Monday, April 16, 2012

Winning Grants

by Betsy Baker

It's not by accident, a fluke or plain dumb luck that nonprofits win grants. It's a result of hard work and dedication to five simple elements that make their funding chances much greater. If you find your efforts aren't paying off, it might be time for a quick review of common features that all winning grant proposals share.


All winning proposals meet their grant funder's objectives. Remember that saying, "it's not about you, it's about them?" This is especially true when it comes to developing and writing your proposal. Pay attention to the mission of the grant funder. If it doesn't pertain to you, skip them and look for someone whose interests match your own. Pay attention to their restrictions and make sure you meet them.


All winning proposals ensure that their budget aligns with the funder's guidelines. While there are many good and different approaches to demonstrate how your organization plans to spend the money in the requested grant, be sure to follow the approach that the funder requests. More often than not these days, the funder will include budget guidelines or even a template in the application to follow. Be sure to follow them and also ensure that your budget matches your proposal narrative. The two should be reflective of one another. In other words, your budget should be your proposal in numbers.


All winning proposals tell a good story. While I always emphasize the importance of keeping up with statistics to provide concrete evidence of the good you're doing in your community, a good story is at the heart of every winning grant proposal. I get a lot of questions about protecting the privacy of clients in writing stories but you can either use aliases or use several clients to form a composite.


All winning proposals follow directions. You might say "duh!" to this one but you wouldn't believe how many foundations reject proposals simply because the applicant didn't follow directions. Go back to your first grade roots and think about the reward you may get simply because you followed someone's directions.:)


All winning proposals are submitted on time. Foundations are sticklers for timeliness and do not look favorably on nonprofits that can't get their act together. Make sure that you begin a proposal in plenty of time to allow for the inevitable: printer running out of ink, not making it to the post office in time due to traffic or accidentally deleting that ten pages of narrative you had just written (guilty!!) The Boy Scouts were right - Be Prepared!

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