Grant Funding Tips

1. You must understand your organization’s mission and priorities to identify funding opportunities that are a good fit. Do not use shortcuts when trying to find the right funding source. Conduct thorough research to find the right funders. The average nonprofit spends up to 200 hours researching and applying for one (1) federal grant.

2. Start a conversation with three or four local foundations in your city and have a conversation about your organization and its mission. Research local funders (local businesses, elected officials, family, friends, etc.).

3. When developing a nonprofit budget, keep it simple about 4-line items that give a general overview of your budget activities.

4. To benchmark, select a service or project and analysis data to identify its key performance measurers for an opportunity for improvement.

5. To know if your project or service is viable, find out some of the minimum funding requirements.

Grant Funding – Proposal Requirements

Many grant funding proposal requirements include:

1. Cover Letter
2. Executive summary (goals, vision, and strategy). Your project or service should be researched and innovative, your team should be qualified or experienced, design risk management policies, a strong market for the project and/or services.
3. Financial
4. Project principles
5. Application forms
6. Paying fees or cash equity
7. Design a website

Grant Funding- Additional Information

Additional information about grant funding proposals can be found at www.pandadoc.com/blog/grant-proposal/

• The Department of Health & Human Services offers more than 100 different types of federal grants that nonprofits may apply for. Federal Grant A8201 is one such example — this program focuses on prevention efforts like reducing tobacco use among youth or providing education about healthy eating habits across America.
• The average nonprofit spends up to 200 hours writing a single federal grant application. That’s an enormous time investment for any organization. The payoff can be huge too: The US government provides $3 billion in grants every year and has promised never-before-seen funding rates of over 50 percent this budget cycle!
• If you’re looking for a way to make your nonprofit more successful, then this statistic is the answer. 75% of grant seekers who applied won an award while 94% percent of those with three to five grants received at least one! Of applicants that had six or ten applications on hand — 98%

Writing grants is a small part of the funding efforts. In addition, you will need to define your approach to fundraising, determine to cost use a timeline and find additional grant funding.

Just like in research, one of the important parts of the process is to write a problem statement using the history and let the funder know how you will solve the problem.

Another important part of the process is to clearly state your goals and objectives and the desired outcome.

You must also tell the funder how you are going to achieve the desired outcome measuring the success in timelines.

Mention other funding opportunities that you have explored. Make justification for all expenses and services that you offer.

Make sure that you include the following:

1. Cover letter
2. Executive summary
3. Outline project or service budget

FYI: Total charitable giving grew 4.0% over the revised total of $466.23 billion in 2020. In 2021, charitable given remained strong reaching 484.85 billion (https://philanthropy.iupui.edu).

Who is eligible for grant funding: (Nonprofits)

1. Government Organizations
2. Educational Organizations
3. Public Housing Organizations
4. Nonprofit Organizations

More of our articles about Grants:

5 Steps to Nonprofit Grant Writing

Grant Making For Nonprofits