Transcripts
1. Introduction: is your nonprofit or school always short on funds? Do you keep hearing things like there's so much grant money out there? Why don't you just apply or you need more supplies? Just write a grant for it. It's not that simple, is it? Do others make it look so easy to get grants? But you feel like you're fighting for every dime. It's time to start searching for grants like a ninja. Hi, I'm Teresa Huff, and I'm a professional grant writer and development consultant. Since 2005 I've brought in several $1,000,000 for schools and nonprofits. I get the constant uphill battle for funding, and I can help in this course. I'll teach you where to look for grants, how to speed up your search with a checklist of what to look for, how to quickly read out the non options, my method for tracking and organizing possible grant options, my deep dives, search tips and step by step examples using actual funders. Then, by the time we get to the course project, you'll have a framework to set up your own grant search process. You'll be able to prioritize and track the different opportunities that you fight. This will help you use your time more effectively. This courses for beginners and grant writers with some experience, this will be helpful whether you're on staff or if you're a freelance grant writer. If you're wanting to learn grant writing, but you don't work with an organization yet, that's fine. I adapt the assignments so you can learn tools to use later. Be sure to follow my channels so you don't miss upcoming grant writing courses. I have a master's in education and before grant writing, I was a special ed teacher, so you'll find extras in my courses like principles and challenge questions to apply what you're learning. Your next steps are to download the course bonus materials, watch the videos in the course, complete the challenges in each lesson, post your questions in the community and then complete your course project. Leave a review and follow my channel so you can have access to more grant writing courses. By the end of this class, you'll have a foundational knowledge of how to search for grant funding. You'll be able to quickly evaluate an opportunity to see if it's right for you. Organize your search and better position yourself for the grant writing process. Invest a few minutes in yourself today so you can then change your world. I'm excited to be a part of your grant writing journey. Let's roll.
2. Do Your Homework Now = Speed the Search Later: Before you start your search for grant funding, you need to figure out why you're looking in the first place. Here's where you have to ask some tough questions. More importantly, you must have realistic answers. If you don't, it'll catch up with you. Sooner or later, we're going to run through a short organizational check up to figure out your current status. This will help you know what types of grants to look for. Think about things like, Do you have your official nonprofit status? If you're a five, a one C three has your application but improved. When was your organization established? So how long have you been operating? What geographical areas do you serve? How big is your organization when we can measure big by a few different things. The number of people you serve, the number of your staff number of volunteers, number of locations you may have. How much money do you have coming in? For example, what was your budget last year? Do you have several different funding sources and what are some of your other sources of funding besides grants? Keep in mind there aren't any writer. Wrong answers here. You're just putting together a quick, accurate profile of your organization's current status. Write these down for easy reference. Later. Let's push pause for a second to take a good look at your answers. Some of these will be key factors in your grand applications. If you're learning to be a freelance grant writer, thes air questions you'll be able to work through with prospective clients. Here's a visual representation. Do you have your official nonprofit status? If yes, keep moving forward. If no, you're not ready to apply for grants yet. Do you have multiple sources of funding? If yes, keep moving forward. Are you serving clients again? Yes, Move forward. No, you're not ready. Have you been operating? Meaning serving clients for a least a few months or, ideally, a couple of years? If yes, keep moving forward with grants. If no, you're not quite ready. Now, if you're not ready to apply for grants yet, the key word there is yet. You can still be doing other work. In the meantime, to position yourself for success, set up your processes, solidify your programs, work on other sources of funding, check out the course resource is section for a bonus download of this Infographic to help you think through these questions,
3. Why Are You Looking? Determine Your Grant Vision: Before you start looking for grants, you need to determine your grant vision. In other words, why do you want grant funding? That may seem obvious, of course, because you need money. Daw. Let's play a little game called. But why? What? You don't ask yourself that question again this time instead of the eye roll. For every answer you give, ask yourself. But why? Until you can't answer anymore, here's an example. Why do you want Grant funding? Because we need the money. But why? Because we really need more supplies. But why? Because our program is growing and we can't meet the demand to serve enough alliance. But why? Because we're the only after school program in the area and we need to help these kids. But why? Because if we don't, they'll run the streets, cause problems and get in all kinds of trouble. We have to give them a positive alternative. But why? So they can be safe, learn practical skills and know that someone cares enough about them to set them up for a brighter future? Wow, See what that did? We kept digging deeper and deeper until we got down to the real reason the compelling Why of our program? We're not writing grants to get more money for writing grants to change kids futures for the better. That's what motivates our work. And that's what we need to convey to funders. When we're looking for grants were searching for opportunities. Little line with our why are really now we're not just chasing dollars and searching for anyone waving money around. We're focused on building our program to create a better future for kids, and we're offering a chance for funders to partner with us. In doing that, it may take on several forms that are still a good fit. In the example of the after school program that may look like a healthy kids initiative, illiteracy programme, life skills, education, arts and music or any number of possible options. There may be multiple types of grants that are relevant without bending our mission out of shape. Look for the opportunities that are a good fit and pass on those that aren't for this challenge. Go through the but why exercise for your organization until you uncover your riel? Why write it down and posted in front of you so you'll see it as you search for grants and can keep that in mind if you don't have an organization yet do this for yourself. Why do you want to become a grant writer? But why keep going till you get to your Really? Why? Whatever your situation, I'd love to hear your why posted in the course communities so we can see the awesome difference you're making.
4. Types of Grants: Which Are Best for Your Org?: Now we're ready to talk about the different types of funders in which ones you should be targeting with your grant search. Pull out your answer from the organizational checkup questions and listen to and keep that handy. Now this isn't a completely comprehensive list after all. The sky's the limit when it comes to grant funders, but this will help you understand the main sources of grants. First of all, we have government grants. Thes could be federal, state or local government issued government grants will have the most requirements and likely the most rigorous application process, especially at the federal and state levels. The's air better suited for organizations that have already had some experience implementing and managing grants and that have a fairly large operating budget. Another kind of grant that is very common is foundation grants. Thes will have a wide range from very simple and small to very complex. Low amounts up to very high amounts. That's the short version of foundation funders. You'll typically run into a corporate or private foundation for your search process. Local grants are typically a little bit smaller in amount and the size of the application and documentation required thes could be things like local clubs such as your Rotary Club or even other organizations like a chamber of commerce. Some of these can be a little elusive online. Okay, maybe they don't live online at all. Word of mouth is going to be the biggest key to hearing about thes network and keep an ear to the ground everywhere you go, because you never know who might be on a board or connected to a grand opportunity that you wouldn't otherwise. Here about partnerships can be things like umbrella organisations or maybe co ops. So from the funder side, these may involve an umbrella organization that manages and oversees the application process for smaller funding partners from the applicant side. This could be a consortium of applicants who apply together. One applicant is designated as the fiscal agent, meaning the funds will pass through them, and they will be the primary point of contact between the funder and the other applicants. So which types of grants should you be looking for? That depends on several factors. Go back to our readiness questions and consider things like How long has your organisation but around? Have you ever received Grant funding before. What's your total operating budget and how many clients are you serving? If your organization has never received a grant before, I recommend starting with a small foundation or local grant. If you're well established and have multiple funding sources, you may be ready for a government grant. Let's look at a couple of examples. Sample agency one has been running for over 20 years. They have 10 paid staff members in over 100 volunteers. Their general operating budget is about $500,000 a year, and they serve about 1000 clients each year. So when they're reviewing grant opportunities, the $1 million grant that aligns with their mission and their project goals might be pretty feasible for them. On the other hand, if there's a $500 grant application that requires quite a bit of time to fill out, might not be worth. The resource is it would take their efforts. Are Blackley best used elsewhere, maybe with fundraising or donor outreach and on larger grants? Now let's look at sample agency number to this agency received their nonprofit status about nine months ago, so they've been operating for almost a year they have one part time staff person in about 10 volunteers. They serve 30 clients, or so they're operating. Budget goal for this year is $20,000. Now funders are not gonna look twice at them. If they apply for the $1,000,000 grant, they don't have enough of a track record or fiscal management experience. However, the $1000 Rotary Club Grant might be a perfect fit. They're doing good work in the local community. Their program is growing, they can show some small results already, and $1000 will make a nice addition to their budget. Plus, there may be opportunities for Rotary Club members to get involved in volunteer at special program events for this nonprofit. Some funders look for ways that they can join forces in other ways besides just financial. They like those opportunities as well to get involved in the community. Do you see how we took what we knew about each agency to know which types of grants to seek out those air to extremes of one very large one very small organization, But you can kind of get the idea is the same method for any size of organization are you a teacher meeting funds for some classroom ipads? Or are you the superintendent of the school district looking to fund 1 to 1 technology for all students district wide. Then you can base your grant surge accordingly. Neither one is wrong or bad. You're just looking at it from different perspectives and looking for different types of opportunities. There's not an exact formula. There will always be an element of risk involved with grand applications that you can mitigate that risk if you learn to add a dose of common sense when weighing out whether to apply for the challenge. Consider this based on your organization size, budget and other factors we talked about which types of grants will you start with when you're searching? If you're unsure, post in the community where we can help you sort it out.
5. Organize Your Search + Grant Search Tracker Swipe File: grant searches are so much more effective and efficient. If I take a minute up front to organize my notes, I use a simple spreadsheet to keep track of which grants I've looked at. Before I did this, I only wrote down Good Prospects Center notebook. I can't tell you how many times I would spend time looking through a possible grant only to rule it out and then a few months later, stumble across the same one again and repeat the whole process for a grant that wasn't even a good fit. I finally got smart and started keeping track of my searches in a spreadsheet, even the ones that aren't a good fit. That way I can do a quick search of the sheet to see if I've already previewed that Thunder saves a ton of time. Here's a quick overview for you of my Grant search tracker. This is just in a simple Google doc. This will give you a head start on your course project as well. You're going to customize your own tracker to use when you're searching. You can make a copy of this template in the course resource a section. These are the things I like to track first. Of course, I have the funder name and the deadline of when the grant will be do. If I know. If not, it might be an ongoing. Or I might put a note to check back. I put the link to their website or their online application and any notes about it. And if there's a log in, it's helpful to have that right here handy. I also think it's helpful to put upcoming deadlines in red so that I will notice those right away. And I like to color code the results. If it was awarded, I turn it green. If it's pending its yellow, that means it's been submitted, but we haven't heard yet. I also put the funders in alphabetical order with an inch section. These at the top are possible options that we are going to most likely apply for. Then there's a probably not They might be a fit, but it would be a little bit of a stretch. Or maybe just not quite what we're looking for it this time, possibly in the future and then no means. It's definitely not a fit. So, for example, on probably not. There's a State Dental Association grant. It's a very small grant. It was quite a bit of process for the application, and it requires you partnering with a particular type of dentist for my client that's in a rural community, and they're really not wanting to spend a lot of money on Grant writing. They don't have access to this type of dentist is just really not a good fit for them at this time. I'm keeping it here just in case the situation changes or if it leads to another grant opportunities down the road. But I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one. This Carter Family Foundation They are looking for programs that help at risk youth. Now, if I'm working with a senior citizens center, this is not gonna be a good fit for them at all. However, I'm leaving it on here because I may want it for reference for a different client, or I may come across this Carter Family Foundation grant again sometime, and I can easily see Oh, wait, I've already looked at this one. It's not if it the same with some of these others. Here's another example, this is one that I found and everything about it was perfect for the senior center I work with. The problem was, it's only limited to the neighboring counties around them. It would not fund anything in the county where the senior center is located, so it's not a good fit. If you're not in the right geographical area, they won't fund you. So don't apply thinking. Well, maybe they'll make an exception. They've made those boundaries on purpose, and they have reasons for it, so don't spend your time on it. If it's not gonna work when you create your own tracker, you may find that you want to add other columns as well, Like maybe an amount range for the awards. The number of awards expected. There may be other factors we talked about, and if that's the case, just add columns. And, of course, in a Google doc, you can easily rearrange those however you like. Another thing that's very easy, as I do control F or command F, and that way you can quickly find the ones you're looking for, and then Aiken search for that and say, OK, that wouldn't didn't work. I can move on. I've already checked it. This system could be easily adapt to a task management system like Trillo or asana. If you use that already, or you could link your spreadsheet to that system to where you could quickly access it, that's it. It's a really simple way to track, but it saves so much time and effort. Now it's time to start thinking in terms of your course project. You're going to create your own version of this grant search tracker. You can download my template in the resource Is section or you're welcome to create your own from scratch or set it up in your own project management system. Do what works best for you. First, you're gonna make a note of any other columns that you want to track or ways that you want to organize the information and then set up a draft to use in the upcoming lessons. You don't have to have all the answers yet you don't have to have your spreadsheets set up perfectly. This is just some food for that. Let's talk through your ideas and questions in the course community
6. How to Search for Grants Online + Sample Search: Now it's time to start your actual grant search. There are several different ways to find grants. The first, of course, is online. Another good resource is word of mouth. Sometimes you'll hear about one that you somehow missed online. Local contacts will have a lot of good ideas. Check with your Chamber of commerce, civic groups, other people in the area that you may know, think about all of your network and then look around literally as you're driving through town. Look around. What businesses air in your community. Do they offer grant funding? Have you ever thought to check if you're in a small rural community? Expand this a bit to any nearby cities. Sometimes you'll run into brick walls as they only fund within their city or in a certain county. But keep looking and think about even some of those rural companies or factories you never know who might offer something that's just the right fit. Keep in mind you'll never find all the grants, and to some degree you have to be okay with that. Find the ones that will work for you and move forward with those. You won't have time to implement all the grands anyway, So go with those that are the best fit and don't stress over the others. The main thing is to keep making progress. I say this for my fellow perfectionists who like to leave no stone unturned. Don't feel handicapped when you can't do it all. Just keep moving forward. What? I'm searching online. I like to change it up a bit with different terms. Let's say I'm looking for a corporate foundation that offers funding in my community. There happens to be a best buy in my area, so I'm curious if they have anything that might work. I'll try terms like Best Buy Foundation, best by corporate giving best by community programs. And I also see what pops up when I do type that in and see what other options there might be. If something doesn't turn up pretty quickly, I'll make a note on my tracker and move on to another. In this case, there are quite a few options because Best Buy does have a fairly large foundation. Now I'll click on their website and review the program guidelines to see if it's a good fit , and the next lesson will cover how to do exactly that, and I'll give you a checklist to make it go quickly to wrap this lesson up. List 3 to 5. Business is in your community. That might be possible. Grant funders. Put them on your grant search tracker. If you're in a rural community, think about what businesses you do. Have a gas station franchise, fast food, restaurant, electric company. Start thinking outside the box. No one's going to hand you a list of perfect funders and say, Here you go right Thes grants. The surge is a big part of your job. Is a grant writer look at it as the thrill of the hunt, and it will be a lot more fun.
7. What to Look for + Grant Search Checklist: Now that we found a possible thunder, it's time to review their grant guidelines to see if it's a good fit. Another time saving trick I've learned is to go through the guidelines and look for specific factors. First, those will usually help rule out pretty quickly. First of all, there are two things I start with that I always look for right away. One is the geographic area they fund, and the other is the type of organization they fund. Meaning are they only funding nonprofits, schools, government agencies, whatever. Which types will they fund or not? Those two things will tell you right away if it's worth pursuing any further. If either one is a no for your organization, meaning there outside your geographical area or they don't fund your type of agency. Move on, Don't read through the rest of the page and dwell on how perfect it would have been. Don't say maybe they won't mind, since I'm just a couple of counties over from, there's no if it's not a good fit, make a note on your tracker and move on quickly. If it is a good fit, keep looking. Once the funder passes this to question test. Let's look at the types of programs they will fund. If you need funds for a senior citizen housing and they only fund K through 12 schools, move on, see what we're doing. Since our goal is to find the right opportunities for our organization, we don't want to waste time on the wrong ones. On the other hand, if the answers to those questions are yes, so far, keep going down your checklist. Make sure there aren't any non negotiables that you can't meet. For example, if they require a 1 to 1 cash match, that means that they give you $10,000. You have to come up with another $10,000. Can you afford that? If you can. Okay. If not, you better push, pause and move on. Once those air out of the way, there are some other things I look for. Can you meet the deadline? Is it reasonable based on the amount of work and the time that you have? If not, make a note of it on the tracker and be sure to start earlier and watch for it the next round. Do their funding priorities align with your program goals. Don't be tempted to stretch. Get creative by all means, but don't force it. Here's what I mean by that. They only fund intercity kids programs. You're in a rural community of less than 10,000 people. You can't stretch to bridge that gap. On the other hand, if you really need new P E equipment for your school, they fund after school programs that focus on healthy kids and reducing couch potatoes Screen time after school, you have an existing after school program that mostly focuses on literacy. But you request funds for P E equipment, where your existing after school program to implement new fitness sessions every day as a new rotation. This equipment can also be used during the school day for your P E classes. The funder is fine with that, as long as it's being used in the after school program. The key is that it fits well with what you're already doing. It meets a need, and it aligns with the funders, goals and your mission. Are there any funding restrictions? What's the amount the term meaning, how long you would have to implement the grant and the number of expected awards Those are things I like to be aware of, but they're usually not make or break items. I included a sample pdf of the grant search checklist Items for you in the resource is section. This will help you remember what to look for when you're searching. Let's take a second to think about this lesson. Why is it so important to make sure that the grant opportunity is a good fit before you apply? Make some notes and post in the community. What questions do you have it this point? Let's discuss.
8. Apply What You've Learned: Sample Grant Search: Now that you have your grant search checklist in hand, let's walk through a sample search. Together, I'll use Best Buy is an example again, I don't have any affiliation with them. They just have everything laid out nicely on their website, so it works well. For an example, Here's their corporate giving page. With the guidelines, some foundations will be very brief. Others will have a lot of details that you'll need to wait through. Remember to first look through quickly for those key elements, so you don't waste time if it's not a good fit. First of all, we're looking for geographical area and the types of organizations they fund. I'll scroll down and quickly clients for those things. Eligibility criteria. They're serving under resourced youth ages 13 to 18 maybe a public or nonprofit community based organization such as a community center, school or library with an existing local out of school time program and a proven track record of serving youth ages 13 to 18. So these air important criteria to meet if you don't already have an out of school time program or if you're not serving youth in that age range already, they're not going to approve your application must be targeting teens in under resourced communities must operate within 25 miles of a best buy store or other center of operations . So make sure you're within that geographical area, and it looks like something else to note on this one is that they offer to separate grants and you can only apply for one or the other, but not both. So that's your first step. Just quickly weed out if you're not serving youth in this age range. If you're not within 25 miles, then move on quickly. If you are, keep looking. This might be a good option for you. This one is a little unusual. They have a little eligibility quiz here, so you would just click that and take that. If it's something that you think you might be a good partner for them, I'm gonna quickly scroll down here and look for their award. Details. Looks like program grants. No general operating or product only requests. That's not unusual. Not to exceed $15,000. It looks like the deadline proposal due date is Friday, May 31st 2019. That's the one that you really need to focus on and make sure that you can meet that deadline. So if I've looked through these initial items and I feel like it's still a good fit to move forward, I'm gonna fill it in on my tracker in the possible options section. I've got the deadline. Gonna make a big note of that one. Put the link to their page on their website, and I'll make a couple of short notes about who it's for and what they're looking for. Then I like to have thes enough medical order. You can do it however you want by deadline order. Whatever works best for you now, if this were not a good fit for my organization, if the Best Buy foundation were for youth and I only work with senior centers that I would put it down here in the nose section. That way I'll note later. I might just put a quick note so that I'll remember why it's not a good fit. Maybe I'm working with a different client, and it's helpful to have that there, so I can say, Oh, wait a minute, this might work for someone else instead of that client up to this point, we've been working quickly to weed out grants that are not a good option. Sooner or later, when you do find a funder, that's a good fit. That's the time to review every detail of their website and their guidelines. You don't want your application to be disqualified because you missed one small detail or you overlooked a document that they wanted Spend your time where it counts. Now let's challenge yourself a little bit. Try your hand at a search or two and see how it goes. Used the Grant search checklist and make some notes on your tracker. This will be another step towards completing your course project.
9. Digging Deeper: when you find a possible funder and you're serious about applying, it can be really helpful to look at the list of previous awards they've given. This is usually posted on their website or may be in another spot, like a local newspaper article or a press release compared the list of past awards amounts and the types of organizations they funded or any other information to see what direction their past rounds have gone. Also, compare that with the new guidelines to make sure they're still going the same direction. Funders may change their focus a little bit, so don't base it entirely on past awards, but it can be a very helpful tool. Here's one that I just Googled to find a list of past awards to show you. I'm going to scroll down through the list, and this one has a section on their past cycle recipients. I'm gonna click that, and we'll just take a look and see what they say. It looks like. Last year they funded over half a $1,000,000 to 23 organizations, so that gives you an idea of the breakdown and how much total spending they had then This one they've also broken it down by the types or categories of organizations and their specific priority funding areas. Now I can go through and look at the types of organizations that they had the purpose for each one academic program bridging the Gap preschool and go through those and compare. And then also look at the award ranges. Looks like a lot of them are in the twenties. There's a low one in the 5000 range even got up to the forties a couple times, so that tells me I don't want to go in and ask for $200,000 but I also don't want to ask for $2000. The somewhere in that mid range is probably a good sweet spot to be depends on my project. I don't want to shoot for the moon and ask for frivolous items just to pad our pockets with more money. But if I can find a good fit and justify the spending, then might be a reasonable amount anywhere from 15 to 35,000 just a quick analysis of their list can be really helpful. To get a better feel for who they are, is funders and what they're looking for, what types of projects, the amounts the purpose go through that don't spend a lot of time on it. But definitely use that as a helpful tool. When you're preparing all right for your challenge, it's time to really review your Grant search tracker that you've been working on throughout the course. By now, you should have already set up your own search tracker. You've practiced searching for a few grants to see how it goes, so share a screenshot of your project and any questions that you have about the process.
10. Conclusion + Next Steps: that's a wrap. By now, you should have a good handle on how to go about searching for grants in a more efficient and more effective way. Let's review those key steps one more time. Do a quick organizational check up to speed up your grant search. Understand your grant vision before you start searching. Remember, But why? Which types of grants will you target in your search? Organize your search with some sort of grant tracker. You can use my template or come up with one that works for you. Use multiple methods in different terms to search for grants. Sometimes you have to dig a little. Prioritize what you look for so you can quickly sort through possible options and not waste time on those that aren't a good fit. Search of foundations. Past awards to get a feel for what they've funded, what they may be looking for. And remember, it takes time to find the right fit. Don't force it. Hang in there and wait for the right ones. Take time to review the course project. If you completed the challenges as we went along, you should have this pretty much set up by now. Share a link or a screenshot of your grant search tracking method. Feel free to hide the names of actual funders. We want to see your method and the items you're tracking. Remember, you can always adjust it as you go and as you learn more about your client or your organization, if you aren't working with the specific organization yet, think about one in your community that you can use as an example. Client. What types of grants would they be looking for? Then do a mock search to find grants for them. The main thing for now is that you're learning how to search and what to look for. Your next steps are simple. First, review your notes from the course. Complete the course project and share it in the community. Follow me on skill share so you can learn about future courts. Is that I have planned. I'd love it if you would leave a review for the course and then go out and make an impact. I'd love to hear your questions, your long term goals or where you're stuck right now. Shoot me an email info at Theresa huff dot com and let's discuss it for strategy sessions and 1 to 1 mentoring. Go to Theresa huff dot com. Thanks so much for watching. Now go change your world.
Teresa Huff, Equipping you to change the world
