How to Secure Private & Federal Grants

Wonderful, thank you so much for having me and really excited to be with all of you today. So thanks, everyone for tuning in, and especially to DonorPerfect for hosting us today, really excited to talk with you about a very important topic. And really looking Read More

Wonderful, thank you so much for having me and really excited to be with all of you today. So thanks, everyone for tuning in, and especially to DonorPerfect for hosting us today, really excited to talk with you about a very important topic. And really looking at how to secure grants, both from foundations as well as the federal government, we’re talking about roughly a quarter trillion dollar opportunity every year. And the goal of this program is really to help ensure that your nonprofit receives its fair share of those funds. So let’s get started. And again, my name is Darien Rodriguez hand and you’ve got my personal email. And on the screen here, I’ll show it again along with my cell phone number at the end. And you’ve also got my Twitter handle, if I can be helpful in any way, as you heard, in the introduction, my work in the world is basically helping people help. So I write books, I speak at conferences, lead webinars, I’ve started multiple organizations and have run quite a few. And so I’m a practitioner in nonprofit fundraising, and also in nonprofit management. But more than anything, the work that I do is helping other nonprofit leaders be more impactful with their fundraising, and with their efforts in general. So the two books that I’ve written are nonprofit management, one on one, and another best seller, which is nonprofit fundraising when they weren’t really the first comprehensive and yet really practical guide to all aspects of raising money for your cause. Both of those are available on Amazon. And what I’ve learned today is that taken some of the tips from nonprofit fundraising one of the one in particular, there’s an entire section on foundation, fundraising, and, and grant writing. And I really lifted some of those tips out and distilled them into a really concise format so that over the next hour, my goal is to help you improve your success rate with writing grants from 5% to 50%. So meaning that half of the grants that you write, you should be receiving, that’s been my success rate for about the last 15 years. I attribute it to a very simple formula that I’ll be sharing in today’s program. And it really speaks directly to an answer to a question, which is why don’t more nonprofits write friends? And I’ve asked this question many times. And invariably, the answer that I get is always the same. Oh, well, we tried going after grants, and it was so much work, and we wasted so much time, and we didn’t get anything back, or we got a couple 1000 bucks back. And it just wasn’t worth our time? Well, the short answer that I would have to that comment is, that’s because you’re not doing it right. And so what I want to share, again, over this next hour is how to do it right, how to go about getting both private and federal grants for your cause to really help catapult your efforts moving forward. Now, as I said, we’re talking about a quarter billion dollar opportunity here, the lion’s share of that is coming from federal grants going to nonprofits, a lot of that is fee for service and kind of earned income stuff. But we’ve also got $55 billion dollars going to nonprofits, from other foundations, not just the government. So before we dive into the tips, and really how to go about getting your fair share of these dollars, I wanted to start very briefly by talking about the different kinds of foundations. And as you heard in the introduction, if anything that I say isn’t clear. Or if you have any questions about how any of this relates to your particular cause, please feel free to use the question or the chat feature of GoToWebinar. And I’ll be happy to integrate questions throughout the program. There’s no need to wait until the very end if something’s not clear. So that said, let’s dive into it. And really the first kind of foundations that I want to talk about and it is key before I get into any of this to just add the caveat that there is a an old saying, and it’s there for a good reason, which is if you’ve seen 1000 foundations, you’ve seen 1000 foundations, meaning that they’re all incredibly different. And anything that I say is intended to be a generalization, but there is no doubt that there will be quite a few exceptions to any rules that I try to put out there. So with that said, let’s dive into it. And the first type of foundation that I want to talk about are private foundations. Now, private foundations are things like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation or the Ford Foundation. You know, those big foundations that you’re used to, and they are endowed, meaning they have a sum of money that they’re kind of sitting on, they’re giving out at least 5% a year by law, but they have a professional staff and as a result, they tend to be more strategic or

organizations that are run by professionals, they have stated priorities and their giving tends to focus on those different program areas as overseen by what are known as program officers. And those program officers are filling the pipeline for the arts or education or homelessness. And then putting together a slate of different grant opportunities into a docket is what it’s typically known as, and submitting it to a board for approval. That’s the way that the private foundations run. And I’m going to share a little bit about a couple other types of foundations that are really important. And then we’ll dive into the tips of how to get as much money as possible from all of them. The family foundations are the foundations that are started by individuals, maybe they make a little bit of money or get an inheritance. And these tend to be much less strategic, oftentimes, they don’t even have paid staff. Or if they do, it’s, you know, one person part time. And it’s really a philanthropic vehicle for the founders. So they might go to the ballet and see a beautiful play and decide to write a big check, they may go to a fundraiser and hear an impassioned plea decide to write a big check. So they don’t usually have areas of focus that they really stick to religiously, they also tend to be not as open to receiving, you know, unsolicited requests, where really, they only want to give money out to the groups that they’ve come across and decided to support. Again, any of these can have exceptions. But in general, you’re looking to receive an invitation to apply for these. And it’s really based on, you know, the interests and how that aligns with that major donor with that the person behind the foundation, so it is very much like a major donor approach. Now, a lot of high net worth individuals that set up a Family Foundation, actually do it through a donor advised fund a dad, and these are hosted at Community Foundation’s, and this way that that, you know, philanthropist can kind of get the benefit of a professional staff, they also get the the entire tax write off when they give the money to the Community Foundation. And technically the Community Foundation is thereafter in charge of that money and can do whatever it wants with it. In practice, however, the donor tends to be, you know, continue to be involved, they usually give them some different areas of focus. But they’re usually the ones calling up the Community Foundation saying, Hey, I just went to this ballet, and I really thought it was great, please send them a check for $50,000. Right. So it’s similar to a major donor or a family foundation. But the other thing is that even though the lion’s share of funds at Community Foundation’s tend to be housed in these gaps, these donor advised funds. And as a result, there’s usually one or two people who sort of manage the relationships with all those philanthropists. And it is possible to get a call or a meeting with that person, Make Your Pitch and then they can pitch on your behalf to their network of donors. Now you’re playing the telephone game and you’re one step removed. But depending upon which your causes and how it might be aligned with the interests of that donor base, it could be a good opportunity. And with one call or meeting, you can potentially reach multiple supporters. The Community Foundation’s themselves also have access to some funds. So typically, they will have a pool of funds that they oversee just like a private foundation, with a with a paid staff with very established programmatic areas of focus, usually, usually regional in nature. And a lot of times you can go after those funds, if you’re working in education, or homelessness or something that is regionally focused. That overlaps with what the Community Foundation is supporting through its funds. It can also be a funder in that way. And then the final thing is most Community Foundation’s have what’s typically known as a president’s fund, where it’s really a discretionary pool of resources. And you might not be able to get more than, you know, 510 or $15,000, from the President’s fund, and even 50 would really be pushing it. But the good news is you have one good meeting with the head of a community foundation, and they can essentially write you a check if they’re so inclined. So that could be a really great opportunity if you don’t fit neatly into one of the typical programs.

And then we’ve also got the corporate foundations now legally and again, you see the distinction between technically or legally and what happens in practice. Legally, corporate foundations are separate entities than the companies who start them and they’re actually not really allowed to advance the interests of the company.

I explicitly. Again, in practice, that’s not the way it works. And these foundations are typically, you know, dovetailing off of the focus of the company in terms of where it’s where their philanthropic giving us going. And they’re also usually looking for high visibility, so they can get out the name of the company. So if you’re doing a gala, or a run lock ride, or things like that, a lot of times the company foundations can be great resources. The other thing to keep in mind is when it comes to kind of getting in the door, with corporate foundations, if you are able to recruit volunteers, from you know, their staffers or board members, even that goes a long way, a lot of times, they’ll have matching programs, where they’ll match not only donations from their staff, but they will also match time. So if someone volunteers 10 hours a week, you might get a check for $1,000 a month from that corporate foundation. And then similarly, another way to sort of priming the pump and build up relationships with the corporate foundations is through securing in the kind donations. So maybe you need beer for your upcoming Gala, or a V support or accounting or legal services, whatever the case may be, that can help to build up the relationship with a corporate partner.

And then finally, before we dive into the tips of how to go about approaching these different foundations and getting as much funding as possible out of them, let’s talk briefly about the government funding.

Now, government, as you might imagine, I mean, they’re spending taxpayer dollars. So there’s a huge amount of accountability, they typically require a lot, a lot of paperwork. And generally speaking, even though these grants can be quite large, you pretty much don’t want to bother with them. Unless you have a dedicated staff person who is in charge of managing those relationships. And staying on top of them, the reporting the paperwork, the documentation is quite onerous. And again, it can absolutely be worth it. But you’re going to want to have someone in charge of that. And you’re also going to need to be in established projects or organizations. In general, they’re not going to want to spend taxpayer dollars on something that’s unproven. The time to go to foundations in general, is when you are, you know, I think of them as domino tippers, they’re looking to set a new wheel in motion that has a lot of opportunity, and hopefully, will be self sufficient. After this initial grant is done. With government grants, however, they’re looking more for kind of to be your booster rockets, they’re looking to scale in established and proven effort. So there’s kind of a bit of a dynamic there, between the experimentation and the growing.

So let’s get into it. And the first thing that you’re going to want to do, if you are going to take your success rate with foundation fundraising from 5%, to 50%, is you’re going to want to focus on the right prospects. And that means that you’re not trying to go after 500 different prospects, and taking sort of a shotgun approach of spray and pray, throw it all out there and see what hits, no, then you’re in for it, you know, 5%, or even less, you actually, in order to get to 50%, and make the best use of your time, you really want to focus in on probably no more than 20 or 30. top prospects. And you’re really looking for prospects that are a strong fit in a couple of key different areas. Number one, they are interested in your area. So if you are an arts education organization, well they fund that ideally, they even fund it in your region, right? So the connection to the cause is really critical.

Number two is their financial capacity. Right? If they’re only giving out grants that are $500, well, and there’s someone else who’s given out $500,000 grants for the same stuff, they’re much better prospects. And then finally, is your personal connection. If you or someone on your team knows someone at one of these organizations, that’s another really big factor. So it’s who’s supporting the kind of work we do at a significant scale where we have a relationship. Those are the three key criteria. Now the good news is there’s really only two tools that you need to know about and be able to use to do the research to identify these top 20 or 30 prospects and

And for foundations in general, though resource, the only resource you need is Foundation Center. And for government grants here in the US. grants.gov is basically your go to resource. Foundation Center has a website at foundation center.org. And you can run some limited free searches there. They do charge you if you kind of want to upgrade and do more advanced searches, and they have the most comprehensive database of philanthropic giving in the world. So this is not just the US, they have a really, really great infrastructure. And all the data is in there, it’s just a question of finding. Now, the best way to do this is actually in person. And Foundation Center has seven centers all around the US, including in my hometown of San Francisco and New York and Indianapolis in quite a few other places where you can go in and meet with one of their librarians, and for free, they will help you search through their database. And you will have access to the whole thing, not just to the sort of lite version, that you get free online. So that’s the ideal scenario if you live in one of those seven cities. Otherwise, they have about 2000. affiliate partners, mostly libraries, and community centers, where you can go in use the extended database for free. And sometimes there may be a librarian or a staff person there who’s familiar with the database and can help you figure out how to use it and how to search through it. But more likely than not, you’re probably going to be on your own, and essentially need to figure it out yourself. It’s really not that complicated those. So Foundation Center is a phenomenal resource for private and Family and Community Foundation’s really incorporate as well. And again, on the on the federal side, on the government grant side grants.gov is really all that you need. It is a very comprehensive resource that covers all the different government grants available, all the deadlines, all the related information. And they also have a feature where you can kind of sign up for updates, whether it’s on a particular grant or in general, so that when they become available, you are notified immediately. Great, great resource. And again, between these two, that’s your prospect research right there. I mean, at least from a Pareto Principle, these are the, you know, the 20% of things that are gonna get you 80% of the information you need. And so if you have capacity to do additional research, that’s great. But if not, you’re pretty set with these two.

So now we’ve got our 20 to 30 prospects, right, we know who we want to go after, we’ve identified the groups that are funding exactly what we do that have a good bit of money, and hopefully, where we have some relationships. What’s next? Well, the next step in the process is getting your pitch ready. And in fact, what I should say is your pitch is plural. Because what you want to do is not necessarily flesh out a 20 minute, you know, PowerPoint and presentation and diatribe around your organization or around one of your initiatives. But rather, what you really want to get as tight as possible are the elevator pitches for each of what I call your fundamentals. And my elevator pitch, I mean, 30 to 45 seconds, really, really brief and concise and to the points, right. So just really compelling and concise pitch. And by fundamentals, if you want one of these elevator pitches for your organization as a whole, for each of your programs, or initiatives that are up and running. And for each of the different projects or initiatives that you would love to launch and hopefully the board has already bought into it. If only you were able to get a check.

Right. So it may be the case that you have general operating support. You have a homeless shelter, a vocational training program, and a healthcare facility for the homeless. And those are kind of what you’re doing currently. But you’re looking also at an art therapy program. Right? So that would give you five pitches, five fundamentals, usually you’re going to have anywhere from like five to 10.

And that’s not to say you’re going to use every single one of these, right? You’re going to be selected based on your audience and what they’re interested in. But having these in your back pocket is really helpful. And the last thing that I want to say because this is such a common mistake and I do a lot of work with nonprofits around storytelling. What I have discovered is 99% of nonprofits make the same mistake, which is whenever they talk about their

work, they only talk about what they do. And they don’t talk about why it matters. So make sure that these elevator pitches even though it’s four or five sentences, that you speak to the impact of this initiative or proposed project, then you speak to the problem in society that it’s solving. Right, and you don’t have to go into detail. You can use buckets and kind of group things together about, you know, well through our vocational training program, we’re providing job skills, interviewing skills, and resume writing. And each of those has some details within it, right, but you’re talking at a very high level, think of your message and each of these elevator pitches as a pyramid. And instead of working your way from the bottom up, starting with all the details, go from the top down and start with the big picture, not what you’re telling them, but why it matters. And that provides invaluable context for the details of what you actually do.

So now we’ve got our prospects, we’ve got our elevator pitches, right. So next step is we want to do a little bit of homework. And this is probably one of the single biggest pet peeves I’ve heard, as I’ve interacted with grant makers over the last 15 years. And in fact, as I’ve been one myself, you know, these folks tend to be so busy, that when you finally do get a caller and meeting with them, if you’re asking really basic questions that you could have discovered the answer to on their website,

guess what you’re going to annoy them. It’s that simple. And if they’re annoyed, they’re less likely to invite you to apply for funding, or to give you money. So you really want to respect their time, you want to do your homework on each of your prospects in order to prioritize them, but also to prepare for that color that meeting. And and when I say prepared, the probably what I think of as the single most important output of that preparation process is the development of what I call Level Two questions. And these are questions that you cannot answer through their website, or through their annual report. But they achieve two things. Number one is they give you additional intelligence, additional information that will help you make your cause, make your case for your cause. And number two, they also demonstrate that you’ve done your homework and so the grant maker is going to feel better about it when they speak to you and you’ve shared it. So it could be something along the lines of what is known in major donor circles and fundraising as an appreciative inquiry process, where essentially in the beginning of a color meeting, usually the first thing you want to do with a donor or with a grantmaker Amex Chase, is you want to get a better sense of what motivates their giving. So when you think about your level two questions, it could be something like, Well, I know that this foundation has been supporting, you know, the homeless community in Cleveland for the last 20 years, but couldn’t really find any information on your website as to what initially connected the foundation to that cause. And really what you’re thinking is about the root cause of homelessness, could you share a little bit about that place? Right. So again, now they know that you’ve done your homework they’ve been grant making for 20 years, etc. But you’re asking them things that aren’t on their site, that are speaking to how they think about their giving, very critical for both major donors as well as grant makers. And this is really one of the first things you should be doing, when you get a call or a meeting, you may have to keep it brief. And if they try to push you into giving your pitch, you have to dive into it. But any additional context you can get that will help you better frame your cause in the context that they care about are really, really helpful.

All right. So now let’s dive into the meat of what I want to talk about today.

And remember that I said that, you know, the typical approval rates for grants that are submitted to foundations and to the government is about 5%. And my success rate historically, over the last 15 years, has been 10 times that 50%. And it’s really not rocket science. It’s very simple. What I want to do is walk you through just a few pieces of information. And it’s a very simple formula that if you put to work I promise you you will see a significant increase in the amount of grants that you receive and more

importantly, your success rate. So you’re spending your time more efficiently. Right. So that’s the goal of what I’m going to share now. And the first thing I want to say is my cardinal rule, as it relates to foundation fundraising is never show up to a party, you haven’t been invited to, or set another way, never submit a cold grant, meaning, if you have not been invited to apply for funding, then you should not be applying. Right. And this is really critical. To be clear, though, just because you get invited to a party doesn’t mean you know where it’s at, or what you should wear, or if you need to bring anything excetera. And the same thing is true with grant writing with going after foundation and government grants. Because just simply getting invited to apply is great. And that will take your success rate from 5% to about 20%. Right? So let’s say you’re at a conference, you bumped into a program officer in the hallway after his or her keynote, or panel or what have you, you give them your 35 second elevator pitch. And they say, that sounds great, get me a proposal. That’s awesome. That’s, you know, worthy of a high five, and you just went from 5% to 20%. But we’re not at 50%. And I’m going to share the details of how to get there in just a second. But to be clear, what I would respond with in that scenario, if I bumped into that program officer in the hallway is I would say something like, well, thank you so much. I’d love to get you a proposal. I do have a couple of questions that I’d love to ask beforehand, though. Do you have time for a 10 or 15 minute call or meeting in the next couple of weeks? How about next Thursday for? Right? So I would look to parlay that invitation into a caller meeting. In order to secure the other information. Again, we’ve gotten invited to the party because we got the invite, but we still need to know what the address is and the time etc. So there’s additional information here. But in general, when you’re down with that 5% level, that’s because you have not been invited to apply. You’re showing up, you’re crashing a party basically. And yes, you might be able to get in, you may get a grant, just like you can buy a lottery ticket and win the lottery. But what I would rather have you do versus spend five hours filling out a grant application with only a 5% success rate is I’d rather have you spent that time getting calls and meetings with grant makers, so that you get the invitation to apply. And we get you from a 5% to a 50% success rate.

So given that we’re talking in general about sort of this umbrella goal, the broad goal of what we’re looking for here is to get the invite writers to be invited to apply for funding. So everything I’m going to talk about now is within the context of that, but there’s some additional details that we want to get. So we get, you know, so the first thing is, in order to do this, we actually have to get in the door, right, we need to get the call or the meeting. So that and again, it could be the case where we bumped into someone in the hallway and we got invited to apply, they don’t know I’d be happy to but till we get a short call or meeting, that’s great, because then you’re leveraging a personal relationship directly with the person you’re looking for a meeting with. Right? That’s ideal. It’s also not always the case. And so you might need to leverage other personal connections, maybe you know, the Secretary, maybe you know, the executive director or CEO, as opposed to the program officer, maybe one of your board members went to college with, you know, the systems administrator, whatever the case may be any kind of personal relationships to anyone on staff is really helpful. So now that you’re only dealing with 20, or 30 prospects, it’s a little bit more reasonable to print out a list of all their staff and board and email it out to your team, to your board or to your advisors and volunteers and your paid staff and ask them Hey, does anybody know any of these people at the Smith Foundation, they find homelessness and we’re hoping to go after them for grant. If anyone has a relationship and really help things out.

That’s top option. Barring that direct personal connection, then you can use a tool like LinkedIn that will help you identify sort of level two or level three connections. Well, I might not know anyone at the foundation, but I know someone who knows someone and then I can contact them and mutual friend and say, Hey, could you

All right. So LinkedIn is a really powerful tool.

Twitter can also be a powerful tool, especially when it comes to building up social capital. What I mean by that is, once we’ve identified a prospect, and we know that the program officer is, if he or she is active on Twitter, well, then we want to follow that person. We want to start retweeting them, we want to reply back to some of their comments and ask them questions or demonstrate our knowledge of, you know, our expertise in the fields, you know, maybe push some of their assumptions, but basically build up a virtual relationship. And after doing that, for a few weeks, or you know, depends on how much you’re interacting with them. At some point, it could become appropriate to say, Hey, I’ve really enjoyed, you know, going back and forth on some of this stuff, I’d love to share a bit more about our work at St. Jude’s, would you be open to a shortfall or meeting, right? So again, now we’re building up that personal relationship. And then the final option that I would throw out there if you’re unable to do any of these things, but you’re really committed to trying to build a relationship with someone is essentially what I think of as stalking them. And I’m only saying that half jokingly, because there’s a free tool called Google Alerts google.com forward slash alerts, where essentially, anytime a particular phrase appears on the internet, including this program officer’s name, then you’re going to get pinged with an email, Oh, Bob Smith is going to be accepting an award at this conference, or he’s going to be speaking on this panel, great, maybe I want to be at that event, so that I can meet this person face to face, get their business card and follow up with her or him in order to get that color meaning, right. So that’s, you know, just a few tips on how to get in the door. And some of the things that I think are really helpful, you know, as you’re trying to build up a relationship.

Now, as far as the stalking thing, it might be the case, once you have this person’s name or number that you’re going to be following up with them. And because these folks are so busy, you might need to do this many, many times, you may wind up having to leave 10 voicemails and just as many emails, and it takes you six months to finally get a call back. That’s yet another reason why it’s so important to identify your top prospects. So you know that that time is well spent. It’s not a lot of time in one instance, but it will add up over time, you’re not going to be able to do that effectively with a group of 100 prospects, right. And so you want to make sure that it’s worth it. And this is where you’re putting the time in, that would have gone into filling out grants applications where you only had a 5% success rate, I’d rather have you stay on top of your key leads. leaving a voicemail every two or three weeks, you want to walk the line between being persistent and annoying, and stay on the side of being persistent. But every two every three weeks, you can leave a voicemail, you can call them in between and if you get the voicemail hanging up, and every time you leave a voicemail, follow up with an email, keep it super brief two to three sentences. Hey, Bob, I really would love to connect and have a short collar meeting to share a bit about our vocational training program for the homeless at St. Jude’s. Do you have time for color meeting? House next Thursday at 4pm? Right? That’s about it. And you’re not trying to share all the details of your work in a voicemail or an email, you’re just trying to get the call or the meeting.

So now we’re in the door. Right? And again, the goal is really to get this invitation to apply. Well, what are the additional pieces that take us from 5% to 50%? Or from 20%? Once we get the invitation, what’s that additional 30% look like? Well, the first piece of the puzzle is what I call the pasta test. And the idea here is if you remember back to college, maybe like I did, you know when you were first learning how to cook, you would throw the spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks. Right? And that’s when you knew it was ready? Well, essentially, you’re going to be doing the same thing with those elevator pitches that I talked about earlier. The members. So now we’ve got our quiver with all the different arrows of each of our different pictures. And based on our research, and based on our thinking about this funder, maybe we’re only going to use three of them. Right. And at the beginning of the meeting, like I said, it’ll typically start with an appreciative inquiry process where you’re building up a report or a little bit of small talk and you’re asking some of those level two questions to get a better sense of what motivates their giving them when it’s time for you to do your pitch as opposed to like I said, starting from the bottom of that fear

Remember with all the details and working your way up, start from the top, start from the top, and share the 30 to 45, second elevator pitch for each of those different vegetables, you know, the three that you picked out, starting with general operating support, maybe there’s one of your existing programs, and then there’s a new idea

could be that your mix could be different. And it’ll be different for every funder. But you’re you’re breaking out the appropriate elevator pitches, maybe they’ll Energex one or three times, maybe they’ll just let you do all three of those. It’s only gonna take you a couple minutes. But then what you’re hoping for is that they’re going to ask questions, right? Because that interest demonstrates that there’s a possible alignment of goals. If they start asking you questions, after you give your little elevator pitch, that means you’ve hooked them, that means that there’s some interest there, which is a great sign.

Now,

you know, so So based on their interest based on the questions they asked, they will essentially draw you further down the pyramid into the details. That’s great. If they don’t ask if you finish your song and dance, and then there’s cricket afterwards, you may have to say, well, you know, now that you know a little bit about our organization, and the two programs that I’ve just mentioned, I’d love to hear if you think that any of them are a fit with your grantmaking priorities, or based on our research, you know, we really feel like the vocational training program seems to be a clear fit for the Smith Foundation’s goals. What do you think? Question mark, pause, right. And whether they just volunteer this and say it of their own accord or whether you have to prop them either way, what you’re listening for, is essentially a tuning fork, you’re listening for resonance. And this is where the pasta fest comes out, because you’re looking to see what sticks. So you’ve just done three little pitches. And hopefully, what you’re going to hear back is,

well, gosh, and,

you know, thanks so much for sharing that. I think that, you know, what you’re doing as a whole is really interesting. And it really is aligned with our focus on helping people help themselves. And I’m especially intrigued by your vocational training program, because we believe that everybody deserves a second chance to fulfill their potential, right, or whatever the case may be, but what you’re listening for when they’re talking, and again, they might volunteer this, you may have to prompt them. And you might have to prompt them to ask for their thoughts on each of the different elevator pitches and then share more information where relevant. But the point is, you’re listening for two things here, you’re listening for the what? And the why, the what and the why. And what I mean by that is the what is out of these three or four elevator pitches UK, which are the ones that resonate, which are the ones that stick? Well, they’re interested in general operating support and organization as a whole. And they’re interested in the vocational training program. Great. We’ve got two leads to options. The why so that’s the What the Why is the context the why is why what is the rationale? Why are these two things potentially of interest? And they are probably going to use some words when they answer that. And you want to be taking really good notes at this point. Because oftentimes, the way they describe why these issues are fixed, will not be found on their website, but it is how they think about their giving. So kind of like the appreciative inquiry process. And guess what, as a result, you want to include those same words and phrases in your actual application. Right? So in this case, you’d be writing something in your notes down, like general operating support, you know, helping people help themselves and vocational training program, everyone deserves a second chance at fulfilling their potential, right, whatever phrases and little morsels you know, little nuggets that they use to describe not only what they’re interested in, but why it’s a possible fit. Really, really critical that you’re taking good notes at that point. So now we’ve got an invitation to apply for, you know, a specific program or set of programs. That’s great. We’re not quite there yet. We’re now at about 30 35% success rate. The final stretch to get us to that 50% success rate involves a couple other things. The first thing is the dollar amount. And it is critical that you asked for this for each fundable for each thing that

For each piece of the posture that stuck for each thing that they say might be a potential fit, you want to make sure that you’re getting the information about how much should we ask for. And this will most likely have to be an explicit question from you, you’re going to want to do this for each of the fundamentals that they expressed an interest in contributing to, and it’s going to sound something like, oh, well, thanks so much for your interest in our organization as a whole. We’d really love to submit a grant, our budget for next year is $2 million.

Do you think a $500,000 request would be realistic? Or would a quarter million dollar grant opportunity be more reasonable given that were first time grantee question mark? Pause? Right, and then it’s their turn to answer. And then similarly, you’re going to have the same conversation about And thanks also for your interest in our vocational training program. Our budget next year is $250,000. Do you think the sniff foundation would be in a position to underwrite that entire operating budget? Or would $125,000 requesting more realistic? Question mark? Pause right? Now, in general, first off, you should know that based on your homework, you don’t want to come across as unprofessional and blow them out of the water. So if they typically get up 30 to 50k, you’re not going to ask them for 500. Write

in, but in general, you do want to overshoot a little bit. So if they normally give 30 to 50k, I would probably ask for 90k with a 60k backup option, but she want to overshoot a little bit. And then when you ask them, you know, what do you think about 90,000? Or what 60, the more appropriate question mark pause, that’s when they’re likely to say something like, Well, gosh, even 60 would be on the high end, usually, we only give out about 30 grand 50 would probably be the very highest we could consider great in your notes, your writing and $50,000. If they give you a range, all you really care about is the number on the high end of that range. And then again, you’re going to repeat this for each of the fundamentals that they express an interest in.

Now bear in mind, that if you if your research is if you’re not able to identify what their common levels of giving are, or if you’re just, you know, working cold and kind of diving in, because you just so happened to bumped into someone in an elevator, what have you, then as a starting point, what I would suggest as a formula is for your organization as a whole for general operating support, I would invite them to contribute 25% of your total organizational budget for next year, with a backup of half of that. And for an individual project or initiative that they expressed an interest in, I would suggest they fund the whole thing and what its entire budget is next year, with a fallback option of half of that, right. Now, again, I put the Asterix here because if your research tells you that that would be inappropriate, and you listen to your research, but as a starting point, hopefully that formula was helpful. So now we’ve gotten an invitation to apply for a specific set of programs with a rationale behind them, and $1 amount for each individual requests. The final question, the final thing that helps gets you to 50% is what I call the Jedi mind trick. And it’s a little counterintuitive. It’s a little surprising, but it actually really works. I’ve seen it work miracles myself. I also spoke on a panel alongside a grant maker who got 800 applications for only 30 grants that she was able to give out each year, and of the 3020 of them pulled this Jedi mind trick. So it really does work. And it’s this simple. At the end of this conversation after you’ve talked through everything else we’ve already shared. All you’re going to say is Well, thanks so much for the invitation apply. We’re happy to get your proposal. One last question. Would you mind taking a quick look at a draft of the proposal? Before we formally submit it? Would you mind taking a quick look at a draft of the proposal before we formally submit it? Right. Now what’s happening here? First of all, just so you know, from my experience 99% of grant makers will agree to this request. They almost all say yes. And unfortunately 99% of them will never actually look at the draft and give you any feedback. And actually that’s okay if they do offer feedback even better. But ultimately what you’re really

Looking forward, this Jedi mind trick is you’re looking for them to essentially adopt your proposal, you want them to have a sense of ownership over your proposal. So that when they take it to the board, and their board is reviewing a docket of 12 different grant opportunities, and they can only approve five of them, guess what the two are the three that someone in the room is really passionately supporting. Those are getting approved. And they’re probably getting approved for the full amount, having been in the boardroom where these decisions are made, I can tell you that nobody wants to undermine the competence of a paid staffer have another board member who is actively championing grants, right, everybody wants to say yes to that person.

And it’s the grants that nobody is championing that gets denied or that get cut down. So even though it doesn’t necessarily make sense that they wouldn’t get this sense of ownership, just by agreeing to do something they never do, which is reviewing a draft, I’m telling you that it really does work. And just in general, and bear in mind that if they do agree to do that, you may need a different deadline. Well, thanks so much for agreeing to take a look at a draft. I know your published deadline is March 1, if I get you a draft by February 15, would that give you enough time to take a quick peek at it? Right. So you might need to adjust your deadline. But just take a step back and look at the macro perspective here. Because compare and contrast 5% to 50% 5% success rate is your go to Foundation Center grants.gov, you find the perfectly targeted grant, you spend 510 hours putting together a killer application, and you send it in through their website, and then you cross your fingers and pray. Right? That’s 5% success. likelihood. 50% is everything I just said you find the perfect prospect, the perfect target. But instead of just sending in that cold application, you secure a call or a meeting, you get invited to apply for funding. They specify exactly which programs and initiatives are the best fit and tell you why they’re the best fit. They tell you how much money to ask for and agreed to review a draft of the proposal before it’s formally submitted. Right. That’s 50%. That’s the difference between the two. So, you know, ultimately, that is really the the formula for success that I was talking about earlier. I do want to share just a couple other quick comments before we wrap up. And again, you can feel free to send in any questions or chat if there’s anything I’m saying. That’s not clear. Now, as far as once you’ve been invited and actually writing the proposal itself. You know, this will impact the likelihood of your success. What I will say here very briefly is color inside the lines basically follow the rules if they ask certain questions. And so the model, that they give you guidelines on what font to use, or what spacing to use, or how many pages or what the deadline is, follow those instructions. And if you’re submitting an LOI versus a grant form, an LOI is a letter of intent or a letter of inquiry, which basically just a short proposal, usually two or three pages, maybe a little bit more, but all in prose all in one document. Well, if you’re doing it that way, then it’s critical that the very first paragraph of your application, include the Ask thank you for your invitation to apply for $65,000. For St. Jude’s homeless program, and to apply for $50,000 for our new proposed vocational training program. With these funds, we will be able to serve 3000 homeless people and help provide them a pathway to self sufficiency, right. So you want to leave with the AST and with the impact that will be achieved. If the grant is offered. You also want to make absolutely certain that you’re integrating the language and the insights from that call or the meeting, that you help them understand very quickly in a document what your personal connection is, you know, so glad that we were able to meet with Jane Smith last week and we appreciate your invitation to apply. And finally, that to the extent you have a budget in there, you want to triple check those numbers and make sure they add up right and if you have any citations you want to triple check those and make sure those are accurate to nothing upsets a grantmaker and makes them feel like you are unprofessional, more than numbers that don’t add up.

Now I do want to take a quick seconds and mentioned DonorPerfect our host today because presumably quite a few of you are clients of theirs. And just in case you didn’t know they actually offer a lot of free functionality to their clients.

To help with tracking grants activities, sort of going down the checklist as you’re

fulfilling the requirements of the grant, the actual creation of grant reports, and then also reminding your staff when deadlines are coming up, so that they can be sure to submit those grants and those follow up reports.

So I really encourage you to look at those pieces of functionality within the platform, since it’s something that I think is underutilized and can really make your job a lot easier than using an Excel spreadsheet.

And finally, just as a bonus tip, I wanted to share probably the easiest grant that you will ever apply for. Google Offers Google Grants, I don’t know a single nonprofit that has been denied for these if you aren’t established 501 C three, not only in the US. But in any of 60 countries, you can essentially just sign up for $10,000 a month of free advertising on Google. And basically, you know how when you search on Google, you see those sponsored links at the top of the results page. Well, people bid on those keywords, and they pay by the clicks. And Google will give you $10,000 a month, not a real money you could take to the bank, but of money you can use to bid on those keywords and phrases. So you can pop up at the top of the list, there are a couple limitations, there’s a limit of how much you can bid per click. So you will need to spend a decent amount of time coming up with a list of two or 300 phrases and what are known as long tail keywords instead of homeless shelter, it might need to be homeless shelter in Minneapolis, you know, so you need to get a little bit more detailed, but the traffic that comes from those searches is going to be more relevant and targeted. So that’s the plus side. And you do need to allocate a couple hours to fill out the application and probably a couple hours to get set up and about once a quarter a couple hours to optimize your efforts. But that’s about it. And you’re talking about $120,000 ad budget. So really, really valuable. And bear in mind. In general, the goal of Google Grants is essentially just to increase more traffic to your website. So if you’re raising money online, if you’re trying to get people to sign up petition, Google grants will help drive more traffic to your website by improving your positioning in the search engines. And finally, before I share a couple of resources, I wanted to make a quick comment on the importance of saying thank you, not only donors, but grant makers as well. They don’t like hearing from you and being treated like an ATM, they don’t like hearing from you only when you want money. And so make an effort to communicate and simply say thank you whether it’s when you first get a grant when you finish a program. And bear in mind that people don’t give to you, they give through you. So anytime you can really highlight the impact and the community that they’re benefiting, the better. This is just a short 32nd video is not a Hollywood production. But you get a quick sense of how powerful it is to let the community service simply say thank you.

So just a short little video to wrap things up. I also want to just share a few different resources and links that might be helpful. We talked about that patient center and grants.gov as the to read, and very comprehensive prospect research places around grants. Google Grants, we just talked about AFP, the Association of Fundraising Professionals is a global membership organization and professional fundraisers. They offer the professional certification for fundraisers. They also host an annual conference that’s really great. And have regional chapters all over the country in the world, as does GPA, the grant Professionals Association. They have an annual conference coming up November 10. In Atlanta.

I’ll be down there with them. They also have regional chapters. And they’re similar to AFP and that they’re a member network with regional chapters, but really with a focus on grant writing, and grant seeking. And then finally, e civis is a great website that talks mostly about government grants and has quite a few resources around that. Finally, there’s a book called grant writing for dummies that Browning road. She’s a really great resource. I actually interviewed her for the foundation fundraising chapter in my book and the grant writing chapter. Really, really wonderful author and I agree

A resource. So I hope that I hope that those are helpful. I do want to hand it back to our friends at DonorPerfect here in just a second. But before I do that, I really just want to say thank you not only thank you for your time today, and not only thank you on behalf of myself, and on behalf of DonorPerfect, but I really want to thank you on behalf of the 1000s of people that you collectively serve. It’s truly an honor and a privilege to be with you today. I hope that you’re leaving this talk not only inspired, but inspired to action. And again, like I said in the beginning, know that this is my work, I’m here to help people help. So if I can be a resource in any way, reach out via LinkedIn through Twitter, feel free to call me on my personal mobile phone or email, and just let me know how I can support your good work. So thanks, everyone, and have a great day. And I’ll hand it back to our friends at Jonah.

Hi, Darien add this is Miranda from DonorPerfect. I do have a couple of questions. Would it be alright, if we asked you some of those?

Yeah, absolutely. Great. Okay. So the first question that I have here was, do you need to focus on one area or your foundation, or your foundation can have more than one area of interest?

If you’re talking about it from a grant seeker standpoint, from the nonprofit standpoint, I mean, I guess either way, the answer’s no, you know, if you’re a nonprofit, typically you will have different programs, right, as opposed to only having one thing that you do, and that’s it, a lot of nonprofits will have three or four different programs or initiatives. You know, so again, maybe your work is with the homeless, and the example I kept using in this webinar, and you have a soup kitchen, you have, you know, you provide medical treatment and healthcare support, and you also do vocational training. So all of that would be in homelessness, but it could be in different pieces, whether it’s health care versus professional development. But you may also have other pieces to your organization, right. So it really depends on the organization. And it might be the case that you can work with one funder on different areas, because most foundations will not only support sustainability in the environment, they’ll also have another program area, which is the arts and another program area, which is education. Right. So I would say foundations almost always have multiple areas of giving nonprofits typically have multiple programs, but they tend to be focused in one particular area. But that’s not always the case.

Great, thank you. And then I do have a few more thoughts. Okay.

Well, I know that we’re at the top of the hour, so I want to be respectful of everyone’s time. What I would suggest is maybe I’ll answer one more question really quickly before I hand it back to our LinkedIn to wrap up. And then if anybody wants to email me or call me with any personal questions, I’m happy to feel those. And then I also am really happy to share contacts through LinkedIn. So if you’re ever looking to connect with donors, or funders, and you want to reach out to me that way, I’m happy to make the introductions. But let’s do one last question. And then I’ll hand it over to Charlie. Great. Okay, so this one came from Emily, she said, if your organization has damaged the relationship it had with a big Foundation, what is the best way to repair that breach if the foundation program manager has now moved on?

Well, it’s probably a good thing. If you burned a bridge and ruined a relationship with an organization, it’s usually that that bridge was burned with a person versus an organization as a whole. So maybe you did something that upset that program officer, if they’ve left, then you’re in a perfect position to kind of restart and reinitiate that relationship.

And so I would look at ways that you can support their work.

Social media, in particular, I talked a little bit about Twitter and LinkedIn, but you know, building up some social capital that way, commenting on their Facebook page, whenever they post up, retweeting them on Twitter, you know, trying to show up to the events that they do or ask them if they want to be a partner in some ways that are non financial. Anytime you can ask for things that are not a direct financial ask. It’s a much easier ask and it’s much easier for them to agree, and to sort of use that to build some social capital in the relationship. All right, thank you very much Darian. I did want to just remind everybody, if you haven’t heard that we will be hosting our seventh annual Community Network Conference in Philadelphia. So downtown Philadelphia where

You may have heard that our there is a convention going on right now. But in any case, we invite you to our fair city. So we look forward to seeing you there. So thank you to all of our attendees, especially to Darien for giving your time to us today and sharing your extremely wise words of wisdom.