Do This to Start Your Search for Grants!
Ready to start seeking grant funding and wondering where to start?
Sometimes the fastest way to proceed is to go slowly.
Following a step-by-step process will help you get started, not feel overwhelmed, and stay on track for the long run.
When researching foundations, you will first want to cast a wide net.
Then, when it comes to choosing which foundations to target with actual grant proposals, you will want to be quite selective. Reserve your grant writing efforts for those submissions most likely to get results.
By planning before you leap, you can make the grant seeking process more manageable and save time and energy, both in the short term and in the long term.
In the short term, having a plan to follow will help you move forward more confidently and more quickly.
In the longer term, having a plan that includes a simple system for tracking your progress will allow you to navigate a vast forest of foundations and potential funders, without losing track of what ground you've already covered and what comes next.
Best of all...with a tracking system in place, you will have ready data at hand for proceeding quickly with future grant writing efforts and for efficiently outsourcing those grant writing tasks if you want to.
Here are some tips for getting started...
Goal One:
The Matching Game
My Organization ⇔ Compatible Foundations
Your first task will be to IDENTIFY STRONG MATCHES between your organization and those foundations whose mission, vision, and passion align most closely with yours.
Goal Two:
Keeping Track
A secondary goal of this process, will be to TRACK & KEEP RECORDS of your activity.
You will want to track the following:
the resources (websites, directories, professional contacts) you have already tapped in order to find prospective foundations...
the foundations you have already vetted...
the foundations that prove to be most aligned with your organization and your goals...
the foundations you've already submitted proposals to and when...
Keeping these two broad goals in mind, let's begin with goal one: the match making process!
Remember, in its most simple terms, the grant seeking process has a lot in common with online dating!
In a vast universe of charitable foundations, you are looking for a small number of strong matches based on your own organization's mission, goals, and funding objectives.
The more a prospective foundation is aligned to your organization's mission, programs, and specific grant proposal goals, the better the odds of success in the short term, and a better overall return on investment for your grant proposal efforts over the long term.
Socrates' famous saying "KNOW THYSELF" is a key part of this first step.
To quickly identify the most promising foundations, start by formulating an identity profile for your own organization.
I've listed 3 Key Criteria below that will help you quickly develop a profile for your organization:
1. What KEY DESCRIPTORS highlight your organization's unique identity and mission?...Ask yourself:
What social SECTOR/DEMOGRAPHIC does my nonprofit focus on (e.g., education...arts...disadvantaged youth...teenage women)?
What CRITICAL NEED(S) does my nonprofit seek to address (e.g., community college drop out rates...universal access to arts education...pregnancy prevention...outdated science classrooms and lab equipment in high schools...connecting schools with private sector partners to enrich and improve STEM education...)?
What CORE STRATEGY defines my organization in terms of passion, expertise, and focus for impacting those critical needs (e.g., a program to recruit and train skilled math mentors...building a local community-to-schools volunteer pipeline...producing high quality social media content for a public awareness campaign...)?
What are the SIZE, SCOPE, and target REGION of our current or planned programs and services (e.g., serving disadvantaged families in one target neighborhood...supporting secondary public schools across a large county...implementing a national public awareness campaign...)?
2. Which ONE of the following kinds of expenditures are you seeking to address in your grant request?...
Funding needs outlined in a grant proposal typically fall into one of the following distinct categories
PROGRAM expenditures: funding to start a new program or to expand an existing program...or
CAPITAL expenditures: funding for your organization's infrastructure needs or expansion (e.g., office space, office upgrades, land, fleet of vehicles, major software or SAS purchases)...or
OPERATIONAL expenditures: funding for keeping up with day-to-day and general operating costs, general (not program-specific...) staffing costs, recurring utility costs...
3. What SIZE grant are you seeking?
What is the approximate dollar amount of the grant you will be seeking?
Are you seeking one-time monies (most grant proposals), or ongoing operational support, or some other kind of partnership?
Once you've built an identity profile for your nonprofit and it’s current fund search profile, it's time for the next big part of the process, looking for the best matches!
But, before you get out ahead of yourself, this is a good time to slow things down and get organized...Here's how...
Build a SPREADSHEET for tracking your progress...Here's a list of helpful FIELDS you will want to include:
Directory information for each foundation you wish to research further (name, address, URL, contact person, contact email & phone number...)
Source (identify what Website, directory, index, colleague...was the source for any foundation you are adding to your list of potential funders)
Foundation Profile Key Words (at this stage, or after further research, use this field to list key words that provide a composite of the foundation's profile--their mission & vision; the demographic, sector, and geographic area they serve; what kind of funding they award [e.g., program support as opposed to capital expenditures]; the approximate size of the grants they offer; any unique priorities or restrictions they stipulate...)
Grant cycle windows / dates (record any information--IF readily available to you at this stage in the process--about when the foundation accepts submissions, when it awards grants...)
Rating field (upon further research, use this field to record scores for the foundation in terms of how good a match it is with your organization's mission, goals, & current funding objectives--more on this below!)
Contact history (if and when you engage a foundation, use this field to keep a log of your past and current interactions, such as any email or phone inquiries and the name of contact persons for the foundation and from within your organization... the date you submitted any proposal...any responses or awards from the foundation...)
Okay...you re-engaged with your own organization's vision, mission, and goals and drafted a personality inventory or identity profile for your nonprofit or social sector organization...
Afterwards, you made a valuable time investment by preparing a spreadsheet to keep track of your progress and record important data and reminders....
Now it's time to look for a mate and...keep score as you go!
This is fundamentally a three-part process:
IDENTIFYING foundations for further research (noting key directory information in the directory field on your tracking spreadsheet)
RESEARCHING foundations: gathering information that will allow you to create an identify profile for each prospective foundation (entering key words into the respective data fields on your tracking spreadsheet)
RATING foundations: comparing your organization's identity profile with each foundation's identity profile in order to assign a compatibility score, which you also track on your spreadsheet
Here's a simple method for assigning a compatibility score for foundations you are researching:
Remember that PROFILE INVENTORY you made for your organization in step 1?...
As you research potential funding partners, you want to assign a compatibility SCORE based on the mission and the grant criteria of prospective foundations...
For each of the THREE categories in your organization's profile (i.e., 1. key traits of your organization's mission and core strategy 2. type of expenditures you need to fund 3. size of grant you are seeking ...) assign a corresponding score to indicate how a foundation aligns with your organization:
0 = No Match 1 = Weak Match 2 = Satisfactory Match 3 = Close Match
Remember that you already created a field in your tracking spreadsheet with spaces to record one score for each of the three main profile areas and a place to record the score total (= the sum of the three assigned scores).The foundations with the highest score totals (in the 6 to 9 range) are going to offer the highest probability of success for your grant writing efforts. Remember, you are tracking your progress using a spreadsheet, with discrete "fields" for your data entry. So, at any time, with just a little spreadsheet magic, you can produce lists and reports and take advantage of sorting tools in your spreadsheet software, applying those tools to any of the desired "fields."For now you will want to sort data using the total score field and rank the foundations you researched in descending order, from highest compatibility score to lowest compatibility score. Those at the top of the list will be your best bets! Later, you might want to use other fields to generate other kinds of reports or lists, such as foundations with high compatibility scores that offer grants of $5,000 and greater, just as an example.
EdPro Communications hopes these suggestions will help nonprofit leaders seeking to develop and submit their first grant proposals.
But remember...
When it's time to write a winning proposal...
You don't have to go it alone!
EdPro Communications offers flexible and competitively priced writing and communications services informed by over 15 years of successful experience in the education field...
Just CLICK HERE to contact EdPro Communications today!
