How do funders pick award winners?

Successful grant proposals illustrate these key points.

·         Your proposal delivers an important idea relative to the grantor's mission by addressing a significant issue.

·         You show that you understand the grantors mission by providing an innovative approach to that issue.

·         You set reasonable objectives and present a detailed plan, including a budget, to achieve them.

·         You can provide proof to the funder that you are capable of success.

·         You can explain how the project will advance the funder’s mission.

·         You can show that the project is sustainable beyond any support the grantor may provide.

·         You don't apply if you aren't qualified.

Grantors receive from dozens to hundreds or even thousands of proposals when they announce an open application period.

You have to stand out. One of the best ways to do that is to provide documentation of your success in addressing the issues even if it is through a pilot program or another type of program that is still mission-centric.

Sometimes that simply means presenting your program differently.

Homework is the most important part of any grant proposal. You already know about you and your needs. Your assignment is to find out what the funder needs or wants.

Get to know everything you can about the funder. Who have they funded in the past? What type of programs do they fund? Who is on the board? Do they fund the same organizations every year? Is there an opening to present a new twist that those other grantees haven't explored? Don't be afraid to look at those other grant winners and discover their strengths and weaknesses.

 For instance one nonprofit that worked to provide transitional safe housing for domestic violence victims presented their program as "Safer homes mean better educations" and landed a $25,000 grant from a grantor that normally supports early childhood education.

The trend toward online applications that began a few years ago is not your friend. Learn to condense your narratives and program outlines because you may not have several pages to elaborate on your planning and goals.

The last bullet point above is important. Don't apply if you can't qualify. Aside from making you look incompetent, you might very well leave such a bad impression that you hit the funder's blacklist (and yes, virtually every funder has one).

It is rare for a smaller nonprofit to have dozens of potential funder matches. If you can align with a handful each year, you are doing far better than average.

Grantors don't typically fund organizations that have few or no other resources, which is why they almost never fund start-up organizations. New programs are often okay, new organizations, not so much. Grantors are looking for impact potential, and it's hard to have impact if you can't pay the light bill.

On the other hand, if you have managed to grow your organization using financial resources from avenues other than grants, that's a definite plus.

That said, if you have a truly outstanding angle and an ironclad plan of action that offers a new twist on an old problem it might not hurt to try.

Consider these tips and you are likely to connect on more proposals.

Next week – Collaborate and conquer. 

Should you use a templated proposal?

It depends on what you are calling a template.

Periodically I have people ask me to write a template for them to use to reply to RFPs or LOIs (Letters of Inquiry or Introduction). What they seem to see as a template is a one-size-fits-all canned response, like a sales letter, that they can send out shotgun-style to multiple grantors.

In some cases, they will send me to their "about" or Facebook page and tell me to use that wording verbatim, but "put it into a grant format."

It would oh-so-easy for me to just add a couple of paragraph headers and collect a few bucks and move on.

The problem with that is the client would probably never win a grant with it, and here's why.

All Requests for Proposals (RFPs) and all grantors are different.

It follows then that there will be differences in the verbiage in your application. While they may have a similar macro-focus their goals will be different.

Take youth program funding for instance. That's a macro-category. To one funder that may mean providing money to purchase tablets or laptops. The next one may see it as providing after-school care.

If you send out your canned LOI, but none of your programs address laptops or after-school care, you just wasted your time.

What CAN be templated or reused.

When I think of a template I think of the headings in an application or proposal. Things like program descriptions, statistics,  board member biographies, prior year outcome reporting, annual reports and organizational history tend to stay fairly constant for at least a year, and these can be pasted into a proposal.

Most RFP's have sections for these things. Statements of need can utilize statistical reporting such as population, race, age or gender percentages, income profiles of the targeted populations, etc. That wording can be pretty much left as is for as long as they are accurate.

Other things will have to be written so that they apply to the specific grantor.

   

Program descriptions and goals tend to stay pretty much the same, but sections of them may need to be highlighted or even extracted to show relevancy to the grantor's goals.

Board members, key personnel and their bios usually don't change much for at least a couple of years  but should still be reviewed and any additions or subtractions noted such as promotions or a change in title.

   

Notice that I don't include the executive summary as a static document. If the proposals are slightly different the executive summary will also change. That's why it's called a summary. Sections of it might not change, but it should still reflect the proposal you are submitting.

I distinctly remember one summary I read that was still talking about funding for an event that had happened several years in the past. I do a lot of these documents, and I always verify that all, and I mean all, of the information is up-to-date and applicable to the grantor.

So the answer to the title question is a qualified maybe.

If the grantor or the request you are sending, say for assistance with a capital campaign, is exactly the same you could get away with sending out nearly the same proposal or LOI to several grantors during the year. If not, you may need to do a substantial rewrite.

BTW - Do be sure you have the right grantor's name in your executive summary or request for funding. I remember one person who used a foundation's name in the original LOI, and then hit "send to all" to seven different funder  prospects. Awkward!

Questions or comments?  Drop me a line at rightwords@ida.net

Hello? Is anyone in charge here?

As a grant and proposal writer, I find myself asking that question a lot, and too often the answer is no.

Oh sure, there may be someone assigned to answer questions or provide data, but no one seems to be able to make a firm decision. In fact, it happens so often that it has become one of my top questions when qualifying a client…what is your approval process for accepting a grant application or LOI deliverable? The least desirable answer is that it will be "reviewed by the staff and/or board".

The bane of any grant writer's existence is the serial editing process. That means you submit a proposal or LOI for review and it makes the rounds throughout the organization not once but many times.

You know you are in trouble when you get back multiple edit requests signed by six different people and they target six different goals.

What you have then is six different people all defending their piece of the turf. That doesn't move the process forward, and it may indicate to the grantor that your planning process is not effective as a means to provide long-lasting outcomes.

Understand, I don't have a problem with the people or the input. It's the lack of coherent planning that serial editing represents.

With rare exception, grantors focus on supporting a proposal that targets one of their must-have results. Let's say  they are into acquiring housing for the homeless. They are looking for ways to assist you in putting that roof over someone's head.

While many conditions contribute to homelessness, the grantor's ultimate goal is reducing the number of homeless people. However, in your organizations serial editing process, one person wants to include funding for substance abuse counseling, another wants to provide job training, another wants to address domestic violence, while someone else is focused on acquiring properties for temporary housing.

Only the last will meet the goal of this specific grantor. That doesn't mean the other three are not worthy of funding, or couldn't be presented as individual programs or phases, but they don't provide the physical roof.

Someone needs to be in charge of maintaining a focus and assigning a priority to the specific needs that align with both the grantor and grantee's mission.

In the example above, the physical building meets the grantors guidelines. All of the other peripheral elements can be targeted once the person is safely housed. That might require writing more grants and applying to several grantors.

It very seldom happens that one grantor will support every facet or nuance of fulfilling your over-arching mission. As a grant writer or adviser, it isn't up to me to  prioritize your needs. The best I can do is make suggestions that will strengthen your chances of winning funding.

The decision on whose interests or needs are most important within your organization at any given point in time needs to made before you approach a funding prospect. Then, when you review an RFP or a proposal one person should be able to make a decision and evaluate the proposal or grantor on that basis.

That saves you time and money by allowing me to provide you with a quality targeted proposal or assist you in finding appropriate grantor prospects to approach, and more importantly, it maximizes your chances of winning funding.

Make a plan and put someone in charge of it.  It will make both of our jobs easier and more productive. 

The creative side of grant writing

In business writing, there is a category that deals with sales copy. It used to be called copywriting, but the new terminology is "creative content".

To put it succinctly, the people that call themselves "creative content providers", including me, craft words  and sometimes images into what amounts to a sales pitch. They can be both long and short form, but they are all designed to do one thing, and that's to make you want to spend money on something. And let's face it, a grant proposal is asking someone to spend money on your mission. 

Most grant applications are heavy on facts and statistics by necessity, but there is one place where you can get creative, and that's in the statement of need. This is the one place where you can kind of let the creative juices flow.

 

That's not to say that you should make up stuff, or wax so poetic (or just plain sappy) that the reader feels like s/he is drowning in syrup. Creative writing doesn't work with every grantor, or for every program. Some foundations and programs are strictly "just the facts" oriented, and it's up to you (or your grant writer) to determine which approach works.

Still, you do need to create some sort of connection with the grantor.  Admittedly, that's harder than it used to be, given that many foundations are using space-limited online applications, but it isn't impossible.

Here's an example of two ways to pitch your "winter coats for kids" program to a grantor.

Example 1 

There are 6,000 children living below the poverty line in Anyplace County. Most of these children do not have a warm winter coat.  Our program provided 1500 winter coats to children last year, and we could add 1000 more with your support.

Example 2

Anna is seven, and she's waiting for the bus. The thermometer on the bank shows a temperature of 22 degrees and it's windy. Anna huddles behind the bus stop bench wearing just a thin sweater, because she doesn't have a coat to shield her from the cold. There are 6000 Anna's in Anyplace County living below the poverty line.  Any money her family gets goes for food and rent.  Our "buy excess inventory " program provided 1500 coats for some of these children last year, and we can add another 1000 to that number with your help.

Of course you will have to go on and explain the program more fully, provide a budget for it, submit financial statements and all of the other business-type things that grantors need to see, but Example 2 will very likely entice someone to read through your proposal, while example 1 might just get tossed to the side.

By the way…Example 2 netted $10,000 from the grantor, and Anna got her coat.