How to Succeed With Emergency Grant Opportunities

Good news! You non-profit organization just received an invitation to apply for a grant. Bad news! The application is due next week and you have at least a dozen other priorities.

Here’s a schedule to help you organize your preparations to meet the application deadline and provide a competitive application for funding:

Day 1

1. Review the donor’s website. Contact them for application requirements. Ask initial questions. Read any guidelines, marking all requirements with a tick box. You will fill the box in with a check mark during your final review after you fulfilled each requirement.

2. Do you need information for anyone else? Request their help. Establish Day 5 as their deadline.

3. Create an application dummy with scrap paper. A dummy is a mockup of the total grant proposal you will submit from cover letter to you’re the last page of the attachments. As you work, you will replace the dummy pages with completed ones so you can identify missing items. Take time to organize your submittal now instead of at the last minute.

4. Start drafting. Use paragraphs from existing materials, like case statements, bio statements from key staff.

5. Make a first attempt at creating the project budget.

Day 2 and 3

6. Continue drafting, aim for 1-2 hour sessions per day, during your most productive interludes. Apply butt glue, if necessary.

7. If you get stumped, you probably need more information. Find someone with answers or to make project decisions.

8. Time helps. The difficult questions you struggled with today will be easier when you review them tomorrow.

Day 4

9. By now your draft is emerging. Plan to work in shorter time blocks. Re-read sections while waiting for appointments, when you’re on hold or 15 minutes before lunch.

10. Email or call everyone who needs to provide you materials to remind them of the pending deadline.

Days 5, 6, and 7

11. Proof the draft, triple check all dates and numbers.

12. Ask one or two other people to read it.

13. Read the final application aloud. Check off the requirements you completed. Flag uncompleted items. Make a list of these and work through them one-by-one until all is done.

14. Compile the final document. Make copies. Remember to keep one for your organization. Deliver the application.

15 .Relax! You made it!

For more grant writing articles to help you non-profit organization earn funding, see this directory.

For six audios to purchase that will help you write grants if you are a newbie or an expert, follow this link. Each offers one hours of training from Karen– and contains the content of her famous grant writing workshops.

For other sources of non-profit income to augment your grant opportunities, read this article. Can Your Organization Obtain More Income?

Karen Eber Davis

How Can Your Board Help With Corporate Sponsorships?

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Board members help non profit organizations to earn corporate support in many ways. To develop and sustain corporate sponsorships, these three types of support are important for boards leading successful non profit organizations:

1. Provide oversight and balance to protect the non profits long-term interest.

2. Identify opportunities.

3. Create connections that lead to and build relationships.

Here is an example of creating connections that lead to and builds relationships:

A film festival’s board includes a number of members with extensive home entertainment systems who favor a particular specialty store. One member knows the owner of three local stores and has heard him talk about his marketing needs. Together, the development staff and board members develop a proposal with several sponsorship opportunities. The board member sets an appointment. The three meet. After learning more about the owner’s needs, they jointly craft a sponsorship package for $50,000. It includes festival advertising, plus an exclusive in-store event. Platinum film festival members will be invited to an intimate event for $75 per couple to share refreshments, view a new film, learn from the film producer and be introduced to a “cool” new piece of home entertainment equipment. Besides directly marketing to the right potential customers, the storeowner gains the opportunity to meet and continue relationships with platinum members, and share one of his sites, his enthusiasm, and his expertise. This successful non profit organization gains new funding and an enthusiastic new sponsor who shares strong alignment with their mission statement.

How have your board members helped your non profit to secure corporate funding?

To learn what your board members need to know about corporate support, read and then give your board this article.

Moving From A $40 Gift To $5,000 in 4 Repeatable Steps

-->Sally Part Two
In my last entry, I shared about a conversation I had with Sally in a bar after a consulting conference and how Sally grew from a $40 to a $5,000 a year donor. This entry shares the “moves” Teach for America used. This is what Sally shared, with my comments in parenthesis, just like a DVD commentary of a movie.

Event One: The Invite
Sally was invited by a business associate who had helped her and her husband a lot in the past to come to a dinner to learn about Teach for America. Sally figured it was payback time; they owed this man plenty. (The right person asks Sally. How can she say no?)

Event Two: The Dinner
Sally and her husband attend the dinner and learn about Teach for America. She is offered the opportunity to sponsor a classroom. (A specific request for a specific amount that provides tangible outcomes.) Sally learns about the impact this gift would have on a whole classroom for one year. She believes the offer is a great bargain at $5,000. “All those little lives for one year for $5k?” Sally and her husband become class sponsors. (How can you help donors to understand you offer a great bargain?)

Event Three: Unknown
After the dinner, one assumes several exchanges and thank you notes were exchanged. Sally doesn’t mention these to me as she relayed her story. (These are musts.)

Event Four: The Offer to Tour and Meet Someone of Interest
Later, Teach for America makes Sally an additional offer. Would Sally like to go on a tour? They are giving a tour to a major business leader from a Fortune 500 company. There was space. Was Sally interested? Yes, she was. (Teach for America understands Sally’s professional need to meet other business leaders to promote her business. They understand the value of her time. Not only is Sally happy to learn more on a tour, she is happy to be introduced to a business leader who is a potential client of her consulting business.)

None of these brilliant events is accidental. Someone or a group of people, have thoughtfully considered how to offer these opportunities to Sally. Sally is being helped to do what she wants to do more of—make a meaningful contribution both personally and professionally. Teach for America helps Sally. Sally helps Teach for America. Teach for America helps Sally . . .
Who are your Sally’s? How are you reaching them? What is your plan to increase your income—whether via individual donations or one of the other six nonprofit income sources? How do you help people to succeed, so that they can help you to reach your mission? - Karen Eber Davis

Proof: The Individual Donor Opportunity Door is Wide-open

Sally Part One

We were having drinks after the consulting conference. Sally asked what I did. (Not her real name, because even though this sounds like it is about Sally--it is not.)
“I help nonprofits earn sustainable income and with innovations.”
“You know,” Sally responded, “Teach for America does a really good job.” Sally went on to explain that before Teach for America, she and husband were forty-dollar givers.
“Forty dollar givers?” I asked, astounded and then quickly assuming that even though I understood what she met—I must not. Sally, as I had learned earlier in the day, is a successful consultant who worked for global name-brand clients. Earlier, she earned an MBA from Stanford and worked as a manager with for a large international consulting firm. Surely, Sally and her husband, who had to in my quick conservative estimate earned more than $100,000 per year, didn’t only give $40 a year at a time to a nonprofits?
Yes, she explained they did. In the past, when they were asked to write a check they wrote one for forty dollars. Now, with Teach for America, they were sponsoring a classroom for $5,000 a year. “It’s amazing, we get to touch all those lives and it only costs $5,000 and only about a 100 people a year do it.”
Sally represents one of thousands of people who are bright and earn a sizable income—and seek to make a difference. She represents someone who has never been asked and worse, never shown the path your nonprofit offers to making a difference.
Sally reminds us that the individual donor opportunity door is wide-open, as are the majority of the other six nonprofit income opportunity doors. This is why this story is not about Sally because it is about nonprofit leaders, like you, who are unsure about approaching the Sally’s you know. Are you neglecting to offer the Sally’s in your sphere of influence the opportunity to help you change lives? Are you assuming (like me) that educated people with means already understand philanthropy and are already doing their part? How might we reach, show and educate Sally about the opportunities she is missing?

Stay tuned for more about Sally. In my next piece, I will share how Teach For America helped Sally to become a $5,000 a year donor. -Karen Eber Davis

Karen’s Ultimate Test: Is this a Good Plan?

We like to hike, especially as summer heat gives way to cool fall mornings. Sometimes we come to bridges. Stone bridges are good. Solid wood bridges are good. But open slat or rope or wobbly logs over swiftly moving creeks—not my favorite. Nonetheless, I will step upon them to cross if I can see that they will bring me to where I want to go… in advance.

Your plans should also let you “see” that you can reach your destination from where you are. With firm plans you can feel that the next step you take and each one after that will let you place your foot on something solid that leads you to your destination.

Can you in your minds eye see in advance how your plan gets you from here to there? How many of your plans, big and small, get you from here to there—in your mind's eye?

Planning, The Final Step Bridge Building

By far, the most complicated and most important step of planning is bridge building. The purpose of the bridge you will build is to get you from here to there. The bridge represents the steps you will take to move between these two spaces. A good bridge closes the gap between the two locations and it carries solid traffic. This is complex thinking. It involves concepts, making connections, identifying steps, estimating timing, using resources, testing ideas, and research. It involves eliminating good choices that do not work, coping with unknowns and not meeting everyone’s expectations. Throughout the planning process, hope is critical. You must believe that solid plans are possible and that the results will be worthwhile. Finally, good bridges and good plans are not built in a day or afternoon. Invest time and energy to create your bridge or plan from where you are now to your vision.

When it actually comes down to making “the plan” how do you organize the process so that nothing is overlooked?

(For more on the first two steps of planning, see my recent entries in this blog.)

The Often Missed Step of Planning: Where You Are Now

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My office is near U.S. 41 in Sarasota—the main commercial artery of the city. Along this corridor I have standard errands, both north and south. To save time, I run different errands en route to meetings depending if the meeting is north or south respectively. This plan saves gas, energy and waiting at stoplights. At your nonprofit, your plans will work best if you also know your starting place. This Where You Are Now is the second essential stage of good planning.

What does it mean to know where you are now? Knowing includes obvious items; your physical location, financial status and pending staff changes. It also includes subtle issues, like market conditions, a planning group’s comfort level with each other, and if you have the information you need to plan, etc. As an example of the last, last week a group of consultants planned what with a series of recorded teleconferences. We failed to make much progress until we determined that we had recorded the previous sessions—a needed piece of information.

Another component of Where You Are Now that is especially fruitful for experienced groups is information about other planning experiences your group completed. What was successful about them? Lacking? Do people have positive expectations about up-coming planning sessions? Was the fiscal piece strong or does it need additional effort? Identifying these or related issues is “knowing where you are now” and the second step in good planning.

What kinds of questions do you ask and answer when you look at your current situation as part of the planning process?

(For the first step of good planning read this entry: The Critical First Step of Income and Other Planning: Destination.)

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