Tips for Successful Grant Writing

What, you might ask is a “big sore thumb” in a grant budget? If there is a line item in your budget that is substantially larger than all the other expense items, it probably will stick out like a sore thumb to someone reviewing your proposal. See the big number I outlined in red in this example.

Big numbers can provoke questions, and you want your budget to answer questions, not create them.

So what should you do?
(1) Add a footnote to the budget explaining what went into determining the number, or
(2) Break it down into smaller numbers, but in doing this you might create additional questions (why is there a line item for sheetrock in an art budget?), so you might instead
(3) Create a subschedule, that is, a separate mini-budget that breaks down and explains the big number.

In this example, the exhibition costs are by far the largest single expense. By breaking it down into several lines in a subschedule, you’ll show the reviewer how much you have allowed for shipping, building out the exhibition space, fees to lenders, and marketing specifically for the exhibition.

In December I’ll be giving two grant writing seminars.

December 7, Arts Council of Rockland, Garnerville, NY. Grant Writing: Beyond the Basics, will explore specific ways to create strong proposals that are competitive in today’s economic climate.

December 14, New York Foundation for the Arts, Brooklyn, NY. Introduction to Grant Writing, includes all the aspects of the process of creating a grant proposal from initial research to follow up after submission.

Both seminars are open to individual artists and arts organizations. Contact the specific organizations about registration.

One of the responsibilities of every board member is to help provide for the financial stability of their nonprofit. Part of that responsibility is helping you make connections with funders. Passing around lists of the trustees of prospective foundation funders to your board can help turn up connections that your board members might not know they have.

Of course, some board members are better connected than others. As a group, lawyers who specialize in trusts and estates (T&E lawyers, for short) often have the most connections. Part of their law practice involves helping clients set up trusts and foundations, and many of them serve as foundation trustees themselves. Additionally, through professional networking, they tend to know the other important T&E lawyers in a city, who sit on other foundation boards. So when your nonprofit board is looking for new members, point them toward T&E lawyers and make your potential network of funders grow.

Want to research T&E lawyers in your town? Try the free directory at Martindale.com.

Researching prospects is certainly about gathering information about the prospect’s interests and giving history, but it’s also about eliminating bad prospects to create the best possible list for positive results. You can read about how I go about this in my article in The NonProfit Times [http://www.nxtbook.com/nxtbooks/npt/npt091509/#/18]. You’ll need to sign up for a free subscription to read the article, but it just takes a minute to do so.

Reporting to a funder on a successful project is the first and most important step in receiving a second grant. When a foundation or other funder makes a grant, they want it to make a difference and for you (!) to make a difference. A job well done is a stronger endorsement of your nonprofit than any letter for reference or brilliantly constructed rationale for funding. So, what makes a good grant report?

Your grant report will have all the elements of good writing that you use in a proposal: clear, jargon-free language, positive language, and a well ordered narrative. Heading and sub-headings will make your report more readable. It may be helpful to the funder if the topics in your report follow those in your original proposal. So if you wrote about method first and then execution of the service you offer in the proposal, proceed in the report in the same format. And if you promised any specific measurements of success in your proposal, be sure you include them in the report.

Many funders require, and it’s always a good idea, to create a table showing your proposal budget and your actual income and expenses side by side. Any discrepancies of more than 10% should be explained in note to the budget. It’s inevitable that there will be differences, but there should be a concrete reason for them.

“What,” you might ask, “if the project did not turn out as planned? If the number of people served was greatly different than expected or the project wasn’t completed on time?”

Well – first of all, don’t let yourself get to the point of writing the report and to discover this. It is your job as a grant writer* to keep in touch with the people running programs so that you will know well before the grant period ends if it has progressed as planned.

If you find out that problems have arisen that will prevent the project from ending as expected and/or on time, you must first work out with the program people how you can make a success of this (for example, by working on the project longer) or how you can explain to the funders why the project ended differently and what you learned from that experience.

Secondly, you need to contact the funder to let them know what has happened. This is best done with a phone call rather than in writing. You want to be able to judge the funder’s reaction to the problem before going into unnecessary details.

Remember that funders want you to succeed, so if you need more time, ask for it, but do so before the end of the grant period. Also, when asking for an extension, ask for the maximum you think is needed. You don’t want to have to ask for a second extension, which may not be granted.

Sometime, projects just don’t work out. If you can explain clearly what went wrong (or just differently) and demonstrate that you learned lessons from that experience that will make your future programs stronger, you can still use the report to pave the way for another grant.

For more on grant reports, get my book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grant Writing.

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*I refer here to grant writers who are employees of a nonprofit or work on an ongoing basis as a consultant. If your relationship ended with completing the proposal, you’re off the hook for the report.

With everyone pinching every penny at least twice these days, many nonprofits are relying more and more on volunteers and unpaid interns. When you are using a substantial amount of unpaid labor, your program budget will not reflect the true cost of operating your nonprofit. You can and should include an amount for volunteer time in your grant budget. The same amount will appear in your income section showing the donation for time as what you put in the expense line. (You can see an example in my article on grant budgets.)

Finding the right dollar amount is important – you don’t want to over- or undervalue the volunteer and intern time. Ruth Wahtera has written a lot on this topic in her grant writing blog. Rest assured that including volunteer time is standard practice. For example, the Federal EPA includes instructions for this in its tips on grant budgets (mid-way down the long page).

No one will want to pay you (at least, not much) to write your first grant. So how do you get started earning money from grant writing? You will need samples of your grant writing to show potential clients and references from satisfied clients. Volunteering to help a small community group raise money with a couple of grants is a great way to get samples and references.

Then you have to determine how much to charge. Professional grant writers do not work on commission but for a fixed fee or for an hourly rate. A very simple grant prepared by a new grant writer might cost $250, but a complicated government application prepared by an experienced grant writer could earn several thousand dollars. There are a lot of factors that determine price. You can read more about pricing and building a resume and portfolio on my web site, grantadviser.com/freelance.html.

Frequently people are looking for grants to start what will hopefully be for-profit businesses. “Where to go for funding and will a grant writing book be of use to them,” they ask.

On the federal and state levels, the Small Business Administration makes many loans to start up businesses. Government agencies on the local level may offer grants to start ups or to save businesses having trouble or to get them to locate in specific areas, frequently called Economic Empowerment Zones or Business Improvement Districts. Some quick research and/or calls to the offices of your elected representatives should reveal several sources.

And writing those grants will not differ from writing a foundation grant as described in the Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grant Writing. In fact, one college was using my book as one of two required texts in a class on entrepreneurship.

For many people, there is nothing more frightening than staring down a blank page. Yet this is often the best place to start. Time and again, I have seen grant writers held back in their creativity because they take as their starting point the last proposal written for a project. Doing that perpetuates mediocrity and never results in a fresh, inspiring proposal.

Each proposal you write should address not only the organization but the specific person who will read your proposal, which is why you need a fresh start. If the person who will read your proposal is familiar with your program, don’t start out with a detailed description of how the program works — they already know that. Tell them first about all of the good that has been done as a result of their grant. If recognition is important to the organization, be sure to stress that near the beginning of the proposal.

If the sight of a blank page is holding you back, the The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grant Writing, 2nd Edition CD included with my book provides a Narrative Builder tool. It asks you to answer a series of questions. The Narrative Builder saves your answers and, when you have completed them, assembles them into a logical sequence, which serves as the first draft of your proposal. It’s a quick way to take a fresh look at how you describe your program and break away from deadly boilerplate text.

Never before has there been so much interest in federal grants. With the economic recovery program promising to distribute billions, the possibilities seem endless. But even with all that money available, there will be intense competition for those grants, which when distributed to all 50 states, may really not be all that much. As an example, a small part of the recovery program was $50 million for the National Endowment for the Arts, 40% of which was for the 50 state arts councils to use in making grants. That’s an average of $400,000 per state: not a tremendous amount, especially for the larger states.

When applying for an economic recovery grant, it is particularly important to make sure you follow directions and apply ahead of time. You can find info on all federal grants at www.grants.gov. To apply for one, you have to go through a lengthy registration procedure that can take days, so don’t wait until near the deadline to start the process.

Your tax dollars make federal grants possible, so don’t be shy about applying, just realize there are many others chasing the same finite amount of money.