How to Win Grants: 12 Steps for State and Local Grants (Part 2)

Planning a proposal to win a grant from a unit of state or local government is a 12-step process. Its final six steps are: Inquire, Structure, Revise, Filter, Develop, and Deliver.

 

 

INQUIRE: Contact the program officer (or other contact person) for the selected grant opportunity. Be prepared to pose intelligent questions, not ones you should be able to answer on your own. Verify your organization’s eligibility if you have any doubts. Learn about upcoming key dates in the funding cycle. Ask for a copy of the Request for Proposals (RFP) if it is not available online. Ask for names of contact persons and other public information about recent grantees. Ask how to make requests under your state’s version of the Federal Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) if you plan to submit formal requests for copies of proposals recently funded under the same grant program.

 

STRUCTURE: Prepare three checklists based on each selected RFP. Create a checklist for the proposal’s content requirements, particularly its selection criteria. Make a second checklist for your key selling points as they relate to the RFP’s selection criteria. Finally, create a checklist for the RFP’s format and submission requirements. Note that while many state and local agencies now require online applications, the requirement is not yet universal.

 

REVISE: Refine your project after your inquiries with the program officer, review of each RFP, and creation of your three checklists. Adjust your project plans to reflect the insights gained. Do not distort a project to fit priorities declared in an RFP. Continue to revise and refine your project’s key selling points. Compile a list of new questions as they arise.

 

FILTER: Contact the program officer or a similar state or local agency program management representative. Submit to that person a synopsis or draft of your revised proposal and ask for project-specific feedback, if allowed. Incorporate the input in a further revision to the proposal. Thank the program officer or other representative for the non-binding administrative guidance provided to you.

 

DEVELOP: Fully develop the plans for the project. Establish organizational capacity. Substantiate needs. Formulate goals and objectives and specify key activities. Develop timelines. Identify appropriate staff. Articulate evaluation plans. Delineate itemized budgets. Comply with each specific grant program’s selection criteria, funding priorities, performance indicators, and instructions.

 

DELIVER: Write and submit a timely full proposal that is scrupulously consistent with the grant program’s selection criteria, funding priorities, performance indicators, and instructions. Throughout the state or local agency’s proposal review process, remain patient while waiting for notification of results. Respect with equanimity the ultimate funding decisions—fully funded, partially funded, or not funded—of the state or local agency grant maker.

 

How to Win Grants: 12 Steps for State and Local Grants (Part 1)

Planning a proposal to win a grant from a unit of state or local government is a 12-step process. The first six steps are: Search, Solicit, Network, Monitor, Select, and Assess.

 

 

SEARCH: Use a project outline or a similar device as a guide for planning a project and identifying suitable funding for it. Consider which possible agency focus areas best fit your needs: Health; Human Services; Education; Community Development; Economic Development; Public Safety; Juvenile Justice; Labor; Environment; Agriculture; Energy; or another. Research each selected focus area using state-level and local databases and websites. Note that agencies and programs vary vastly in what grant information they present and how they present it.

 

SOLICIT: Research or contact state or local agencies and offices to learn more about programs and priorities. Learn if there are notification lists you can join to be alerted to new funding opportunities. Learn who handles the State’s single point of contact (SPOC) questions. Learn if the State has a central clearinghouse for bid solicitations or Requests for Proposals (RFPs). If you have not found it on your own, ask if the State has a single online portal for its proposal submissions. Learn also if the State requires applicants to preregister.

 

NETWORK: Network extensively. Attend state or regional conferences in your selected areas of focus. Network with regional, state, county, or city professional associations, chambers of commerce, councils, commissions, consortia, or boards. Link-up with universities, colleges, community colleges, and technical centers. Work with local development boards, economic councils, and non-profit organizations. If no networks for grant seekers exist, form one.

 

MONITOR: Practice vigilant grant seeking. Monitor state and local agency websites and clearinghouses for grant opportunities. Join and monitor agency e-mail notification lists. Review selected trade publications, professional journals, and funding-related newsletters. Monitor online grants databases for updates about state and local grant opportunities. Join and monitor online discussion groups centered on grant making focus areas of interest.

 

SELECT: Identify up to five potential sources of state or local funding. Focus on city, county, regional, or state-level departments, agencies, and programs whose missions most closely parallel your organization’s mission. Visit their websites. Review their funding initiatives and options. Examine their published performance data and annual reports, if any. Look for clues about their appropriations, resource allocations, accomplishments, and priorities. Consider the extent of fit between each state or local grant program and your project. Eliminate as prospects those funding programs having a poor or forced or uncertain fit.

 

ASSESS: Match your project to each identified grant opportunity. Assess each opportunity in terms of seven basic questions: Eligibility: Does your organization qualify? Geography: Does it fund in your area? Focus: Does it fit your interests? Support: Is your organization ready to apply? Funds: Does the available funding amount fit your needs? Time: Is the project period long enough? Deadline: Can you prepare a strong proposal in time to meet it?

 

A second post presents further steps for winning a state or local grant.

 

How to Win Grants: Reasons for Seeking Local Grants First

As a long-term funding strategy, few nonprofit organizations can afford to rely upon single-source funding, and few actually do so. Although the typical funding mix varies with the type of nonprofit, most nonprofits must dine on a salad of revenue from investments, service fees, grants, donations, and other income.

 

As potential applicants for grants and solicitors of donations, many types of nonprofits benefit from seeking and securing local support. In searching for support, trying to capture grants and donations from multiple local benefactors—before casting a net more widely—is normal practice.

 

Pursuing local funding first builds upon the advantages of locally shared issues and concerns as well as nonprofits’ local reputations. Local funders are more likely to care passionately about local problems and needs and to want to act so as to impact them positively. They are also more likely to be familiar with what any given local nonprofit does and what it has done.

 

 

Commitment as Catalyst

 

Local support, if obtained through grants or donations, implies to other potential funders a shared commitment to—and potentially broad-based ownership of—a nonprofit’s mission and vision. It implies a program or initiative in which local entities are confident enough to be willing to invest their scarce resources. As signs of local investment, confidence, and commitment, they can serve as magnets for funders located farther afield.

 

Local investment in a nonprofit—such as through grants or donations—improves the probability that the nonprofit will continue to operate into the indefinite future. Each potential funder, whether local or remote, will desire some evidence of a nonprofit applicant’s long-term viability—past, present, and future local support is exactly such evidence.

 

Maximizing Eligibility

 

Operating in partnership with local related service providers is often an effective strategy for attracting funds from both local and remote benefactors. Partnerships leverage the assets of all the partners. They also work to extend the reach and resources of each partner. If they involve different kinds of potential applicant organizations, long-term partnerships can serve to maximize eligibility for funding — different organizations may serve as lead applicants (or fiscal agents) as opportunities arise.

 

Most grants from private sources are one-year propositions. In fact, the Chronicle of Philanthropy has reported that 90% of foundations in one recent study by the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy did not report or make any multiyear grants from 2004 to 2010.

 

The general trends are for foundations to direct less funding toward multiyear grants and to make fewer of them. Under such circumstances, nonprofits need to describe how they will continue their new program or initiative with other sources of support. Being able to point to existing local sources and to identify possible or probable new ones enables them to do so more convincingly.

 

Support-Building Strategies

 

Given many private funders’ short time horizons, two key strategies for nonprofits are sustained community outreach (or public relations) and routine dissemination of news about their progress, impacts, and results. Happily, both strategies, as part of a project’s work plan, are as well suited to seeking government grants as to seeking private or community grants.

 

Creating and maintaining nonprofits’ high visibility in local communities can build public awareness and enthusiasm for what they’re doing to meet local needs and to solve local problems. Such visibility and enthusiasm can lead to local willingness to offer support to ensure that the nonprofits remain able to do what they do. Good press in local media can stimulate interest among volunteers, individual donors, and other benefactors. Nonprofits can then leverage these assets to pursue more ambitious plans to seek larger donations and grants from more distant sources.