by Eliza Sanders, Ph.D., GPC, Writer in Residence
If you’re new to fundraising, focusing on grants can seem really appealing. You don’t have to ask anyone for money (at least not directly), you can reuse material from one proposal to the next, and when you’re done, you can send it off in the mail and experience that little adrenaline rush of waiting for the notification to come in.
And look, I can’t blame people for feeling that way. I’m a grant professional, so I fully acknowledge that there are many good things about fundraising through grants.
However, not every organization is prepared to make grants a significant portion—or any portion—of their development revenue for the coming year. Here are some questions to consider as you decide how big a role you want grants to play in the next twelve months of fundraising.
How new is your organization?
New nonprofits are often excited about the idea of grants, often because it feels familiar. School prepared us much better for answering questions in writing than for sitting in front of someone asking for a donation.
However, many grantmakers simply will not consider funding an organization that has been a 501(c)(3) for less than a certain number of years. Some need you to show a financial history for a certain amount of time, and some required audited financial statements, which can be a burden for newer nonprofits.
If your organization is less than five years old, think very carefully about how much time you want to spend on grant seeking. Remember, funders are wading through more proposals every year, so when they have to make tough choices, they are going to go with the “safe bet” – an organization that has been around long enough to prove it will do good work for the foreseeable future.
Do your outcomes show your work?
You may have life-changing, evidence-based programs, but if you don’t have reliable numbers that demonstrate real change over time, those grants won’t come rolling in.
Individual donors can come to an event that inspires them, or visit your program site and see it in action…and they probably only have a handful of similar experiences each year.
Now consider how many of those events a program officer at a foundation gets invited to.
While site visits with grantmakers can make a difference, it’s more critical that your organization can prove on paperthat you are making a difference, in a way that can go shoulder to shoulder with the hundreds of other nonprofits competing for the same pool of money. You do that through having outcomes that measure change that both fits your specific mission and aligns with the priorities of the grantmaker.
Do you have the infrastructure to handle reporting?
Remember that simple picture of grant seeking I painted above? If you have any experience with grants, you know that’s not the reality.
Grant seeking isn’t just sending in the proposal. It’s the cultivation beforehand, the stewardship afterward, and writing the final report (often while you’re writing the next year’s proposal). Grant applications are less similar than we’d like to think—the dream of copy-and-pasting from one proposal to the next often doesn’t work. And grant reports are the same way: each one will have different questions, different wording, and different word count maximums.
Grant seeking is time intensive. Particularly in comparison to scheduling a few meetings a year with a major donor. Consider whether grants are the most effective use of time for your particular development shop.
What need do your finances show?
If you are just starting to fundraise after years of being funded by the government (or any other one reliable source), it will be difficult to argue that you need a grant more than another nonprofit who earns most of their revenue through fundraising.
Demonstrating need to a foundation is tricky. You can’t be in dire financial straits, because that would signal a level of risk in investing in your nonprofit that grantmakers rarely take. However, you must have enough financial need for a funder to believe their grant would make a real difference.
What to do instead
Are you panicking after reading through these questions, thinking: “I just created a year-long plan with a lot of grants, but maybe we aren’t ready?”
Don’t worry. Get to work. Make a new plan to raise that money through individual giving. Events, online campaigns, major gifts, giving clubs—there are so many ways to invite people to practice their philanthropy by supporting their work. Meanwhile, plan out what strategic steps will get your organization to a place that is grant-ready. If you need help moving your focus from grants to individuals, give Let’s Build Hope a call! We would love to talk with you about your fundraising future.
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