Tag: Apply for grants

What Do Reviewers Look for in a Grant Application?

Despite increased efforts from foundations and funders to simplify the grant application process through FAQs, information sessions, and webinars, there still remains an air of mystery around reviewing grants.  So, what can you do to help your submission stand out?  Here are some items to consider before you submit your application.

Consider: Is your proposal realistic?  Have you thought the program through?  Is it a new program your organization is taking on, or are you doing the work already?  Will your program actually address the challenge?  Does your budget align with your project narrative? Lastly, are your outcomes possible, and can they realistically be evaluated?  Grant reviewers will be able to notice if you have padded the budget, or conversely, not allotted enough room in the budget to accomplish something.  Be honest, accurate, and direct about what you intend to do with the money if you receive it.

Read and follow the application guidelines.  Don’t start off on the wrong foot by incorrectly following submission guidelines or failing to answer the prompts accurately.  Make sure you are responding to exactly what is being asked of your application.  Re-read the questions and re-read your responses.  Then, do it again. Ask a colleague to read over your proposal to make sure you are following all direction.

Attend the informational webinar, phone call, or in-person session.  If your schedule allows, attend the information session related to the grant. This shows the funder that you are interested in the opportunity and dedicated to being as prepared as possible with your application.  While generally not a component in the scoring process, grantmakers will notice who participated in a listening session.

Before writing, take time to understand your audience.  As with all writing, it’s important to consider who you are writing for.  Do you know the history of the funder or this grant opportunity?  Have you researched previous awardees to see the types of programs funded?  Do you know how the funder reviews grants – a panel of staff reviewers grading your application or community volunteers?  Is your funder concerned with local or national initiatives?  Check the guidelines again for context clues to help you determine your audience and voice.

Provide Clear and Concise Responses.  Grant writing is a delicate balance of writing descriptively but also keeping it specific. Stay focused—you are writing to solve a problem, not convince the funder about your organization’s value. Reviewers want to know you are knowledgeable and prepared to do what you are proposing to do.  Telling a story can help illustrate you know the landscape and are ready to respond to it with your program.  Make sure to provide relevant details whenever possible and support your proposal with data or direct quotes.  In the end, is your response convincing?

It’s the job of a program officer or grant reviewer to steward their employer’s resources wisely.  It’s also their job to give funding to the organization that can convince them their program is the best way to address a challenge.  Help grant reviewers see you as knowledgeable, capable, and responsible, and success will follow.

Williams Grant Writing (WGW) has the team, time, skills, and systems in place to act as your grant writing partner. WGW can help you research funding opportunities, review draft applications, apply for the grant funding, and help you stay on top of reporting and deadlines. WGW has a proven track record of connecting nonprofits to funding. Contact us today to see how we can help!

 

The Elephant in the Room: Grant Writing as Fundraising

There are many blogs, books, and conferences devoted to nonprofit fundraising. Topics, such as direct mail best practices, making “the ask,” and getting your board on-board, have been dissected again and again.  Yet, how honest are the conversations around fundraising coupled with grant writing?  Compared with the personal, relationship-based nature of appealing to individual donors and meeting face-to-face with local businesses for financial support, fundraisers can feel overwhelmed when also expected to research and write grants on top of their other responsibilities. When everything’s a trade-off, should your fundraiser spend their time grant writing? Or is their energy better spent cultivating relationships and stewarding donors? Here are a few considerations when debating the best use of your fundraising team’s time.

Grant writing is unique and requires a special skill set. Grant writing is vastly different from other types of fundraising and other types of writing.  The process is often solitary, reflective, and inward-focused. A strong grant application should be clear and concise, making sure to answer questions directly, with little-to-no niceties.  Simple, detail-driven, transactional grant writing is oftentimes in stark contrast to the friendly nature of a fundraiser who interacts with donors.

Grant writing is a process, with a system and deadlines. Maybe not the first or second time you apply for a grant, but once you’ve applied for enough grants, a good grant writer develops a system.  How is your system working for you?  Do you have a system? Large foundations have entire teams to monitor grant deadlines and reporting.  Smaller organizations with limited resources may find it difficult to systematize grant writing while balancing other fundraising activities.

When successful, the real work starts. When the grant is awarded, you and your organization must administer, track, and report on the grant funding.  There is typically more demanded on an organization when funding comes as a grant, so fundraisers must have the system in place to concentrate on the reporting.

Making the case for outsourcing your grant writing. Contracting your grant writing to an outside team frees staff to focus on what matters most: your mission and your donors.  Professional grant writers will write more objectively about your program and have the tracking systems in place to handle researching new grant opportunities and reporting once grants are obtained. What are you waiting for?

Williams Grant Writing (WGW) has the team, time, skills, and systems in place to act as your grant writing partner. WGW can help you research funding opportunities, review draft applications, apply for the grant funding, and help you stay on top of reporting and deadlines. WGW has a proven track record of connecting nonprofits to funding. Contact us today to see how we can help.

Staying Ready to Apply for that Dream Grant

If You Build It, They Will Come:
Staying Ready to Apply for that Dream Grant

Most of the time, working for a nonprofit means juggling competing deadlines, lack of resources and time constraints … all while fulfilling your important mission to do good work in your community. It can feel overwhelming to have inadequate planning time to get ahead and stay ahead of critical projects.

However difficult it may seem, planning is essential to success. So, schedule planning time on your calendar, turn off distractions and notifications for an hour or two, and compile your grant writing toolkit.

With a little prep work, you can get and stay ready for funding opportunities by organizing just a few commonly-asked-for grant application items. Because many funders are turning to online portals where you need to enter text into text boxes, it makes sense to organize your materials for easy copying and pasting of information. In Williams Grant Writing’s experience, there are six items most funders want to see to consider funding a program:

1. IRS 501(c)(3) Determination Letter
2. List of Board of Directors and Senior Management
3. List of 3-5 Highest Paid Employees and Salaries
4. Current Organizational Budget
5. Itemized Budget for Project
6. List of Other Funding Sources Associated with Project

Having these items ready-to-go will make those last-minute application deadlines easier to make.

Of course, compiling these 6 items is just the first step. WGW can help you research funding opportunities based on your programs and location, review draft applications, apply for the grant funding, and help you stay on top of reporting and deadlines. We have a proven track record of connecting nonprofits to funding. Contact us today to see how we can help!

Are You Ready to Apply for Grants?

Ready…Set…Go Whoa!

You have a great project your organization is super excited about, and you think you are ready to apply for a grant. But are you really ready? The kneejerk reaction is to say, “Yes, of course,” because you’re so eager to get started on the process.

But wait!

You can’t afford a false start that will disqualify your organization and keep it out of the running for the funding. So, before you say you’re ready to apply for a grant, take a step back. And another.

The best thing you can do to increase your chance of obtaining grant funding is making sure you’ve done your legwork. Merriam-Webster defines legwork as:

active physical work (as in gathering information) that forms the basis of more creative or mentally exacting work (such as writing a book)

There’s a lot of ground to be covered.

Try this exercise to see if you’re on track and in the best shape to start researching and applying for grants.

Y or N: I can clearly articulate our NPO’s core mission and everyone at the organization agrees.

Y or N: We’ve done our research and know precisely how our project would benefit the community. We’ve interviewed/surveyed/conducted focus groups/brainstormed with community members who would benefit from our project and the project incorporates their input and comments. We also have general community support.

Y or N: This project fits our core mission very, very well. We’re right on the mark.

Y or N: We have planned for the project. We have explored other means of funding and have determined that the best way to fund the project, in part or in whole, is through a grant.

Y or N: This project is best done by us, and in the near future. We know our timeline and we have specific, measurable outcomes.

Y or N: We are very organized. We have readily available documents that provide detail on and an understanding of our organization such as:

  • Our history and timeline, the evolution of our philosophy and mission
  • Who’s who and what they do
  • A list of prior grants and project results
  • A description of past, current, and upcoming projects
  • Our track record: Tangible ways in which the organization has benefited the community
  • Copies of media mentions of the organization or organization leaders and recommendations from clients, community awards and recognition.
  • Particular strengths: What does our organization particularly pride itself on? How is that relevant to our mission and this project?
  • Particular areas of improvement relevant to our mission and this project, along with plans and a timeline for getting up to speed in those areas.

Y or N: We are not being overly reliant or overly hopeful about securing grant money. We have other robust sources and means to accomplish the organization’s mission.

Y or N: We have the staff to supervise the use of the grant money, including keeping accurate and detailed records.

Y or N: We realize it’s a very competitive market for grant money, guaranteed grants don’t exist, and other NPOs could be as deserving and eager for the grant as we are.

Y or N: We are ready to learn from rejection. But we will do everything possible not to be rejected.

Y or N: We are confident in our ability to research the thousands of possible grant sources from governments and private foundations. And once identified, we are confident we know where to go for additional information, who to call, and what to say.

Y or N: Everyone agrees we will only pursue the kinds of funding previously identified in our plan, and not be tempted by the funding available for projects outside of our mission, that might cause us to lose our focus.

Y or N: We have experienced, successful grant writers in the organization. We understand that each granting organization will ask for different information, in differing formats. Just because we wrote a grant before doesn’t mean we cut and paste existing descriptions in the new application.

Y or N: We understand that applying for grants is a very time-consuming process and if not done exactly right, paying very strict attention to what is wanted and when, it could be a big waste of our precious time.

Y or N: We gave completely honest responses to all of the above.

Honest truth: Did you answer a resounding yes to all of these questions?

If not, then you might need a partner to help you in the long run or the short run – we can team up with whatever help you need with grant research and every other aspect of grant proposal development. We’re experts and love what we do. You’re in it to win it. Let us help!