Tips for Successful Grant Writing

So you’ve subscribed to an expensive online database that promises to contain all you need to know about grant makers. You find several prospects whose interests match your project. Time to start writing the cover letter, right?

No! You’ve just taken the first step in researching these funders. Why?

1. Never depend on one source of information to tell you all you need to know about a funder. Online databases might be out of date or have errors. Confirm everything by visiting the funder’s own website. But don’t consider the funder’s site the final word either. Many are very of our date. Check out the funder’s 990PF form on Guidestar.org or a similar site to see what grants they have actually made.

2. You need to know everything about the funder, but you also need to know about the people associated with the funder. This is important to find possible connections with your nonprofit and also to help you personalize the cover letter. If the person you are addressing is a recognized authority on the subject of your project, you’ll write to them in more technical language than to someone who isn’t. And if you discover the addressee has kids in the same school system as the one for which you’re seeking support, you can refer to activities she might know about.

A recent article in Fundraising Success magazine provides guidelines to determine if your organization is ready to apply for grants. Among the things you should ask yourself are:
-Where are you in your organizational life cycle? Brand new organizations will have a harder time making the case they are ready to receive a grant to carry out a program.
-What is your program track record? Funders want to fund successful organizations.
The entire article is certainly worth a read.

In the world of grant seeking, who you know can be as important as what you know. Before beginning research on who funds similar organizations, make sure you throughly research your board members and major donors. You’ll check to see if they serve on foundation and nonprofit boards, and you’ll also note what other people are on those boards. Recent research I was doing revealed that a board member of my client was on a board that also included the CEO of Macy’s, which was one of the potential funders I had been thinking about for them. With this connection, the application will stand a better chance of serious consideration.

The most popular article on grantadviser.com is about freelance grant writing. That’s not surprising, given that today many intelligent, talented people are out of work and no doubt looking for new ways to earn a living. And since competition among nonprofits for grant funds has never been stiffer, really good grant writers are definitely in demand.

The second and third most popular articles on my site concern corporate sponsorship. This is a bit more surprising, given that corporations are, to put it mildly, conserving their resources these days. Very few are making grants to new organizations. Those making significant grants are more and more doing so for social services, education, and to help businesses and individuals recover from the recession. That’s not to say organizations in those areas are seeing the money roll in, it’s just that arts organizations and others are seeing corporate money evaporate before their eyes. Connecting with a corporation’s brand/mission/identity is even more important than in the past, as is proving that supporting your organization will help them financially or with public relations.

Research has never been more important: directing your grant proposal to the best prospects is the only chance for success in such a competitive environment. Check out The Concentric Circles of Prospect Research and Finding Grants through Online Databases.

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.