Increasing Your Grantseeking Success Rate
If you are charged with writing grant applications for your nonprofit organization, then you know that all too often this task can become routine. Driven by perpetual deadlines, a mass of continual forms to fill in and the constant search for current constituency
demographics can push even the best grant writer into a mechanical thinking and writing mode. This can lead to more misses than hits. In other words, a lot of time and resources are being spent chasing grant opportunities, but the return rate for funded
grants is less than 75 percent of requests submitted. This article is a quick primer on ways to increase your grantseeking success rate.
Work with the most recent guidelines. Visit the funder’s Web site, call or write for specific application guidelines and a copy of their Annual Report (the report will tell you the types of agencies and projects that were funded in the previous fiscal year). Often if the
funder has a special grant application form or format, it can be downloaded from their Web site. Note: some funders post their Annual Reports online.
Make sure your organization and your funding idea meet the funder’s eligibility criteria. Check the applicant eligibility section of the funder’s guidelines. Your organization’s specific need for grant funding should mirror the funder’s area of interest; you should be located in their geographic funding area and your need for funding should escape any of their published limitations.
Adhere to the submission protocol. Honor the funder’s requirements for how to approach them for a grant request. For example, if print guidelines ask that a letter of inquiry be submitted first, then upon the funder’s review you will asked to submit a full proposal, adhere to the method of first contact protocol.
Pay attention to technical specifications. Follow instructions for the font size, page limitation, spacing requirements and mandatory attachments. This is an area where doing your own thing can get your application eliminated from funding consideration based on noncompliance.
Use up-to-date information to describe your organization. Introduce your organization by giving the funder a brief history and a bulleted list of major accomplishments. Write about your current programs and activities and provide only the information related to the project for which you are seeking funding support.
Describe your constituency with factual, current statistics. Use demographic information released in the past five years for your service population. Only cite older data when showing a progressive incline or decline in a population characteristic that strongly supports the need for grant funding as an intervention strategy.
Share your collaborations with other community-based organizations. Create a table with two columns: Community Partners and Roles. Use this to list all organizations you have a working agreement with to provide some level of participant or end-user services. Remember, the partners on this list should write letters of support for inclusion in the attachments.
Describe the problems, needs or issues that grant funding will solve with compassion and facts. Select compelling words and phrases to convey the problem. Use a liberal dash of gloom and doom (the dire need for grant funding) and drama and trauma convince the funder that the current situation has no chance of improving without intervention). Present charts and other needful”
narrative to paint the picture—telling it like it is!
Plan and write a winning program design. Capitalize on input from your stakeholders (board members, other staff, clients and volunteers from your organization) to write a strong and direct purpose statement; develop short- and long-term goals and measurable outcome or process objectives; present budget-related activities and implementation strategies; and a include realistic timeline for fulfilling the grant-funded promises. Present a management plan that shows personnel responsible and internal accountability for grant-funded activities and expenditures.
Learn to write a comprehensive evaluation plan. Remember, all programs or projects need to be evaluated for effectiveness. Write an evaluation plan that covers all bases. Discuss who will be on the evaluation team and who will be responsible for monitoring and collecting data. Terms that are important to include: logic model, impact statement, qualitative and quantitative, formative and summative, and dissemination.
What it Means to be an eCivis Client!
eCivis is committed to providing a world-class grants management system and professional services. The eCivis team is made up of some of the leading grant experts in the nation. We work closely with the funding agents to ensure that information is up to date, eliminating wasted time and resources for our clients. From local communities to state organizations, clients such as Los Angeles County, Chicago, Orlando, Raleigh, and Houston rely on eCivis every day to assist them through the grants process.
Expanding Capacities to Exceed Expectations
Grants Professional Services
In 2011, eCivis added a Grants Professional Services (GPS) division to serve clients’ grant-consultation and grant-writing needs. Dr. Beverly A. Browning (Dr. Bev) was invited to join our Management Team and create this newest department. GPS has been integrated into every area of eCivis operations. From adding web site links to create client-requested services to rolling out Nonprofit One-Stop™, GPS is using your feedback to build a current and future tier of critically needed services.
Here’s an overview of the services developed-to-date (using your valuable feedback):
Grant Writing
Many of you told us that there are simply more grant funding opportunities that you can keep up with and, that regretfully, some of the best grants for your communities are not pursued due to lack of time. In order to meet your ongoing and intermittent grant writing needs, Dr. Bev recruited a core group of grant professionals who represent the cream of the crop in their specialty areas. Nearly 100 grant writers, managers, evaluators, and budget analysts have experience and high win rates with government and private sector grantmakers. Many of our grant professionals hold Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) and/or Grant Professionals Certification (GPC) Institute credentials. Using our grant writing services alleviates stress on your end and increases your organization’s chance of winning a highly competitive grant award.
Peer Review
A core group of our long-term clients provided feedback about the need for a second pair of eyes on the grant applications written in-house by their staff. Dr. Bev developed peer review services to help you find the visible and invisible red flags in your completed grant applications. Our team members look at the grantmaker’s guidelines and compare them to what you or your staff has written. The markup (via tracking comments) provided reflects high scrutiny of major narrative weaknesses. When you accept our expert advice, your chances of winning a grant award increase immensely.
Training
eCivis has always worked one-on-one with our clients to provide product training use. Our Grants Network system has training available at every level to ease client use and promote product satisfaction. As a newcomer, Dr. Bev recognized that many of our Grants Network clients extend online access to their community partners. She has created a one-day customized training program to strengthen your community goodwill efforts. Dr. Bev will write specialized curriculum to fit your organization’s and community partner’s needs in the area of grant writing. Recently, she delivered these standing room only training programs for the City’s of San Antonio (TX) and Avondale (AZ). Audience response was overwhelming. Look for a video of the Avondale training and community partner feedback on our web site in 2012!
About the Author
Dr. Beverly A. Browning (Dr. Bev) has been consulting in the areas of grant writing, contract bid responses, and organizational development for nearly four decades. She has assisted clients and workshop participants throughout the United States in receiving awards of more than $350 million. Dr. Bev the author of 39 grants-related publications, including Grant Writing For Dummies™, Grant Writing for Educators, How to Become a Grant Writing Consultant, Faith-Based Grants: Aligning Your Church to Receive Abundance, Perfect Phrases for Writing Grant Proposals, Rule of Thumb: A Guide to Small Business Sustainability and Perfect Phrases for Fundraising (2012). Her online courses (taught to thousands of students annually on www.ed2go.com) are Advanced Proposal Writing and Becoming a Grant Writing Consultant. Dr. Browning is a current member of the Grant Professionals Association. She is CEO of Bev Browning & Associates (BBA, Inc.); Founder and Director of the Grant Writing Training, and most recently, the Vice President for Grants Professional Services at eCivis Inc. (www.ecivis.com).
Assessing Our Grant Writing Skills
As the year ends, we are all reflecting on the past 11+ months and asking ourselves for evidence of our impact for our own consulting businesses and for our employers. These are the typical year-end review items for grant writers:
- Number of grant applications written in 2011?
- Number of grant applications funded in 2011?
- What is my WIN rate?
- Weaknesses in the rejected grant applications that can be corrected before resubmitting?
- Employer satisfaction with my performance?
- Clients’ satisfaction with my performance?
- Do I need professional development training to strengthen my skills?
- What is my plan for the New Year?
Now, let’s explore the reason to ask these questions.
Number of Grant Applications Written in 2011
Typically grant writers measure their productivity level in 12-month calendar timeframes. Your 12-months can start in January and end in December; start in July and end in June or even start in October and end in September. It’s not the start/stop month that matters; it’s looking back at your grant writing productivity—the first component in determining our WIN rate. Count every grant application (competitive and formula) that you had your hands on. By this, I mean count any grant application where you participated in the planning, worked on a team, or worked on from start to finish. Everything we’ve touched counts!
Number of Grant Applications Funded in 2011
Sometimes we write a grant application in one year and find out its fate in the New Year. If that’s the case, count the funded month in the actual year that you receive the award notification. Knowing how many grant applications we’ve touched (some level of participation) that are funded. Know the number of applications funded in the second and final component in determining our WIN rate.
What is My WIN Rate?
First, count the number of grants written this past year. Since I’ve been Vice President of Grants Professional Services for eCivis (April 2011), I’ve cut back on the number of grant applications that I can write for current and incoming clients. This year, I worked on the following grant applications:
Table 1: Dr. Bev Browning’s Roster of Grant Applications in 2011
| 2011 Grant Applications | Funded | Not Funded |
| Nassau County Non-Secure Detention Center (Awarded $208,000) | ü | |
| OJJDP FY 11 Second Chance Act Juvenile Mentoring Initiative (Awarded $609,289) | ü | |
| Small Business Jobs Act (Awarded $837,632) | ü | |
| Alternative Education Pathways ($1,000,000) | ü | |
| Procurement Technical Assistance Center ($271,996) | ü | |
| Civis Justice Corps | ü | |
| Totals | 5 | 1 |
I wrote five grant applications and four were funded. That’s 4 out of 5 or 4/5ths. This means that my WIN rate for 2011 was 80%.
Note: Profession-wide, anything over 70% is considered exemplary. The more grant applications you write in a 12-month timeframe, the higher your success rate will be. In the past, I’ve written upwards to 20-30 grant applications per year and my WIN rate has been a steady 80-90%. Yes, I was very lucky!
Weaknesses in the Rejected Grant Applications That Can Be Corrected Before Resubmitting
When we don’t succeed, it’s important to request feedback from the grantmaking agency about why our grant application was not funded. I write a Freedom of Information Act request to expedite the feedback process. At the federal grantmaking level, the 26 agencies awarding grants are required to put grant applications through two review processes. The first review, called the Technical Review looks for failure to comply with standard first level submission requirements. For example, correct line spacing, font, font size, margins, table and graph formatting, forms signed, budgets that are correct, and submitted on time. The second level of review, called Peer Review is where a team of three grant topic experts review the application and write extensive feedback on the application’s weaknesses and strengths. You will want to request the peer review feedback to determine where your grant application fell short. Once you know the weaknesses, you can work on rewriting your narrative sections or redoing your budget section so the application is ready for resubmission when the next funding cycle is announced. Remember, if we don’t know our mistakes, we just keep making them and wondering why nothing we submit is getting funded!
Employer Satisfaction with My Performance
During your annual performance review, did you discuss the number of grant applications that submitted; the number funded, and the total dollars you helped to bring in to your employer? These are important career progression points and should be noted in writing. Is your employer satisfied with your performance? If yes, keep doing what you’re doing. If no, what can you do to improve your grant writing skills? It’s important to set a self-improvement plan annually and stick to it!
Client Satisfaction with My Performance
If you’re a grant writing consultant like me, it’s important to obtain feedback from our clients on how they felt we performed their services. My consulting services include funding research, funder communications protocol, grant application planning facilitation, grant application team member assistance, grant writing, and grant-related training. I continually ask my clients and workshop trainees for feedback on how the process worked; the project document quality, and funding outcome satisfaction. We can’t improve our consulting businesses if we don’t know the impact of our work. Our revenues depend on performing funding-related miracles!
What is My Plan for the New Year?
As we begin to plan for 2012, it’s important to examine our grant writing resources. By this, I mean what grant research databases are we using and when are the renewal dates in 2012? What rejected grant applications can I retool and resubmit in 2012? What professional groups can I join or renew my membership in? Don’t forget to look at the benefits of the Grant Professionals Association, I belong to this group and there are many win/win’s involved with membership. Also, they have a lot of professional development opportunities. Do I need help with identifying grant funding opportunities? Do I need grant writing technical assistance since my full-time job is not grant writing, but I am required to find funding opportunities and write grant applications on a regular basis? Do I have a funding plan for 2012?
Here are some resources to help you to answer these questions:
Table 2 – 2012 Recommended Resources and Links
| Resources | Links |
| Grant databases
-Grant Research or Nonprofit One-Stop |
www.ecivis.com |
| Peer review feedback | http://ies.ed.gov/funding/webinars/pdf/May2applicationprocess_FY2012.pdf |
| Professional associations | www. http://grantprofessionals.org/ |
| Technical Assistance | http://www.ecivis.com/products-services/grants-professional-services.html |
| Funding plan | http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-create-a-funding-plan-for-your-organization.html |
Outsource Your Bookkeeping!
By Steve Zimmerman,
The most strategic decision you make regarding how to staff
your accounting department may be to not staff it at all. Well, at least not
with employees of your organization. Outsourced accounting — having the
accounting done by an outside person or firm — isn’t new, but it is getting a
second look as nonprofits search for ways to cut office costs.
We’ve written here before about using accurate and timely
financial information to manage your organization well. But the question for
many executive directors is: how do I get that financial information? While a
good in-house bookkeeper is probably better than an outsourced bookkeeper, an
outsourced bookkeeper is much better than a bad in-house bookkeeper.(read more)
Last Week to Give Us Your Input
The mission of the Grant Writing Training Foundation and the Small Business Association of the Midlands is to assist nonprofits to develop, grow and operate more efficiently. Please take a few minutes to answer this short 5 question survey to help us plan future workshops in your community. When you take the survey you will be entered in a drawing to WIN the new 4th edition Grant Writing for Dummies book.
This is a digital grassroots effort, would you mind sending this out to all the nonprofits in your community and ask them to pass it on. Take The Survey
Comparing Cheap and Free “Donate Now” Button Services
By Jenny Henry
Thinking about changing your Donate Button, or maybe getting
one for the first time? Jenny Henry of Sumac
Software has compiled this guide to online donation services that are quick
and easy to use.
But first, we hear from Brady Josephson of Opportunity International Canada
and his (probably typical) experiences with Donate Now services:
I was working for a start-up nonprofit — Smart Ventures. We
were looking to use the fastest-to-get-going, cheap, free, easy-to-use solution
to offer a way to purchase items or to give online. We started with Google
Checkout. Our thinking was that we were already using Google Analytics and
other Google services, so it would be good to be able to go to one place and
get everything. (read more)
What we found was their checkout purchasing was okay, but
donation options were very, very limited. For example, we had a gift catalog
where people could make donations that would buy bags of seeds for people in
developing countries, or a chicken, or a plot of land, or just make an outright
donation. We wanted to offer options, like $15 that would buy one bag of seeds
of $30 for two. We couldn’t do it just with the plug-and-play. We did some
coding to customize it, but it just got away from us.
Then we moved to Paypal.
Nonprofit Tax Quiz
By Kim Klein and Jan Masaoka •
Everyone talks about the weather, but how many of us
actually know what a lenticular cloud is or what the dew point means? In the
nonprofit sector we throw around tax opinions, but here’s a chance to learn
something (uh oh). We loved working with Kim Klein
of “Talking About Taxes“
on this fun quiz.
We advise you to take this 17-question quiz with your
friends or co-workers before looking at the answer sheet. (Hint: it’s easiest
if you print out the Quiz.) At the end of this article is a link to a
print-friendly pdf of the quiz, the answer sheet, and the scoring guide. (read more)
Designing the Evaluation Plan: Four Key Questions
From application to execution, evaluation is a key
ingredient in the grant process. Good planning and asking the right questions
early in the process will pay off in terms of generating an evaluation plan that
is manageable and likely to produce outcomes that will benefit your
organization, the funding agency, and the community.
Designing the Evaluation
The evaluation plan is based on the project plan and can
serve as a guide to measure your project, help promote the project to your
stakeholders, and help you monitor the progress of project activities. More
information on the purpose and nature of an evaluation is available in the
eCivis KnowledgeBase publication “Evaluating Your Project.”
Ideally, evaluation planning and project planning should
occur simultaneously for two reasons. Some aspects of your project will need to
be evaluated during the project period. Evaluating mid-project will allow you
to observe whether the project is being conducted as planned and progressing as
expected. The data collected will enable you to make any mid-course decisions
and adjustments needed to ensure a successful result. Secondly, considering
what will be evaluated will help you form clearly defined project goals and
objectives, which are primary criteria on which evaluations should be based. (read more)
Nonprofit Bookkeeping Test
By Dennis Walsh
If you’re not an accountant yourself, it can be hard to hire
a qualified bookkeeper. How can you tell if an applicant really knows
bookkeeping? CPA Dennis Walsh created this terrific assessment test you can
give candidates for bookkeeping and accounting jobs. We especially like the
chart at the end that shows what training is called for based on which
questions were answered correctly or incorrectly:
This 21-question quiz samples from general bookkeeping
knowledge as well as nonprofit bookkeeping and compliance matters. Use this
assessment test as part of your hiring toolkit as well as for identifying staff
training needs. Take it yourself and see how you do!
The Nonprofit Bookkeeping Assessment Test
We recommend that you give an applicant 20 minutes to
complete the assessment test. The ability to make accurate choices under time
pressure is an important indicator of suitability for this type of work (read more)
Watch Your Step! Avoiding Common Application Pitfalls
In the grant application process, accuracy and attention to
detail are key. While you might have written the perfect proposal, exceeding
the indicated page limit, for instance, could cause your application to be
rejected before even being read. This article teaches you some of the common
application pitfalls in order to help you avoid making simple, yet fatal errors
that could prevent your application from being reviewed by a committee.
Avoid Disqualification — Mind the Details
In a competitive application process, you must pay close
attention to every aspect of a proposal, from page limitations to font size.
Funding agencies review many deserving applications, looking for applicants who
have invested the right amount of effort, not only into the project but also
into the application process. The application may be the only chance you have
of demonstrating the merits of your project to a funding agency; avoiding
careless mistakes will leave a good impression and ensure a greater probability
of winning an award. If your organization is an eCivis Grants Network client,
you can easily access the funding announcement, program guidelines, and all
application forms and instructions for each funding opportunity. (read more)
