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For those of you new to grant writing, guidelines vary from donor-to-donor and agency-to-agency. As grant writers often say, “If you have seen one application, you have seen one application.” Keep this in mind as you read through guidelines.
Do you ever wonder if anyone at a foundation actually reads your grant reports? If so, you are not alone. Let’s be honest: writing a grant report can be time-consuming, frustrating, and stressful. But grant reporting is also incredibly important. So, let’s talk...
We get a lot of questions about how organizations could access private foundations that operate on a “by invitation only” funding model. It is quite common for private/family foundations to pre-select organizations they are interested in supporting.
You just received a grant rejection letter. Ouch! You found a great foundation prospect and did your due diligence. You even asked all the right questions to make sure your organization was a good fit. But still, your proposal was turned down. And with a...
Recently, we’ve been sharing our best tips for how to find well-suited grant prospects for your organization. But what do you do once you’ve got a list of incredible foundation prospects? Step one is outreach. When connecting with new potential funders, you...
Before you get worried that you are going to have to pay a fee or get a subscription to starting incorporating 990s into your research process, you can access 990s for free online.
If you’ve ever written a grant, you’ve likely encountered the dreaded “sustainability question.” How will you sustain this work after the grant term? Well-intentioned funders are looking to be sure the programs they invest in will continue after they write a...
If you’re a nonprofit leader, finding a great grant writer is like winning the lottery. These grant writers transform your organization’s programs into written materials that move donors to write your organization a check. All while freeing up your time to...
Grant research tools have become big business over the last two decades. Today, there are several competing paid databases you can subscribe to. But not everyone has the budget to spend on a database and a staff member to navigate it. That’s where free grant research...
Here at Funding for Good, our team has decades of experience writing grants. Combined, we’ve written hundreds (maybe thousands) of grant proposals and raised hundreds of millions of dollars. And along the way, we’ve learned a lot of lessons about grant writing....
I decided to put together a Grant Readiness Checklist to use for myself and with clients.
Today, we are going to focus on a well-written Executive Summary.
The building blocks of a strong statement of need are why, who and supportive data and/or statistics.
Whether you are new to grant writing, or you have been doing it for years, a critical part of your success lies in the relationships that you establish with the foundations to which you are applying.
Evaluation methods are the criteria for evaluating the success of a program or project.
Knowing where to find grants takes practice. Grant research is one of the main components of grant writing and sticks out to me as difficult for many people, like learning a balance pose in yoga, especially for a novice grant writer. Much like balance poses, grant...
You researched, you wrote, and you submitted a stellar grant proposal. After what seemed like a lifetime of waiting, you received an award notification stating, “Congratulations! Your proposal was selected for a grant award.” After the initial excitement of an award...
Your grant writer can do everything else right: develop relationships with foundation officers, present comprehensive financial reports, craft a beautiful narrative to highlight your organization’s history and prior successes, check all the right boxes, but that isn’t enough to secure dollars.
Grant writing is more than simply putting words on paper. The next time your board proposes grants as a solution for short-term fundraising needs, take into consideration the following facts every board member should know.
While research and building relationships are both time consuming, the return on investment for both is unparalleled.
Several years ago, I started a job as a grant writer on a development team for a large nonprofit in North Carolina. Grants management was new to me even though I had worked in and around nonprofits for years. While I’d responded to RFP’s and RFI’s (requests for...
