Want your new nonprofit to succeed?  Start thinking like an entrepreneur.

Need more information on planning to succeed? Drop me a line at granthelp@ida.net.  Let’s talk! 

Is your board helping you pay the bills?

Judging from the number of nonprofit founders that tell me they need a grant because they have maxed out their personal ability to support their nonprofit, I'd have to say the answer is a resounding "no".

In my white paper, "Climbing the Ladder to Nonprofit Success" (you can get a copy by requesting one here) I explain why depending on getting grants to start a nonprofit, or even winning grant funding in the first year or two, is not a very wise financial plan.

So where do you get your initial funding after you have put all the personal money you can afford into the mission? Normally, it is going to be from your board, your immediate friends and family, small local events or a combination of all three.

Everyone seems to get the friends and family and the small events part, but they don't want to make fundraising a board duty.

There will probably always be a philosophical discussion about whether to set fundraising goals for each board member. I don't understand why that is even a point for discussion.

Admittedly, many people start nonprofits and  ask people they know to be on the board, just to satisfy the legal requirement that they have a board. It is a good bet that some of the people they pick say something like "OK, but I won't have to do anything, right?"

 

Wrong.

The board should be initially a development group. First and foremost they should care passionately about accomplishing the mission, and believe that they can do it. Right after they affirm their allegiance to that idea, they need to understand that missions need money to succeed. Making the board an integral part of that aspect of being a nonprofit right at the start shouldn't be optional.

If founders would sit down and figure out how much money they need in the first two years, cross grants off the list of possible sources, and then approach perspective board members with a honest inquiry as to whether they can contribute to the organization, or at the very least, be willing to go out individually and raise funds to meet those goals, there would be fewer failing nonprofits.

When someone asks me to write a grant and then says the organization is essentially a one-man or woman show, I know that no matter what I do, the grant thing isn't going to happen. That just isn't a model that grantors can support.

Increasingly, prospective funders are starting to ask for a statement as to how much money the board members contribute personally to the organization. At the very least, they may ask for the amount the board as a whole has personally contributed in the past year.

The reasoning behind that question is first, to judge how committed  the board  is to the organization's survival and whether they are taking personal responsibility to ensure that success. Second, if all they see is zeroes or a few dollars from each board member, it tells them that the organizational strength may not be good enough for them to trust with their money. Third, they want to know that the nonprofit has enough reasonably stable funding to stay in business.

Underlying all of those questions is another big one…if your board doesn't support the nonprofit financially, why should anyone else do so?

Many more funding sources are starting to require proof of matching funds before they will fund a program, or they are making an award into a challenge grant. Very new nonprofits usually have a tough time with that, but if the board is willing and able to gather a few thousand dollars toward that requirement, it can open the door to more funding.

For those that feel that accepting board members on the basis of their ability to contribute monetarily leaves out  some otherwise well-qualified prospects, then consider setting a fundraising goal for those worthy but financially challenged people. If asking them to go out and solicit donations puts them off, they will probably never be fully committed in other areas either.

Like it or not, your organization will always be chasing the next dollar. If your board is so passive that they can ignore that immutable fact, it is probably the wrong board.

Having this conversation with your board can be tricky. You don't want to start off by saying "OK, you lazy pot-lickers, it's time to pony up", even if that's the way you feel. Sometimes all board members need is a firm goal to chase instead of a never-ending whine about how broke you are, and they will amaze you. By setting an attainable goal for board contributions, you maximize the chance that they will put some effort into reaching it.

If you aren't sure how to have this conversation with your existing board, or frame it in a recruiting pitch, drop me a line and I can help you present it in a firm but non-accusatory manner. 

Creative grant writing - are you selling a zebra?

Grant applications are essentially tools for selling your nonprofit mission to donors. One of the phrases I see often in RFP's or advertisements for grant writing help is this one:

"…seeking creative writer to apply for grants"

That should  mean that the client wants someone to frame their existing message in a fresh, compelling, interesting  way.

Unfortunately, experience has taught me that clients advertising this way want a bit more than that. These advertisers might just as well say "Need fiction writer".

Let's look at the difference. Let's say you want to describe a zebra you really, really need to sell to someone that wants to buy a pony for their child, but really doesn't know much about horses or ponies. Seems easy, right?

One way could be to say:

"Zebras are black-and-white striped animals that live in Africa."  That's not creative or very informative, but it's true.

An alternate creatively written description could read:

"Zebras are undomesticated members of the horse family, and are native to Africa. Their typical black and white striped coats are easily identified at zoos and wild animal preserves. Unlike their domesticated relatives, zebras are seldom tamed or trained for riding or driving. Since both people and large carnivores prey upon them as a food source, they are highly defensive and can disable even a lion with a well-aimed kick. While most members of the horse family are tractable with proper training, zebras have a well-deserved reputation for retaining their wild characteristics even under trained professional handling."

That's all true too, but it is more informative, gives some insight into their temperament ,and even a hint as to why they have that temperament.  Even if you know nothing about equines you can deduce that this is probably not the pony of your child's dreams.

What happens when you add fiction into the mix?  Well, you get something like this.

"Zebras are Africa's answer to the beautiful Arabian horse. Their elegant black-and-white striped coats make them attractive and they are gentle and willing to please."

Paints quite a different picture doesn't it? There is a kernel of truth there, but if you were looking for a pet pony for your kid, you would  be terribly misled and have possibly tragic results if you bought into the fictional zebra description.

Grant applications need to portray your organization in a compelling, yet truthful way. Claiming outcomes  you can't prove or citing financial records that don't exist will not get you a huge grant award. Grantors do their due diligence before handing out money, and once they discover that your zebra is actually a wild animal and  not a pet, you not only won't get the grant, you will be forever branded as a liar. Even if you later acquire the most wonderful kid's pony in the world, everyone will remember your zebra.

I'm a pretty darn good writer, but if you hire me,  even I can't turn your zebra into a pony.