Hals' Funding Tip of the Month

Jul/Aug 07 tip: Too many nonprofits?

At  a recent meeting of the Heartland AAGP, someone asked the presentor (who was from a funding agency) whether funders are concerned that there are too many nonprofits in existence currently. Her response: "Absolutely!"

This is not a comforting thought to people who are working with relatively new or start-up nonprofits. So, what can you do to combat what may be a negative perception of new organizations? The presentor gave a few clues: 1) develop some type of collaborative network with other orgs. that provide similar services, so a funder won't think you are operating in a vacuum; 2) gather and report statistics showing that the people you are serving are not also being served by another similar organization; 3) obtain genuine letters of commitment from at least one other organization, validating your services.

Feb/March 07 Tip: Last Chance for Federal Capacity-Building Grants?

The Department of Health and Human Services will soon be announcing the 2007 Compassion Capital Targeted Capacity Building Grants. As the Bush administration moves toward its completion, this may be one of the last opportunities for this particular grant program.

If you are a nonprofit or faith based organization that is a 501C3 nonprofit, you may be eligible for funding assistance of up to $50,000 to increase your managerial capacity. You need to be serving one of the following kinds of needs: homeless, disadvantaged youth, rural populations needing social services, people who can benefit from marriage education and preparation services.

Dec 06 Tip: Register with Samaritan Award Program

One  of the issues for smaller organizations that have not achieved a wide "brand recognition" is how to achieve credibility in the eyes of funders.  One of the ways for faith-based groups to do this is to connect with the Acton Institute's Samaritan Award program. The Acton Institute,a think tank based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, posts a list of organizations which have gone through a rating process with their Center for Effective Compassion. Participation in the process gives nonprofits an opportunity to have their information posted on a national database that receives thousands of "hits" from potential donors and people checking out organizations. Every year special awards are given to 10 organizations that are recognized as highly effective.

The process for 2007 begins on May 1. Check this out at: www.acton.org/cec/guide

Oct/Nov Tip: Power Connections

Organizational and personal networking connections can assist the process of grant and major gift development.  The more connections you can establish between a potential funder's people and your people and your network, the better. Here are some suggestions of this can operate:

1. On a regular basis, share the names of potential funder staff and board member names with your staff, board and key volunteers. You would be surprised how often there is some type of relationship. After doing some funding source research for an organization, the Executive Director and I identified a case where a former staffperson's spouse was currently working for an organization that helps administer a foundation office.

2. If there are other organizations that do the work you do, but have a larger public recognition, don't be afraid to ask their leader to draft a Letter of Recommendation that talks favorably about the work you do, and any connections that the organizations have shared. You can then share this letter, especially in a proposal to a funder that may have given this other organization a grant or major gift.

Sept 06 Tip: Ohio Compassion Capital Grants

This word is going out mostly for our friends in Ohio, who may not know that the Governor's Office of Faith Based Initiatives is about ready to release an RFP for small grants to assist capacity building for faith based and community based organizations.

The grants will provide up to $10,000 for a single organization, and up to $30,000 for collaboratives of multiple organizations.The collaborative feature is a new angle for this program.The grants can help organizations build capacity through board development, development of grant seeking and fundraising capacity, improvements to information systems, etc.

More information can be gotten at www.fbciohio.gov

Aug 06 Tip: Organize proposals in light of evaluation points

One of the basic points in organizing a grant proposal is determining how many pages, or how much space to give for a particular requirement or heading. I've just finished reviewing some federal grants, the Compassion Capital Targeted Capacity Building, and found that many proposals don't have a clue about this.

My tip is to make the section length roughly proportional to the relative points that the section represents, in terms of the grant criteria. For example, in the grants I reviewed, the section called APPROACH is worth up to 30 points out of 100. So out of a 9 page proposal, one would expect that the Approach section would involve about 30% of the total proposal, or somewhere around 2 1/2 to 3 pages. Some of our grant applicants had very brief and non-detailed Approach sections, some as sort as 1/2 page. You can see that the grant reviewers would not be inclined to give such a proposal many of the 30 points for Approach.

Many private sector funders do not provide a detail of the point scoring, so how do you know how long to make a section in a proposal for one of those funders? You look at their materials, to determine what their biggest concerns are. If they are very concerned about methodology, the section about how you will carry out the project should be larger than the sections on project need and background.

Jul 06 Tip: Diversify Funding Streams

I teach grant writing workshops and run into a lot of people who are trying to establish new nonprofit organizations. They think that grant writing is the first thing they should do to bring funds in the door.

I caution them that grant development is a "long term" funding proposition rather than a good source of starter funds. They would be better off trying to first develop a donor base of regular supporters who will agree to monthly or annual commitments. Grant makers would also prefer giving to organizations that already have a donor base, because they will be less likely to go down the tubes when the grant funding ends.

A good basic set of books on this type of fund raising is authored by Kim Klein. The titles are "Grass Roots fundraising," or something like that.

JUN 06 Tip: Criteria Count

One frequent question about RFP's (formal request for proposal documents) is what to follow when there seems to be confusion between the ordering of the proposal sections and the stated evaluation criteria.

The answer is to clearly address the evaluation criteria, using a  table of contents if possible, and bold or underlined headings, so the reviewer cannot fail to miss the items that will be scored. The reviewer's job is to fill out the proposal evaluation sheet or online evaluation screen. He/she is prepared to move back and forth within the proposal to review information related to each evaluation criterion. But if there is no table of contents, or related headings, that will be difficult to do in the brief amount of time that the reviewer gives an individual proposal.

May 06 Tip: Be Responsive

This tip is more like general advice, but it is a theme that I have been hearing and reading about a lot lately.  Whenever someone contacts your organization for information about your programs and activities, be sure to respond quickly and thoroughly to their request. That means within a couple of business days.  You never know when the requester is either a potential donor, or an advisor who can influence a major donor.

Several years ago, our college received a request for information about its hospitality and restaurant management degree programs.  The requester was not someone familiar to the chairperson of this area; however, she responded promptly to their specific questions. Several weeks later she received a letter stating that the Hector Boiardi Trust had decided to donate $150,000 to the college to create a scholarship program for hospitality/restaurant management students.  Hector Boiardi, by the way, was the actual name of "Chef Boyardee" who originated the namesake line of food products.  The officials of the Boiardi Trust had sent inquiry letters to many colleges and universities. Very few responded in a timely manner, and some did not repond at all! So very likely their non-response cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

April 06 Tip:Competition levels

Before submitting a grant proposal, you may want to see what the "odds"  are. Most government agencies and some foundations and corporations  will share this information.  You should call a Program Officer to learn the numbers of proposals submitted in the last round of competition, versus the number that were awarded grants.

For example, I am now conducting a review for a federal program that has received 186 proposals but will only fund 12 or less than 6% of the projects!  Or to say it another way,the odds are 15 to 1 against you. Unless you are very experienced with grants, or have an existing proposal that is well-developed, you should avoid submitting a proposal to a program that has a competition ratio of more than 10 to 1, or is awarding less than 10% of submitted proposals.

One researcher who studied the grant-awarding process in several funding agencies concluded that you can lose several points just due to chance factors. If the competition level is more than 10 to 1, you are more likely to be affected by the "chance factors," because your proposal might need to score nearly a perfect 100 points to be funded.