“Are grants even worth my time?” (Part 1)
This is a question I’ve gotten several times in the last few months, and it’s the right question for nonprofit leaders to ask! Since you’re running a nonprofit, you might assume that grants are a given. But that’s not necessarily true. Like any part of your fundraising strategy, you should consider how pursuing grants might or might not work for your organization – even if you already win many grants each year.
In a four-part series, I’ll be addressing questions you can use as a starting point to evaluate whether grants are the next step for your organization:
Why do you want to pursue grants?
Is your project or program fundable?
Do you have the staff you need?
What other fundraising mechanisms are available to your organization?
Question 1: Why do you want to pursue grants?
Your first stop is to evaluate the goal of your grants program, and your underlying assumptions about grants.
Evaluating the goals of your grants program
Are you aiming for a specific dollar amount of your project or program to be covered by grants? Do you have a gap in your fundraising plan that you’d like to fill with grant funds? Perhaps you’re hoping for a percentage mix of government, corporate, and private foundation grants.
Plotting out what you hope to achieve – and metrics to measure success – will help clarify your goals. And because grants are competitive and time-consuming, remember to differentiate between factors you have control over (how many proposals you submit or relationships you initiate) versus those you don’t (how many proposals are funded, and to what degree).
Evaluate your underlying assumptions
Do you want to pursue government or foundation funding because it “looks good”? Are you hearing from a board member that a particular grant or family foundation is a “sure thing”? Maybe your development committee is putting pressure on you to win grants from new funders.
Acknowledge these assumptions, and then ignore them!
Your purpose in pursuing a grant should be to develop a strong, mutually beneficial relationship with a funder — with the ultimate goal of solving the problem your organization has set out to address. Take your ego (and your board’s) out of the picture.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series: Is your project or program fundable?
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Cover photo by Markus Winkler on Unsplash