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.
1. Research Possible Funders
Your first step is to research potential funders.
So…
What organizations give grants?
Where do you find these organizations?
Organizations and agencies that offer grants typically fall into the following categories:
Private Charitable Foundations
Corporate & Business Foundations (such as the Ford Foundation, Toshiba Foundation, Private company foundations…)
Banks and Credit Unions
Public Agencies: Cities and Counties; State Agencies; Federal Agencies
Here are some common places grant seekers look for these organizations and specific grant opportunities:
Foundation & Grant Prospecting Platforms (e.g., Grant Watch, Instrumentl, Candid)
Foundation Websites
Corporation and Bank Websites
City, State, and County Websites
Grants.gov for Federal Grants
2. Look For Alignment — Identifying Compatible Foundations & Grants
When researching grant opportunities, you’ll need to be looking for which opportunities are potentially promising (to consider) and which ones are not (to excude).
Be sure to cast a wide net initially.
Then, when it comes to choosing which foundations to target with actual grant proposals, be far more selective — to ensure you’re reserving your grant writing efforts for the opportunities that have strong alignment with your organization and projects.
What Is Alignment?
If you new to grant prospecting, it’s crucial to understand that specific foundations and agencies, and specifc grants they offer, have specific parameters for who can apply and what kinds of programs, missions, and activities are compatible with the grant in question.
Eligibility — Who Can Apply?
Most grant opportunities are only for specific kinds of organizations. Be sure your organization is a fit. Common categories for who can apply frequently include one or more of the following:
501c3 Nonprofits
Schools and Institutions of Higher Education
Tribal Entities
Small Businesses
Individuals
Program Alignment — What Is (and Isn’t) Eligible for Funding?
Organizations that offer grants usually align their giving with specific kinds of missions, activities, and initiatives. Some common categories of eligible program areas for charitable giving include:
health and human services
educational programming
arts and cultural enrichment
youth services
support for underresourced communities
environmental initiatives and clean energy expansion
small business expansion
clinical or scientific research (especially public research)
academic research
public works
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’re looking for a small number of strong matches based on eligible organization type, and eligible types of services and programming.
3. Track Your Efforts As You Go
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 system for tracking your progress — which will allow you to navigate a vast forest of foundations and potential funders, grant opportunities, and deadlines, 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.
Tips for Success
Tip 1: "KNOW THYSELF" — Create an organizational profile
To quickly identify the most promising foundations, start by formulating an identity profile for your own organization.
Here are 3 key criteria to help you develop your organization’s profile:
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?
Tip 2: STAY ORGANIZED — Use a spreadsheet or CRM-style tracking platform
Be sure to track your progress as you go!
Here's a list of helpful FIELDS you’ll 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)
Key Alignment Themes & Criteria — use this field to list key words that provide a composite of the foundation's profile, jsuch as their mission & vision; the demographic, sector, and geographic area they serve
Size and Type of Monetary Award — what kind of funding they award (e.g., for projects, vs. capacity building, vs. general operating support…) and the approximate size of the grants they offer
Grant cycle timelines, application submission deadlines…
Rating Field — 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 — 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...
Tip 3: VET YOUR OPPORTUNITIES — Prioritize which opportunities to apply for
You won’t have time and energy to apply everywhere all at once! So, you need to make some informed but quasi-subjective decisions about which opportunities are the best ones to pursue in the short term vs. longer term, and which ones are the top priorities for your organization — based on strong alignment and your organization’s strategic needs and goals.
Assign a Compatibility Score to Each Active Grant Opportunity.
Remember the Organizational Profile you made for your organization?... That profile will help you determine which potential funding partners (foundations or agencies) and which of their grants are best aligned with / most compatible with your own organization’s mission and current projects or needs:
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.
For each of those top-priority opportunities, do some homework and make sure they are no parameters or restrictions that will exclude your organization or proposed activities from consideration or eligibility.
Verify what’s required to complete the required grant proposal or application.
Make a timeline for developing and writing the proposal, to ensure you finish and submit the proposal before any specified deadline.
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!
