Give Your Grant an Edge!
When the grant writing process is going well, it’s easy to sit at the computer and start spending the money before the proposal has been mailed. You know your nonprofit’s need, you know the grantmaker’s mission, and you know how well the two match.
What you don’t know is just how many other writers are sitting at their computers making plans to spend those same monies – your grant funds!
Yes, the competition for funding is fierce. The number of nonprofits increases each year, and each year foundations must turn down deserving proposals. If you read the statistics, your high hopes might suddenly be dashed. Relax.
You can find ways to stack the cards in your favor.
What’s your edge?
Start thinking about which characteristics give your organization and program an advantage over the competition. What do you do that’s more professional, better, different, smarter, more fun, cheaper, or more efficient? (Or maybe all of the above!) Then start thinking about what you can do to communicate your edge to a grantmaker.
What suggestions do you have?
Without going into too much detail, I think affiliations are going to play an important role for my nonprofit. (I don’t mean to be overly vague, I just prefer that this stay anonymous for the sake of the organization with which I’m working.)
I’m writing on behalf of a historic preservation organization which has been forming partnerships and doing cooperative projects with a number of other community and nonprofit groups. I believe leveraging those partnerships will be helpful in making the case for funding, which goes toward expanding and enhancing an education program that my org. has been running for nearly 30 years. They’re proposing to increase capacity and boost the program’s effectiveness through leveraging a partnership with the public schools. This way they can incorporate actual learning targets and make the curriculum for the program relevant for local teachers and their classes.
I think it’s a good idea, both practically, as it’s going to be good for the education program in question, and strategically. Working together often earns an organization plus-points in a grant-maker’s estimation, I’ve heard.
Fingers crossed.
The surest way to get an edge on the competition is to know what the grant maker is looking for. This sounds harder than it seems, but it isn’t.
Look through past awards from the grant maker to see the who, what, when, where, why and how they chose those groups to give money to.
Now see if there are any trends. Do they primarily give awards to only one area (even if they don’t say they do)? What keywords stick out? Are there certain types of organizations they primarily give to?
Stacking the cards in your favor is easier when you know what cards the dealer is looking for.
Do your research and give yourself the better hand!
I recently spoke with my client about what project we will pursue together. I’m very excited because this project is a major community need that isn’t met anywhere else in the city. The client offers free counseling services to survivors of sexual assault. About half of their clients report having been in at least one violent intimate relationship, and many request to work directly on this issue. While major domestic violence service centers help clients with medical care, legal care, safe housing and other immediate safety needs, those organizations do not and will not offer any counseling services. The program manager assures me that she can obtain a letter of support from organizations that might be thought of as competition for a grant like this. Offering a unique program that genuinely meets a community need gives a nonprofit a grant writing edge. Including letters of support from organizations that might be thought of as “competition” also gives a nonprofit a grant writing edge.
In the question posed above, it was mentioned that we (grant writers) “know our nonprofit’s need.” But grantmakers know what’s going on. Writing a grant for a nonprofit’s need might not get the funding. Writing a grant for a community need will.