Don't Let Grants Stress You Out
Note from Diane: Briana’s post today, “Celebrating Grant Success” is the first in a four-part series where different colleagues share their perspectives on celebrating grant success and also on handling and learning from grant rejections. There is no instant gratification in grant writing. Celebrating success is as much about a successful process as it is a successful funding outcome, the latter of which often does…
Your nonprofit is grant ready. You have a list of grantmakers to approach. And now it is time to put the grant application together. It can be overwhelming. So how do you know what to include in the grant application? Here is a hint. Most grantmakers have guidelines and regulations you must follow. Use their guidelines as a guide for the grant application. And avoid…
What do you do when you’ve been writing the same line for 20 minutes? When you’ve used the same adjective to describe an organization 17 times in one paragraph? When that nagging feeling creeps up on you and you begin to wonder if you’ll ever be able to finish a grant. Yup, it’s writer’s block and it happens to the best of us and probably…
Regardless of how long you have been in the grant writing field, as a grant professional, there are always huge benefits for serving as a grant reviewer. I started my career as a grantmaker, I was a Program Officer at the Michigan Women’s Foundation, something I have written about here before. In the years since I left grantmaking as my full-time work and started working…
We get questions like, “Should your grant seeking organization or nonprofit take time to apply for small grants?” and the follow-up questions including “Are they worth it?” or “Do they actually *cost* your organization money?” frequently. These are all great questions for an organization to be asking themselves before they dig in on a new application. Grants are never “free” money – whether large or…
What do you say when someone new to the field broadly asks you, “Do you have any tips to help me be successful with grant writing?” I often joke back that they don’t want to get me started unless they have all day! The reality is, there is no *one* piece of advice or tidbit that is going to make you successful with grants. There…
Note from Diane: We each take a different path into our work as first grant writers and then grant professionals. Understanding how other professionals approach their professional development is a great way to get ideas to help expand and enhance your own approach to professional development. I am thrilled to add Jane Nelson’s perspective to our conversation. My professional development in the grants field…
Grant writing is not easy; it’s not *just* about finding a grant, writing, submitting, and then repeating. Rather, the grants profession is very competitive. While there are many funders supporting a wide variety of fields of interest; they often care about certain geographic areas (i.e. – one city, one state), and often only provide certain types of funding (i.e. – capital, programmatic).
What is GuideStar? GuideStar is the premier hub for information on nonprofit organizations. GuideStar’s mission is “to revolutionize philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.” GuideStar gathers and disseminates information to grantmakers, donors, and potential supporters so they can easily use the information learn more about your nonprofit and make better decisions. GuideStar wants to…
Note from Diane: We’re so pleased to have another perspective for you from one of our team members about what Grant Funding in Action looks like, or in hashtag speak, how #grantswork. We’d love to hear your stories too! Send them to us so your stories can be featured here! What’s your bottom line when it comes to writing for, or allocating, grants? Is…