Tips for Successful Grant Writing

Most grants are to some degree an exchange of something tangible (the grant money) for something intangible (the positive feeling the donor has from being able to do some good). When asking corporate funders for sponsorship, you’ll construct a package of both tangible and intangible benefits.

The tangible benefits you can offer may include access to your mailing list or a complementary advertisement in your program or on your web site. These are things that you normally sell, and so it’s easy to know what the value is for each. Intangible benefits, however, may be your most valuable assets. For example, the prestige of your nonprofit in the community provides an intangible benefit by association for your corporate sponsor.

You can read more about intangible benefits on my web site @ grantadviser.com. You’ll find a quick guide to writing corporate sponsorship proposals in my book, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grant Writing.

Although no one grows up wanting to be a fundraiser, there are certain character traits that successful fundraisers have in common. Chief among these is curiosity. Before you get started writing a grant, you will have a period of learning and discovery. You’ll learn how the program works, why the nonprofit is doing it, what its success have been, who has benefited from it, and much more. This should be one of, if not the, most satisfying parts of the process.

Similarly, you must be curious about people – those who will be executing the program for which you seek funding, those who will be served by the program, and those who will be making the decision whether to fund your program or not. The more you know about all three groups, the stronger your proposal will be.

You can read more about the characteristics of successful fundraisers in “Fundraising is for Everyone” on my web site, grantadviser.com.