How to succeed in your nonprofit grant writing

https://cloudstackservices.com/6-essentials-for-nonprofit-grantwriting/

 Grant writing.

Seems to be the item on a nonprofit to-do list that everyone LOVES to put off.

And seriously - with the amount of work and effort that goes in to writing a nonprofit grant....

The Balance in 2020 found that each federal US grant application took 80 to 200 HOURS to achieve.

But it also can't be completely ignored as a nonprofit. The same study found that 20% of US nonprofit income was coming from grants.

Feels like a bit of a damned if you do damned if you don't for nonprofits.

This insightful conversation we had with Jeffrey Hanger a couple months ago was eye-opening and we are still LOVING his suggesting on how to succeed in your nonprofit grant writing.

3 Common Pitfalls in Grantwriting

Between his grant writing experience, volunteer work and previous work as an executive director  Hanger is also intimately aware of the mistakes many nonprofits make during the grant writing process.

Afterall statistics from Funding for Good found that new grants had a success rate of 30% to 40%.

What is the common pitfalls Hanger sees nonprofits  making during the grantwriting process?

1. Not talking to the funder in advance – while this kind of seems like a given many nonprofit are not crafting their  application to the foundation they are hoping to receive a grant from. Each possible grant your nonprofit is applying for should be carefully researched and your application should speak directly to the people who are evaluating it.
2. Asking for too much – in Hanger’s experience many nonprofits are asking for too much. Foundations often like to spread around the total donation amount for the year so if you come in asking for $100,000 of the $100,000 total budget you are more likely to not be chosen. Researching the granting history of a particular foundation (do they normally hand out $1,000 to $5,000?) is a way to work smarter for your grants and find greater success in your ask. Building long term relationships with a foundation with a successful smaller ask in Year 1 often results in a successful application for more funds in year 2.
3. Evaluation and Reporting – if the grant you are about to apply for does not consider covering the costs of evaluation and reporting as part of their reimbursement it might be time to reconsider applying. In that last 10 years Hanger has seen an increase in the grant world in what he terms “negative fundraising”. Essentially this is when foundations give a small % of the total grant to the nonprofit at the onset. Then all future funding is part of a reimbursement strategy; only costs related to the project can be submitted for remittance. That leaves out overhead and existing staff salary as something that can be reimbursed. Hanger has seen grants in the UK frequently require a full time staff member just to handle the statistics and reimbursement work. This can be a truly difficult cost to over for a nonprofit when it cannot be covered financially by the grant. Grants like these can cost a non profit money – hence the concept of negative fundraising.

Looking for CRM support in 2022? Get in touch with our team to learn more about cloudStack’s services and our trio of products: fundraisingManager, receiptManager and financeManager. All built on the Salesforce platform