Rachel: All right. I think we're just about ready to get ourselves rolling. If you haven't already, introduce yourselves in the chat box, share your answers to our intro questions. I've got almost everybody responding there. And, lastly, open up that course workbook.
Hey, J. E., good to see you again.
I'm going to drop the link for the course workbook one more time in the chat. And again, I'll bring up when that's going to be addressed today. But let's get started so we can get back into our busy Tuesdays.
For those of you who had trouble joining us the last time you’re in the session, thank you so much for coming back. I'm so glad we could reoffer this program today, and I'm excited to run it with you. We're going to go through the first hour, of course, content together. That's when we'll be mostly using our workbooks. And then during the second hour, I'll be running the panel recording from our session, plus taking live Q&A from whoever is in the room with us today.
I will note in the course workbook, there is a last page that has a space for notes. If you're someone who likes to document some of the things that I'm sharing today or things you hear from our panelists, that's a great space to jot down your ideas. So again, that's on the last page of your workbook. I'll drop that in the chat one more time just to make sure everybody has it. And let's get started.
Okay. So, today's course, we've got 5 Secrets to Expert Grant Research: A Two-Hour Masterclass. As I mentioned, the first portion is an interactive workshop and the second being a panel discussion.
For those of you who are not familiar with me, my name is Rachel. I'm one of the newest team members at Instrumentl, and I run the events and community management of the Instrumentl team. I host about weekly grant workshops, and I come from the nonprofit sector. So, I had about 10 years of experience in the arts and culture sector, specifically with museums, and I'm in Los Angeles, California.
Some FYIs for us today, like I mentioned that this event is going to be about two hours long, folks can stay as long as they would like in the second hour. I thought the panel discussion was really, really engaging. There were some amazing tips shared. So, I hope you'll stick around and I'll have some fun little tidbits for those who do stick it out with us to the end today. I have designed this course for Instrumentl newbies, folks that are not currently using Instrumentl yet. However, if you are a current user, don't worry. There'll be plenty of information that will be relevant to you, and you definitely can stick it out. I assure you, you'll find a lot that'll be good for you to use as well. There just might be one section that you might already be familiar with.
I've designed this course also for folks who are kind of already at maybe the middle stages of their grantseeking. This course is to give you some tools and ideas to maybe take some of your already existing grants knowledge to the next level. If you're a novice, no problem. You just might need to go back and look up some of the vocabulary I share or maybe the approaches mentioned later, and that's okay. Use that notes section in your workbook to document some of those phrases or things that come up.
For those of us who are intermediate or expert grantseekers in the room, I'd love for us to think back to some of those grant mentors that we had as we were growing in our work and help support one another in the chat as questions come up. We want to support and win together. So, I love building the space of learning as a community. This workshop is being recorded right now and I'll share everything including the slides directly to your inbox afterwards. Make sure to bring your water, your snacks. I know some of us might be going into our lunch hour, so please feel free to bring what you need in order to stay energized, and we want to make sure we all stick it out to the end if we can. I've got some fun prizes available to folks who stay.
I'll call out when the workbook will be used, but I want to mention the things that you're going to be leaving this workshop with today. So, I have some reflections and tools that we’ll be highlighting using that workbook. It's going to document some of the key actions that are most relevant to your grantseeking and your organization.
We also will set up some specific grant searches. So we'll be brainstorming on how and why we are searching for specific grant opportunities and funders. So you can leave with a set search strategy drafted already for one of your funding projects.
And lastly, you will get special access to our grant tracker and database. I will have a special link that you can use today if you haven't already started using Instrumentl. This will give you access to those 17,000 plus active public and private funding sources for U.S. based 501c3s that we have in the Instrumentl database.
So let's talk a little bit about where we're headed over the course of this first session here. I'm going to start with talking about our strategic planning for grant research. We always want to start with the why when we are searching for grants. We don't want to approach this willy-nilly. I know our experts in the room will already kind of know that you never want to just be throwing darts at the dartboard. You want to have a strategic approach to why you're pursuing certain grant opportunities, so you can make sure they're all worth your while. I'll talk a little bit about the “5 Star” Grant Search, five different search terms that we should be always including in our grant searches. We'll do a project brainstorm and some research on our own to apply it directly to funding projects we're working on right now. And then we'll talk about some tips for kind of taking our advanced searches to the next level.
I'll do a quick little coffee stretch break between the hours so that we have time to, you know, like get up out of our chairs and refill our coffees or beverages of choice. And then we'll get into our session too. I'll intro our expert panel, we'll watch the recording of the panel discussion, and dive deep on some topics related to grant research. I'll do a live Q&A with you all and also share the Q&A that happened with our panel discussion, and then we'll do a little wrap-up.
I will remind folks to stick it out to the end if you can. If you make it to the end of the program today, you can submit your feedback form, and you'll be able to get those two CFRE points for two hours of content. This is for initial certification towards CFRE or recertification, if you're already certified. Happy to reach out to anybody who has any questions about that. You can always message me in the chat or shoot me an email if you need more information about CFRE in general.
Plus, I'm doing a couple of quick raffles while we go through the program today. If you see this symbol on any of my slides, that little trophy emoji, I am going to be raffling off things while we go through the program, including coffee or lunch on Instrumentl, a little office supplies gift box, and our big prize for today is a $100 donation to your nonprofit. So, I'll tag in ways you can participate in that. It'll be things like sharing your feedback. It'll be signing up if you jump into Instrumentl for today, if you share anything on LinkedIn, all of those. So I'll give you some ideas as we go through our program.
But, let's start with getting started with our content, so we can kind of get into the nitty-gritty of what we want to cover today.
So, in an advanced grant research plan, we want to make sure we are planning strategically and preparing in advance before we get into those grant opportunities. We want to set the stage for successful grant applications by ensuring our efforts are well-targeted and well-aligned, both with our organizational missions and the priorities of the potential funders. So, on both sides of the coin here.
I'm going to take a second to help us set the course here, and let's think about what we need to consider as we set out on this grant research expedition.
I'm curious to hear from folks in the room. How do you determine which funding projects are prioritized? You can think about this question for a second. Share some thoughts in the chat box. How would you currently determine which funding projects you should pursue first?
I'll give folks a quick second to share some ideas.
Debbie says, “Our board of directors and leadership team helps me decide.” Absolutely. I'm sure other folks have leadership in the room who were influencing those decisions.
Brad says, “Where are their program gaps.” 100%.
Bobby is saying that “they're looking at the strategic plans in the colleges they represent."
We've got a match in terms of eligibility, amount of award, geography. 100%. Making sure those are aligned before you pursue the grant.
Kristen says, “The needs of the organization.”
Susie is saying, “Pursue the ones that will garner the most support and/or impact.” Absolutely.
Yeah. Kim says, “Whatever is pulling from our reserves the most.” So, we might be looking at our budget, looking at our programmatic spend.
Yeah. Tim is also saying, “I discuss with our CEO and COO on specific needs of the agency.”
So we might have some leadership influence. We might have some reflections on our organization's priorities, our budgets that we might be needing to meet. Continue to share some of those in the chat if you come up with other ideas.
I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the organizational goals and project objectives that we want to establish when we're starting our grant search, and some of this might directly align with what you all just shared in the chat box. I have three questions for folks to consider as they're preparing for grant research. And, these might be things you're already doing, and these might be things that you might be interested in sharing with leadership, for example, to make sure that they are aligned when you're pursuing certain opportunities. So, we'll talk a little bit about that.
This first question here, I want us to think about how we're defining success for our organization in the next year, or even in the next 5 years? Ideally, you or your department, depending on how many folks you have working on grantseeking in your organization, should be able to identify what the organization aims to achieve, both in the short and long term, to help align all those potential opportunities with organizational objectives. I'll also highlight here that these goals should be SMART. I'll talk a little more about that in just a second, but SMART is an acronym that stands for Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound. I'll drop that link into the chat as well so that folks can see that definition there.
Why is this important? Why should we consider what success looks like? There is a lot out there. And some of our folks that might be doing grant research might even feel a little overwhelmed by all of the opportunities that are available to us. We want to conduct prospecting research with a critical eye. So having these goals in front of us when we're doing research should help be our gut check for some things that are going to be a go or no go and might help your leadership decide if something is truly worth pursuing. I know we all may experience some of that kind of shiny object syndrome with our border leadership, where they might be interested in pursuing a particular opportunity. But if it doesn't align with these goals of what fundraising success would actually look like, that might not be the right opportunity to pursue at that time.
Our second important question here is considering which of our current projects are going to align most closely with our strategic goals? Are we currently pursuing projects that are not aligned, but they're still being pursued? Again, we're leveling up our grant research in this course. So I want us to think critically about how we're allocating our resources and setting priorities here. You should be determining which projects or programs require funding and prioritize them based on things like strategic importance, potential impact, and readiness to actually apply for the grant. I'm going to drop those three terms in the chat as well just so we're thinking of how we're prioritizing our grant searches here. So, that’s strategic importance, potential impact, and readiness.
Lastly, one other question I want us to ask before we get into grant research is around some of the challenges we might be currently facing. What are the biggest challenges we face in achieving our goals? What resources are we currently lacking? This can be internal capacity to be even, maybe pursuing specific grants like federal or government grants, which take on a whole different level of intensity with our workload, or this could be a question about your organization's challenges. Maybe there's specific infrastructure challenges that your organization is facing. Maybe there is programmatic support that your organization is currently struggling to provide. Think about what challenges you might be facing in achieving those goals.
Yeah. So, true, Miriam. Very little open call grants, most require extensive networking to even get in the door. It's true. And we'll talk a little bit about, actually I have some good tips there on kind of maybe how you can get your foot in the door with some of those networking opportunities.
But I want to remind us again that our funding goals should be SMART. I mentioned this a couple of slides ago. And just to reiterate, we use the SMART acronym to describe Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound goals. These will help ensure that they are not only relevant to your organization, but they also are actually going to be achievable, actually going to be measurable, making sure that someone can look back and say, oh, we met that goal, or we're not going to get close to meeting that goal because we've identified these things in advance. I actually have a list, a recommended resource in your workbook. I'll highlight that in just a second, and I'll drop the link in the chat here. But we do have a little webinar with Dr. Bev Browning, The Grant Doctor who talks about writing SMART grant objectives using this specific framework. So, I encourage you to check that out after this program as an additional resource.
Yes, she is amazing. I love that. We love her so much.
In the meantime, I want us to reflect on these questions together. So, like I mentioned, we're getting strategic here. We're setting the course for our grant research. I would love for us to open up our workbooks. You'll see on page 3, I've written out a table with these three questions, and I'd love for you to reflect on them, on how they might apply to your current lived experience in your workbook. You can add brief notes to specify more about these strategic plans for your organization, or if you are a consultant, maybe pick a specific client that you're working with that you'd like to kind of use for this exercise. Again, ideally, these goals are SMART. But we're starting with a rough brain dump here, so this is your space to refer back. You can look back at this worksheet after the workshop, and you can make them a little more tangible, a little more SMART after this workshop. But start with these three questions. I'll give folks about 2 minutes to do a quick little brain dump here, and then we'll get into our next section where we take some of these strategic initiatives and apply them to our grant searches.
Now, I’ll move us along to our next section here.
Yeah. Kim says, “I could do two on each.”
Bobby says, “Yes. Narrowing down priorities, not being over the map.” Yeah.
Yeah. Jennifer, I agree. Helpful to articulate, roughly aware they're rolling around, but helpful to put them down. I think that's part of the whole exercise as we might have them there, we know them, we might even have them on our sticky notes or in our kind of like emails from setting our goals for the fiscal year or the calendar year, but making sure they're documented and in front of us when we're thinking about grant research is so valuable.
Miriam, if you'd like to, you're happy, I'd love to see them. You're welcome to share. Anyone that feels comfortable sharing can certainly copy theirs and add them to the chat.
And Yulia, I saw your message about having access to the workbook. Once I get into our next section here, I'll download that and email it to you. I just need a quick second to get us through our next section of the workshop. Thanks for your patience.
Okay, folks. So, I talked a little bit about how we want to frame our grant strategy from the beginning. We want to make sure that we're researching grants that are actually relevant for us. So I'm curious to hear, before we get into this “5 Star” Grant Search, what are some of your biggest challenges with grant research?
I'm going to drop one more poll for us all to answer some questions here. I'm curious to know, if you could pick from one of these, what is one of your biggest challenges when it comes to grant research? Number one is knowing where to look. Two is the lack of information on funders or funding opportunities. Number three is staying up-to-date on new funding opportunities. Number four is resource constraints, that might be staffing, some of the challenges that we maybe talked about in our worksheet a second ago. Or something else. And I'd love to see what that something else is. If you want to share in the chat, I always love to see what folks have to say there.
Yeah. So, Beth, your challenge here is using the best grant search terms to find specific grants. That is truly a challenge I think many people face. I actually will be able to talk a little bit more in depth about this in just a second. So I love that that's something that might be a challenge now but something we can address.
Yeah. Debbie says, “Getting into new foundations and grant funders.”
Miriam’s, “Adding to the resource constraints capacity, only hired very recently.” Oh my gosh. Two and a half days a month for this client. Yeah. And high expectations on ROI.
Nicole says, “All of these. I am a one-person team and our organization doesn't have the funding to pay for a lot of search engines and databases.” That is also something I'm sure many folks can relate to in the room.
Awesome. I'm going to go ahead and end this poll. I appreciate folks who are participating here. And I'll share the results so we can kind of see what's going on across the room. It looks like our kind of biggest challenge here is staying up-to-date on new funding opportunities. That is a common challenge I see across the field, making sure you are in the know on what's coming out and you might not even know this funder exists. It looks like our second place is our lack of information on funders or for certain funding opportunities. And then it's a tie on those kind of knowing where to look and resource constraints. We've also got a good chunk of folks, 30 percent of folks, who shared something else in the chat. So, I love seeing this. I will actually export the chat after our event and share it with you all, so you can go back and look at what some of your peers were sharing on some of these challenges.
Awesome. Okay. We can stop sharing that poll and move ourselves along.
So I want to make sure we're considering really critically what we're looking for. And Beth kind of referenced this, that sometimes it's a challenge to narrow down our search terms and make sure that we're actually searching for things that will come up with what's relevant for us. So, some of these might seem like a bit of a no-brainer, but just like our exercises, sometimes writing things down that we may already know or that we may already have at the top of our mind, sometimes it's great to just get these things down on paper and make sure that we actually are adhering to a more strict or more specific grant search, so that we are finding things that are more relevant for us.
So, I encourage use of this “5 Star” Grant Search. These are five different terms that we're going to be essentially researching together. We're going to think about how we fill out these five kinds of grant search terms when we're looking for grants, and I'm going to kind of organize us by category here.
So, the first being geographic location. We're going to want to be searching for grants that are relevant to the location that our organization is located in, or if you are a nationally-located organization or providing services nationally, making sure that you're finding funding sources that adhere to that specific parameter there.
We also want to make sure that we are actually eligible for the right opportunities. So we want to be searching for funding opportunities that are relevant for our organization type. That might just be a generic 501c3 or that might be more specific. I was looking for a lot of funding related to museums and cultural spaces, right? So, making sure that we have that specificity in there if we have certain niches of our organization type. I'll talk more about some examples for that in just a second.
I also want to dive deep on this idea of fields of work. Now, I'll give you, in your workbook, we'll get to that in just a second, three different questions you should be asking yourself when you're identifying the fields of work that your organization actually adheres to. These are going to be audiences that you serve, your objectives, or maybe goals around specific services that you're offering. So, we'll brainstorm a little bit more about that in just a moment. The fields of work one is, I think, maybe one of the most important search terms.
The financial needs. So, you might be thinking about the minimum amount you need to be awarded for a specific grant, maybe the maximum, that's not necessarily as always big of a problem. But at least having a minimum amount for a specific program that you're looking for funding for, we need to make sure these financial needs are determined in advance.
And lastly, the funder type. Many of you are probably already looking for things like this, but if you're looking for funders that fund arts and culture initiatives, for example, and making sure that you include that when you're drafting your search terms or diving deep on a grant research project.
So, I want us to think about how each of these funding projects should have all these five points identified. You might already do this, but I want us to build, again, like dive a little deeper here, get a little more critical with our search, and maybe even outline some things that we haven't been as specific about in the past when we've been doing grant research. So, all this should happen before we begin our search. And I want us to do this exercise with one of our current funding projects that we're working on. So, you can already maybe kind of start to noodle on a specific funding project that you have an initiative around. I'll talk a little bit about how you can identify that in just a second.
So, let's think back to some of those goals. We set some strategic objectives. We kind of had those drafted down on page 3 of our workbook. We asked ourselves these three questions to establish our organizational goals and the project objectives. So, look back at those. We want to reflect on what we've shared there. And I want you to think about one funding project that you're currently researching for. So, you can think about that. You may already have one right away at the top of your head. You can add it in the chat if you want to share with folks that are in the room, if you have that funding project kind of easily shareable.
Oh yeah. Jennifer is saying, “Plastic cleanup for it's in the Great Lakes region.” Wow. That's such a cool initiative.
Bobby says, “Lab equipment for college STEM programs.” Amazing. Yeah. These are wonderful examples.
So, we want to think about all of these five key search terms, and I love that folks are still sharing these in the chat. I love it. Yeah, keep coming. Keep them coming. You're going to be applying these grant search terms to these projects in just a moment. So think about these specific questions, the geographic location, your organization type, those fields of work, the audiences you might be serving, the key objectives you're hoping to achieve, and then these financial needs and funder type.
You're going to see on page 4 of your workbook, what I've essentially done is I've made a little table for you all again here, and I've broken out these, the “5 Star” Grant Search questions in purple here. So you'll see geographic location, which regions does your project serve. Organization type, what category does your organization fall under, and I've listed some examples here as well. Fields of work. This is the one I think is, again, the most important. I'm going to talk a little bit about this in just a second here. You'll see I've broken it into kind of three questions you should be asking yourself. So, come up with three to five keywords in the fields of work section, and you can use these prompts to help you with what services you are offering. For example, I put STEM education. So, thinking about how to succinctly share what services you're offering. Not getting too wordy here. We're talking about keywords, quick search terms that we might be using. What audience are you targeting, right? For this example, I put women and girls. And then what key outcomes are you hoping to achieve? For this example, I put education and access and equity. So, thinking about these keywords as being succinct, brief, something that describes your fields of work, the areas that your organization is currently serving, without getting too lengthy on our search terms.
Okay. And then these last two, the financial needs, looking for what your grant size minimum and maybe the maximum is, what the funds will be used for. You can jot down a couple of ideas here.
And then that very last question is going to be that funder type. What types of funders are you interested in pursuing? You might be looking for very specific federal or state or local government funding. You might be looking more at private foundations. You might be looking for all of the above.
So, I'll give folks another 2-minute kind of timer here. We'll draft some ideas about this one funding project we're currently working on, and we'll see how that can be applied to a grant search in just a second.
Yeah, Tim and Miriam both did a great job of thinking of succinct keywords that will help narrow down their grant searches. I love seeing these. Some really clear outcomes. I've noticed some very specific keywords that should help with that grant research, these grant keywords.
Awesome. I love seeing everybody submit their responses here. These are so great, and you're doing a wonderful job of applying some of those lessons learned, making sure that those key terms are really clear here. I'll let folks continue to noodle a little bit on their own. I'm going to go ahead and move us forward because we're getting through our time together here.
I wrote up an example. In case anyone's having trouble thinking about how this might apply to their own organization, I created a local history museum in my neighborhood, Highland Park History Museum, and I applied some of these search terms that I've been talking about into my brainstorm here. So, the geographic location for this particular example is within Los Angeles County, California. The organization type, I've actually indicated a couple of different types here, and I wanted to highlight this to whom it may apply to out there as well. I've indicated that we're a nonprofit and a museum, but I've also put school, and that's because, for this particular example, my program of interest is partnering with a local school or school district. So when I'm looking for funding, I want to make sure I'm also coming up with funding opportunities that would be relevant to a school. And this is something that might be a little trickier when it comes to our searches, but I do encourage you to think creatively about what partners you might be working with, other organizations that are going to be collaborating on funding with you. Make sure that organization type is included there as well. For my fields of work, these are these specific terms that I drafted for my museum example. I have art education and youth. Those are going to be the areas of focus for this particular organization. Also, some of the objectives of this organization would be arts and culture access. And then I also included a couple of terms that might just be relevant for kind of the topic that my organization covers, which is history, and then museums, because I want to make sure I'm seeing content relevant to museum funding.
For the financial needs for this particular example, I'm looking to fund a $50,000 education program, so I've listed that there. I've also thought of ways that the funds might be used, specifically for education or programming, maybe community outreach, and staff training. So I've listed those three things there as well.
My last question here on funding type, I'm pretty open to looking for any type of funding. So I have a wide variety. I didn't indicate federal government here. That felt like that might be a bigger pursuit for $50,000, but I did indicate private foundations, maybe some state and local government grants and corporate grants. Oh, I did put federal grants here. I would maybe take that out actually because for $50,000, that might be a little bit much to be going for a federal grant.
So I'm curious. We have all these great brainstorms and I love seeing, I see Linda put in her draft there. Jennifer's got hers. Chris, I love seeing all these here. Now, what do we do with it?
So I want to start some of our searches, and you can do this in a variety of ways. I'm going to explain what I think is the easiest way, which is, I believe, through Instrumentl. I'm a little biased here. So there are alternatives to doing this search and you can always use alternative methods of research. These are the ones that folks often come up with when they're sharing out about ways that they're finding out about grants. We've got using Google for those searches, looking through funder websites. I've also heard of folks that have set up Google alerts. If you are someone who uses Gmail, I know many of us are using Google in different capacities, you can actually set a Google alert to notify you when a funder is maybe mentioned in the news, or maybe there's a mention of an LOI that's being kind of shared out. You can actually set a Google alert for that. So, that's a cool alternative to kind of get information about new funding opportunities. You can also do a little bit of digging through the 990 forms on GuideStar or the IRS, and I'll talk a little bit more about how we can do a little bit of that research today. And then there are other paid databases, also things like Listservs. I know a few folks have definitely talked about Listservs that are valuable to them, maybe even for their very specific industry. Yup. And Yulia is saying Foundation Center or Candid Database. 100%. Those other databases will also have access there.
So, I want to show you a little bit about how you can do some funding research. And you can literally take what you just worked on and plop it right into Instrumentl, and I'll show you how you can do that. For folks that already have an account, unlike Linda, I know, who is already going to be a user, you can set up a new project using the search parameters that you just dropped into the chat box, or you can edit one of your current projects and see if the search parameters that you just drafted may lead you to some new searches or new findings that you wouldn't have expected. So, I'll drop this link in the chat here for folks that want to start their grant research in Instrumentl. And this is a special link, like I mentioned, that will give you access right into the database. If you go on our website and do this, you'll be prompted to set up a call. It'll take about a week or so to kind of get you into the platform. This is going to get you right and be able to set everything up while we're in the workshop, which is pretty cool. And if you do this, you'll leave with all of these things. So, you'll be able to see the specific searches that are already automated and set up for you, and you'll also have access to that database.
So, the easy thing to do here is click on the link, you'll fill out your information, and then you'll be able to start a trial immediately. It'll prompt you to start a 14-day free trial.
For folks that have already done this, you don't need to follow along here. But you can go ahead and just set up your, kind of fill out your information on that first page. You will be prompted with this schedule, your trial kick-off call if you're a newbie. You can set time with one of our grant advisors, maybe skip time for some time later this week or next week once you've had a little chance to see how your searches are going so far, or you can click skip here down at the bottom. And then everyone should be able to set up their first project. If you have any trouble accessing your trial, I see a message from Miriam. If you've maybe used Instrumentl before and your trial has expired, I am happy to give you an extension on that. You'll just have to send me a little message. And I won't be able to do it right in this moment while I'm with everybody on the call, but I will be able to go right back in during our coffee break and give you access, so that you can have a little more time to directly apply some of what we just learned with our grant searches here.
Awesome. For folks that are in, you can let me know with a thumbs up or I'm ready in the chat. If you're already getting started, you can literally see how this project is going to be set up here. It should be super easy. You'll be able to go through and apply each of the grant search terms that I just had you brainstorm right into your project setup. So it should prompt you to go right on into that. I'll show you how that works here really quickly. In about 60 seconds, you'll be able to set up your first grant search and see some of the funding opportunities that are available to you. It'll essentially source all the things that might be applicable based on your grant search terms and bring them right into your grant tracker.
Awesome, Kim. Yeah, I'm happy to do that. I see your message there. And Parker also, I see your message there as well. Same with Becky.
If you haven't tried the trial yet, you can go ahead and click this link. So you can see here, I'm going ahead and selecting the applicant type. This is the organization type that we drafted in our “5 Star” Grant Search method. So I'm indicating all of those different applicant types, including the school or school district because I might be partnering with a school for this particular example. For this example, I am not a faith-based organization, so I'm selecting no. But if you are from a faith-based organization, you can indicate that there. And then this is where you're going to indicate the geographic location of your project. Show where it physically takes place. Mine is Los Angeles County, California. So I'm indicating that in my search to make sure I show up with grants that fund this region specifically.
Now, here's where we get to the really important fields of work. You all worked hard to identify a couple of key terms that might help narrow down your grant searches. This is applicable if you are in Instrumentl or not. But in Instrumentl, this is going to help our matching algorithm give you the best fit grants. So, you can put in, I usually put in three to five to start. You can always go back in and edit these later. You can add in more if you're not, maybe you're getting too many searches and you need to narrow it down, or you can take away keywords if you feel like your searches are too narrow. So, this is something that you can kind of adjust as you figure out your grant search parameters.
For this example, I am a professional arts & culture organization, so I've indicated yes there. And I've indicated the size of grants that I'm looking for, how the funds will be used, also something we brainstormed in advance, and the types of funders that I want to see grants from.
Lastly, if this is a new trial for you, you'll be able to add any of your colleagues that you want to jump in on the trial, and they'll get a little email and they'll be able to see your project right away. So this is a cool way to share with your boss or maybe a peer that you're working on grantseeking with what you're finding. And it found 316 grants for me.
So I'll, I'll show you a little bit more about how you can actually dive into those, but I'll pause here for a second. If anyone has gotten through to their first project, you can give me a little thumbs up in the chat or say I'm ready to move on. I want to make sure everyone's had a chance to check out their own projects. For those of you that are looking to extend your trial, I will do that during our coffee break, and you can get a little more time in Instrumentl. I’m happy to extend that for you. I see everybody's messages here, so no stress. I will get to that in just a few moments here.
So if you've made your first project or if you are a current customer and you're maybe noodling on a new project, or maybe adjusting the search parameters of an existing project, I find that sometimes it takes a couple goes to really get your specificity there. Chris is giving me a thumbs up. And Gabby, awesome. You might be looking through a little bit, and that's okay. I want to see maybe if folks have a number of matches that they received. I'd always love to hear how we did in the chat. You can let me know kind of what your search parameters you came up with. Or if you feel like, hmm, maybe I missed a couple of keywords there that would have given me better matches, and that's something we can continue to brainstorm on in our worksheets, also with any of our searches that we're doing across platforms, not just within Instrumentl. So maybe your search terms were too specific, maybe you actually found a keyword that was something more broad but was able to capture more potential opportunities for you. So, feel free to share thoughts in the chat. And I hope it felt exciting to see some of the opportunities that came up. Maybe it helped narrow your focus. We were talking about kind of approaching our strategy with a critical eye and approaching our grant search with a little bit more of specificity that might help us feel a little more confident in our grant research and our grant searches.
Terry, that's a great question, “Can I put in a search word that is not in the choices given?”
So, in the fields of work, we've identified very specific terms based on things like NTEE codes and search terms that have come up in those 17,000 grant opportunities. So, we basically have created this kind of hierarchy of topics and search terms that we try and help organize the library of the database within Instrumentl. So, long answer short, no, but you might find that there's a search term that you're not thinking of that maybe kind of identifies more with what you're looking for, but it's not the exact term. I have an article that I'll send out as a resource after the workshop that can help you narrow down some of those searches if you're having trouble thinking of a term.
Yeah, Beth says, “Try a synonym.” Absolutely. Or think about the umbrella topic. Sometimes I like to zoom out a little bit. Maybe STEM access and education isn't a specific term, although I think it might be in Instrumentl. So I might zoom out to education and start from there. And then you can do specific searches within the matches that you've then received like from Instrumentl, so you can do kind of a keyword search there.
Oh, sorry, Bobby, I'll make sure you get access to the recording if you need to look back on anything.
All right. I'm going to roll us along because we're heading, steam rolling down to our last 15 minutes of this initial session here. One thing that I thought was really interesting that came up from Sarah. She's the CEO and founder of her own consulting company for grantseeking and is part of our Instrumentl expert council. She mentioned that one of her challenges is that many foundations don't have websites. So, one of their workarounds is to look at 990s for the past 3 years to determine how much they're giving away. So some of these search parameters, that might be harder to find by just doing our Google searches, and where the giving is actually happening. And this is why she says they have a 90 percent success rate with their grants.
So, they're using GuideStar to review 990s. I'll show you really quickly, if you dive in on your Instrumentl trial, what that might look like if you are looking at a foundation profile in there. It's essentially all of the information that you would find on your 990, but it's just kind of centralized and summarized here in a nice-looking, clean format.
So one of my matches for my history program that I was working on was the Dreyfus Foundation Grant. And so, actually, yeah, you can see here. I'll back up for just a quick second, it's shown me the fields of work that I've listed, and the one in green is the one that is a direct match, an exact match with what I had indicated in my search. The ones in yellow are ones that are adjacent to my keywords. So, I didn't put those in as fields of work, but kind of going back to some of these questions around keywords and search parameters we might want to be putting in, Instrumentl is helping me by giving me some that might be kind of on the edges of my grant search, so it would still come up with things that could be relevant. I can quickly look at a little snapshot of the 990 here. And then I can also look at the eligibility of the grant terms, also the mission of the funder because we want to make sure that is aligned first off as well.
If you scroll up to the top, you'll look deeper into the funder and their 990 report. Here's where you can see information about their total assets, their total giving year over year, things like key people, which might be helpful if you're sharing this information with your board or leadership. They're giving averages and median over time, their grant amounts. If you scroll down here, you'll see the median amount of grants given, just a good indication of whether or not this is the right opportunity for you to pursue, and grant sizes they're generally giving.
This is one of my favorites, the past awards. So you can see where giving has happened. You want to see organizations they've given to in the past. Again, all this information is available in their 990s. So, Instrumentl is pulling that information for you. And lastly, the openness to new grantees, also a really great way to see if this is a particularly competitive grant. 35 percent being given to new grantees, that’s actually a pretty good percentage there, so I might be interested in pursuing this. Down here at the bottom, you can see giving by NTEE code, which I mentioned earlier. This is just going to make sure, again, that your search is aligned and that this funder is actually giving to your area of focus or your sector of focus.
So you can do your own noodling there. I want to make sure that these searches are relevant for you. They should directly apply to your experiences and your organizations. You all have amazing projects that you're working on, so think about how you might narrow down these searches and make them even more specific to your specific needs.
I talked about at the beginning some of the ways that we might want to advance our grant searches. So, we've started with kind of the basic info. We've made sure we have really clear keywords, we've identified those five different search terms that we need to make sure are clearly notified and identified before we get into the grant search. But I want to get us into kind of some of these advanced strategies and hopefully maximize some of the funding potential. So these are a little more proactive or analytical approaches that will make us be even more strategic with our grant research.
I encourage you to think about how you might utilize any advanced analytical tools. So you might want to use a data analyst tool, maybe making something like a predictive model, to assess the success rates of your past applications, both within your organization or maybe even looking at trends across the industry, to identify patterns in your funder’s behavior. So, kind of looking and seeing how your past successes have gone with grants and maybe identifying some of those areas of growth that you could look into for your organization. This could also help you guide the strategic direction for choosing which grants to pursue. And building a predictive model could help you anticipate those upcoming funding opportunities and maybe trends in the philanthropic landscape there.
I also encourage you to use things like AI, leveraging technology. We're in a really neat time where we've got some really cool tools out there. And so, you might be thinking about ways to customize your database searches, things like using Instrumentl or other databases that could be integrated with things like your CRM, your Customer Relationship Management system, to track interactions that you have with funders, maintain the history of your applications over time, so it's not spread across multiple Excel spreadsheets, et cetera, and systematically follow up on some of those opportunities.
One of the ways that I use AI, and that I've heard of some other grantseekers in the field using AI for grantseeking, is essentially copying in large data sets or web pages. If you have the free version of ChatGPT, that's just one example of course of AI tools that are out there, you can copy and paste large data sets or even copy and paste a whole web page and ask the tool, the AI tool, to extract relevant opportunities for you based on predefined criteria. Maybe some of the things that we even drafted in our worksheets at the beginning of this course. Things like mission alignment, funding amount that we're looking for, or geographic focus.
Yeah. Nikki, yeah, I'll send you the recording afterwards. I know I'm going fast on all these.
So yeah, this is a really great way to use AI, and essentially you're just asking it to identify best fit opportunities for you. If you pay for GPT, I use, I think it's like $20 a month for an additional, kind of, I guess even more refined GPT, you can actually just drop in links to web pages and it will skim those pages for you. You don't even have to copy and paste text into the GPT. So, there's a lot of opportunity there. I encourage you to think about how you can use that, and there are a lot of folks that are currently doing courses around how to use AI in grantseeking that I would encourage you to check out.
We always are maybe thinking about our networking. That's something that might be something on our plate all the time. But making sure we're taking the time to attend those industry conferences. I know folks might be looking ahead to the grant summit, the GPA's conference that happens in the fall, reading sector-specific reports, and participating in things like professional network. These might help you stay abreast with shifts in funding within specific sectors or just connecting with other grant professionals to share their insights and learn about maybe even less publicized funding sources that might be applicable.
And lastly, doing things like this, continued learning and adaptation. I encourage you to regularly update your skills and knowledge by taking courses like this, certifications in grant writing and fundraising. And think about how you're establishing a feedback loop, a system for receiving and integrating feedback from funders on denied proposals to help you refine your future applications. You might want to take some of the questions that you asked in the workbook today and think about how you apply them to each research project that you're working on. Have a kind of set cadence of reflection so that you can continue to improve and iterate on your existing strategies.
So I'm going to remind us of where we're headed. That's my first session for you all. We're just about at our coffee break. So we got through this first session here. I'm going to have us give 5 minutes or so for a little stretch break, and then I'm going to take us into this next session. I'll go through the expert panel, and we'll talk about their tips that they have, we'll hear their panel discussion, and then I'll moderate a live Q&A. If you're interested in adding in questions into the chat box, if things have come up, the way I usually organize these is just if you type ### at the front of your question as we go through the recording and as we go through the next part of our program, that'll help me organize for the live Q&A.
So, with that, we're a little bit ahead of the hour. I'm going to use this time to go into the Instrumentl back of house kind of admin panel and make sure I address all those questions for folks that needed an extension on their trial. You can use this time to get into the platform and explore a little bit, and then I'll set our 5-minute timer when we get to, about a minute now we'll get to a 5-minute countdown. So enjoy a few moments to stretch, and I'll get us rolling again in about 5 or 6 minutes.
So excited to be here for our second hour of this masterclass. I've got two awesome guests here that I'll share more about in just a moment. But just a reminder of where we're headed, where I'm going to take you over this next 50 minutes or so, 55 minutes, we're going to get an intro to our expert panel, folks that are in this room with us today, to share their expert insights and all their words of wisdom with us. We'll do a little panel discussion with some pre-prepared questions that I compiled from your registration questions. So, I took questions that were submitted by folks when they registered and compiled those to pitch to our panel today. Then I'll also be able to do a live Q&A. So I encourage you to add those questions into the chat. If you can use those three hashtags at the front of your question, that'll just help me organize in the chat. I'll drop an example here, so you can see what that looks like. just to get a sense of what I'm looking for here. So you can add to the chat by dropping in questions with three hashtags at the front. And then I'll wrap this up. We'll talk a little bit about next steps, things you want to kind of still noodle on, as I like to say.
As a reminder, if you stick it out to the end, you're getting those two CFRE points, for initial certification or recertification. Plus I'm raffling off some fun little tidbits as we go through today. So we've got some fun prizes, coffee or lunch on us and an office supplies gift box, and our big prize today, $100 of a donation to a nonprofit of your choice.
I'm also going to do like a quick post-event session. I know some folks might have follow-up questions that are specific to their organizations. I'll stick around for 15 minutes and take questions. You can share feedback with me. If you were like, “Rachel, what happened in the first hour, I'm lost,” I'll be here, I'll stick around, and we can do a little office hour session.
For folks that were in the room for our first hour, maybe you can share just one thing that's sticking with you from session one. I'd love to see what's kind of like something that is still buzzing around in your brain from our first hour together, and maybe some of our folks that weren't able to join that part can learn from our attendees that were.
Oh yeah, Dale is saying, “Smart and smarty.” I loved those. I'm definitely updating to smarty moving forward.
Julie says, “Keeping search keywords simple and succinct.” Yeah.
Monica is saying, “Using a variety of keywords.” Yeah.
Nakama says, “Using AI.” 100 percent.
Joanne says, “Narrowing down priorities so that they align with our goals and outcomes as an organization.” Absolutely. That's the groundwork that's going to make you feel like you're really on top of your grant searches and your grant research.
Beth says, “Remember to relate grants to strategic plan.” 100 percent.
“Using Google alerts and the “5 Star” method,” from Sierra. I love that.
Great tidbits. Okay, cool, folks. Well, I'm going to introduce our experts that are here with us in the room today. I'm so excited to have two folks that are friends of Instrumentl and just awesome partners, awesome nonprofit strategists in the field.
So first, I'm going to introduce Matt Hugg. He's the CEO of Nonprofit Courses. As an experienced writer, veteran fundraiser, and sought after instructor and speaker in philanthropy, fundraising, and marketing, Matt brings a unique perspective to his work. He's had over 25 years of fundraising and management experience with organizations like the Boy Scouts of America, Lebanon Valley College, University of Cincinnati, Ursinus College, and University of the East.
Rachel: Hi Matt! Thanks for being here.
Matt: Hey there! Glad to be here. I also teach a course on grant writing at Thomas Edison State University in New Jersey.
Rachel: Love it. So you're constantly, you're teaching, learning, educating all the time, it sounds like.
Matt: And the brain gets big.
Rachel: Yeah, for sure. I love to hear it. Our second panelist for today is the lovely Teresa Huff. She's the host of the Grant Writing Simplified podcast and the go-to expert in grant writing and strategy for nonprofits. She's helped nonprofits triple their funding and maximize their impact. After winning over 7 million for schools and nonprofits, she now teaches grant writers and nonprofits the strategies they need to develop millions in scalable long-term funding. Hey, Teresa!
Teresa: Hey! I'm excited to be here. Thank you. And I was excited to see Matt was the other panelist because we've chatted in the past. So, I thought that'll be fun to catch up and compare notes.
Matt: Yeah, we don't talk together enough. I know.
Teresa: I know. We should change that.
Rachel: We'll just create more Zoom rooms for you all to connect and chat.
Teresa: Perfect.
Rachel: Love it.
Teresa: Let's do it.
Rachel: I also asked Matt and Teresa to share a couple of like golden nugget tips. And I want to start off by just asking Matt to share one. I wanted to kind of prepare us for our panel discussion today, and I'm sure you all will be sprinkling more of these words of wisdom throughout your answers in our panel discussion. But Matt, do you want to share a little bit about your work and how you use the CIA tip to start us off?
Matt: Yeah, CIA. So, when I tell people I used to teach overseas a little bit and I'd say, you know, every gift needs CIA and people will be like, Ooh, what's going on? Right? But, no, it's Capacity, Interest, Access. Capacity to make the grant you need, they have to have the money you want, interest in what you're doing, and you have to have access to the funder. And, you know, it's a three-legged stool. You pull one out, the whole thing falls apart. You have to have all three to get a grant or a gift from whomever you are talking to. And your job, particularly as you ramp up, get into your work, you know, the prospect research and all the stuff you guys talked about earlier today, is to make sure that you have a solid CIA that, you know, do they have the capacity, are they interested, do your missions align, and can you get access to them? That's really what it's all about.
Rachel: Love it. I'll drop a hint too that we're big on acronyms in this room. We have a couple of acronym-related tips, which I think is helpful because I love to have something that we can refer to. We were talking about our smarty SMART goals, right? our CIA tips. Thanks for that, Matt. That's a great little tip to help us.
Matt: I see a couple comments here. Paul asked about my course online. Yes, go to www.TESU.edu. And is that anything like CYA? Yeah, right. So, you do CIA to make sure it's CYA.
Rachel: I love it. Teresa, I also prompted you to do kind of a similar intro and just share a little tidbit of something that's one of your kind of prep work tips that you would share with folks.
Teresa: Sure. And you know, I loved it when I saw Matt's CIA because mine's a little similar but a different twist on the three main ideas but both, I think, are very useful foundations. And mine stemmed from years of working with nonprofits and seeing, analyzing the ones that really gained momentum with grants and did well, and then looking at which ones kind of fell apart and just never quite got any traction there and looking at what really worked. And so, I found that the three key factors, I've put together into an ROI framework. And in the nonprofit space, founders, donors, foundations are looking for a return on impact. They're looking to invest. And instead of the business world with a return on investment, it's where we can invest these funds to get the most impact in the community to expand our reach. And so, really finding alignment, and I created the ROI framework to help them do that. And I go into detail on that to my TEDx talk on YouTube, but the R is we have to be Relevant, we have to be Optimized and we have to be Interacting. Relevance is really two-fold. You need to be relevant to the community, making sure you're filling a gap, not just overlapping or duplicating, but make sure there's a true need for your services, and are you finding relevant funders who are also interested in influencing the same mission as you, and finding that alignment is critical. And then optimizing, making sure your nonprofit is running smoothly, your operations are in place, your leadership on board, you've got all those internal pieces running well. And then interacting, building relationships in the community is so important. Reaching out to grant makers. There's a person on the other side of everything. We don't need to be afraid to make friends and reach out to people. Most of these people in nonprofit work are so giving and kindhearted and mission oriented. So, they really want to meet other people who are the same way. And so, really those three things. And as Matt said about his CIA, you can have two of the three, but you're just not quite going to get there. But when you get all three locked in, that's when you really start to gain momentum and build that return on impact that you're looking for.
Rachel: Love it. Teresa. Thank you. Of course, I had a coughing fit, right? As you can…
Teresa: Okay. We can cover. It's good.
Matt: Yeah. No problem.
Teresa: No, no, I could talk about grants all day.
Matt: Yeah.
Rachel: I love it. Thank you. These are such great tips, and I will share, I see some questions in the chat. So, for our panelists, if you have time between questions to answer some of these, please feel free to chime in. But I will also include these references to these resources once we share that event resources page. Excuse me one second. Classic. Okay, I'm going to start us off with our panel discussion. Matt, you're up first.
Matt: Sure.
Rachel: What's one strategic approach you've taken for grant research or prospecting that has improved your success rate?
Matt: Yeah. Excellent question. And I will tell you something that I love to do. I think it's not only helpful but it's fun, and that is to create an avatar of who your ideal prospect, your grant prospect is. So, you know, I learned this years ago. There was a book, Purpose Driven Life, I know you remember it. Well, this guy wrote the same book, called Purpose Driven Church before that, and he kind of laid out this person that their church congregation was going to try to appeal to. And it was perfect target marketing. And what they did, and what I'd suggest you would do, is outline demographically exactly who it is you're looking for. In other words, what are the attributes of your funder. And the people who are on their staff who you want to approach, you know, who might be there, whether it's a family foundation, somebody in the family, a bigger foundation that has program officers, a corporate foundation. But know who you're talking to. The other side of that, it's really important for you to know what I call your mission recipient. That is the person who, whether you call them a student, a patient, a client, a guest, whatever it is, the people who receive your services, and to do the same thing there. What is your prototypical mission recipient look like? And in both instances, draw a picture, dress somebody up and take a photograph of it. The idea is to drive it into your brain, so that when you see these both, then you can say, oh, that's exactly what I need or, oh, that's exactly who we help and put them together. So, building that avatar is a really nice approach. It's a lot of fun, people really get into it, and it can be tremendously helpful for you to identify funders and the people you serve too.
So Teresa, I say Rach, oh, okay. I was going to say, you're probably coughing, we can keep on talking.
Rachel: I did.
Teresa: We can keep talking.
Rachel: That was great because you gave me a moment to just like collect myself. I'm back. That was awesome, Matt. And I love thinking about the avatar idea, kind of thinking of our like ideal funder profile, literally building that out. If some of you have been in my grantseeker growth courses before, I actually have that as an exercise. Thinking about your ideal funder and then matchmaking with, you know, what funding projects you might be looking for. It's a really great exercise. Thanks for sharing that.
Matt: And I tell you, I find that a lot of people in the nonprofit world don't really get into the heads of their mission recipients as well as they could. And that's essential in however you're working. I mean, you can use that in a lot of ways, but building that avatar of your mission recipient is really important too.
Rachel: Love it.
Teresa: I agree. The other thing I would add to that, I think it is important, and I hear sometimes nonprofits are afraid to define that. They want to say, oh, we serve everybody or we'll take donations from anybody. But the more specific and clear you can be, the easier it is to convey that and the more memorable you are, as you were saying.
Matt: Well actually, and there's brain science behind this. This is something called the reticular activation system. So, think about what kind of car you might drive if you drive a car, right? And there aren't that many of that, whatever car it is, but you see that car all the time and you can tell the difference between model years and whether they tweaked out a special part of it or something. That's your reticular activation system at work. Put it to work for your job for finding grant funders.
Rachel: Awesome. I have a question for Teresa next. With advancements in technology, I hinted at this a little bit in our first session, but what are some ways that grant writers can better leverage those tools to streamline their grant research process from your experience?
Teresa: I'm so glad you're asking this because I think I'm a big fan of strategy, as we know, and I think it's important to first think about the strategy, how can we leverage these. And so, a couple of ways I do that is, as Matt was saying with getting clear on your avatar, it's just as important to get clear on your goals. Why do we need funding? Why do we need these grants? What kind of program are we running and what's the bigger outcome? Sometimes I see people focusing on the specific thing the program will buy. But focus more on the transformation. What kind of change is this thing going to make? Don't talk about just the books or just the exercise equipment. Talk about the transformation in their health, their literacy, their overall well-being, their quality of life. What's the big impact it's truly making? And so, with technology, I go through a process personally, and also with my clients. I'm really trying to think through in this order of what do I need to eliminate, which is hard for me because I want to do all the things. But I have to eliminate. Then what can I automate? And then what can I delegate? And then what do I need to do? And I do it in that order because that creates a reverse pyramid where things are getting narrower and narrower before they get to me. And so, with technology, I really think that automation piece is key, whether it's with grants or in our business operations of the nonprofit, so that we can focus more on grants. We can focus more on those things that technology can't replace, like building the relationships, having the conversations with the people on the other side. And so, using those tools, really looking at how can we use, whether it's AI tools like Instrumentl and the research piece, to really free up our time, our brain power, our high level thinking skills. Because after a while if some of those grant applications or research and trying to navigate all the rabbit holes, my brain hurts and I am done. So, it's important to really conserve our mental space and save our high level mental capital for the things that truly matter and be able to use technology in the other areas where we can.
Matt: So Teresa, that brings up an excellent point, which there's a book I always recommend to folks, and that's called the E-Myth by Michael Gerber. And Teresa, I see nodding heads here. I mean, Gerber is all about automation to free yourself to do higher level things. And so, if you haven't grabbed it, I think it's called now the E-Myth Revisited. It's not only a quick read, but it's a pretty cheap book because you can get, you can get used copies all over the place. But that speaks directly to what you're talking about.
Teresa: Yeah. Good one. Definitely a good example in there and memorable because it's tied to several stories too.
Matt: Yes. Right.
Teresa: So that, I mean, I read it years ago, but I still remember. I know exactly what you're talking about.
Rachel: Yeah. We’ve got some folks in the chat requesting the title and author. Matt, I don't know if you have a chance to like take that in real quick.
Matt: Yup. I just misspelled the author name. There's no Z in it.
Rachel: Perfect. So, we’ll make sure to note that. Yeah, these are great. And just a good reminder, like sometimes it can feel like our brains have too many tabs open. So making sure that we're funneling down on what we need to prioritize on and what we can delegate, I think those are really great tips, Teresa. I appreciate you bringing that up.
Matt, the next question is for you. How do you approach grant research for collaborative projects or cross-departmental efforts? This is something that folks kind of sometimes struggle with, and I'm curious if you have some winning approaches here.
Matt: Yeah. And there's a good reason why people struggle with this, because, honestly, folks don't trust you. I mean, it's terrible to say, but yeah, this is all about trust. I've worked with health organizations that think that whoever is in fundraising, whether it's grant proposal writing or individual fundraising, or whatever, is going to tell all the secrets of all their clients, to arts organizations where the people who are in the program just would rather do it themselves and don't trust that you're going to do it right. You have to build trust. And it's hard for a bunch of reasons, but one of them is that you have a lot of pressure, I am sure, at least I've been there, where you have to either get out or get material out. And so, people aren't giving you time to go internally to build that trust, to sit down and have lunch with the program head, or to just have a meeting with somebody who is working on something special in your organization.
So yeah, the whole thing is to have trust, so that they feel that they are going to be included because your role as a proposal writer is actually, you know, facing two directions, right? You are the intermediary between the funder and the people on the program side, and you have to be that trusted advisor on both sides. So, being able to do that and be that translator in that role can only happen if you have built trust on both sides of that equation.
Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I think that transparency to write and communication in your priorities, all of that will kind of contribute to some of the trust building you're talking about here.
Matt: Well, and sometimes building trust is saying no. In fact, one of the issues that I've certainly come up with that’s kind of related to this is when somebody comes directly you and says, I want money for this. Right? And puts you in a position of making the priority decisions for the organization. And you don't want to be there. You want to bump that up to your boss who bumps it up to the executive director who then maybe even goes to the board and they figure out what the priorities are, and then it comes back down the chain to you, because it puts you in a difficult position but it's unethical for you to decide the priorities of the organization.
Teresa: That trust is so important. And I love what you're saying because that goes back to what we both said before about needing that clarity, first of all. Getting clear on your goals, who are you serving, why are you serving them, that serves as a filter for all those tough questions that come through. And part of our role, I feel like too, is to play devil's advocate. Sometimes we have to be the bad guy asking those tough questions, the uncomfortable conversations, because if we don't, you bet the funders will, and it will affect their decision. So, if we do it and they trust us, it's coming from a friend when we say, have you really thought that through? Or there are some holes in this program, it's not going to make sense to the funder. If they already trust us, they're more likely to listen and consider our input to help make them more competitive because they know we're on their team, we're trying to make them better and help them be successful.
Matt: And, you know, this is also where things like gift acceptance policies come in, where you have things written down, you've thought them through ahead of time, and now you can say, listen, this is why, and this is where we are. As an organization, it's not just I don't like you or I like you or whatever. It's a policy matter.
Rachel: It's not personal, right?
Matt: Exactly. Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah. And some of the work that we did in our first hour of this session was thinking about that, like how are we prepping for those types of conversations, and do we have those things in mind before we're going to these different departments or different partners and pitching these projects?
Similar to kind of this challenge, Teresa, this question kind of came up. What are some of the most common challenges besides that you see faced by grant writers today, and what are some of the ways you've seen folks overcome those?
Teresa: I'm glad you asked this, because I do hear from a lot of different directions. From grant writers who are trying to run a business as consultants and also from grant writers in nonprofits who, as Matt said, somebody comes to you saying, “Oh, hey, find this grant, you should apply for this,” when you know they have no business applying for that grant. So, that's a really challenging situation to be in, but the more confidence we have in our position, the reasons we're doing things, the reason we're recommending things, the better we can convey those. And so, right now especially, I see a lot of, of course, challenges with technology changing and AI, and at first, a lot of fear around that, what's AI going to do to us, is it going to obliterate our careers. Not at all. I think it's only going to help if we lean into it and if we use it as the tool that it is, not as the expert, we are the expert, but we can use it as an assistant, as an intern. You wouldn't expect an intern to walk into the job being a 20-year veteran of the work and knowing exactly how you want things done. So, in the same way, we need to train the intern and say, “Oh, no, you need to tweak that. You need to correct that. Go back and do it again.” Just like you would with a student that's trying to learn the ropes. And so, learning good prompts is a big key with that.
I'm also seeing more competition for funding. Matt, I don't know if you're seeing the same thing, but grants are more competitive. Funding is scarce. They may be awarding fewer or only to certain ones. A lot of foundations have invitation-only, how do you crack the code and get in the door. And so, really, again, it goes back to what I said earlier about building your ROI, showing your relevance, your optimization and your interaction, making sure that's in place. So then when the opportunity comes up, you're ready. You're not scrambling to get ready because you found the opportunity. You want to be ready, so then when that hits, you can say, “Oh, yup, we've got our stuff together. Here we go.” And you can hit the ground running.
And there's just a lot of shifting trends right now that I'm seeing, and that's where making sure we have those solid relationships in place so that we can evaluate when is it worth pursuing, when do we need to back off and wait, and really just staying current on those and listening to what the funders want to so we can support them as well from a place of service and not just, “Are you going to give us money yet? Are you going to send us a check again this year? Hey, we're still waiting on that.” Like how about asking questions like, “How can we support your mission? What are you looking to do in the next 5 to 10 years with your foundation?” And really just getting curious about them too and caring about their work as much as your own, and showing that sincere interest will go a long way.
Matt: So, Teresa, you bring up something that has been on my mind for a bit, which is I think we need to change the paradigm a bit, and not being a grant proposal writer, being a foundation relation officer…
Teresa: I so agree.
Matt: …Because it is not about the writing. I mean, the writing kind of puts it into almost an ATM kind of relationship. If I write this well, if I put in the right pin code, then paping! they're going to send me money. And the more people are looking through the threads here about getting in the door and connecting with folks and all that, it's all about relationships. So, think of yourself as that relationship officer.
Now, relationships don't necessarily mean that you have to personally meet them. I mean, ideally, that would be great. But if you think of, you know, I come from an era where there were a fair amount of pitchmen on TV who would talk about whatever their product is and they were the president of the product of the company. And I imagine that still happens today, I just don't see it as much. But, you know, they formed a relationship with the people who were their customers by the information they were getting them, and the customers felt like they knew these people one way or another. I mean, you see celebrities do this all the time. So, look to not just – I mean, if you get a personal meeting, God bless you, that's great, but try to build that relationship through your marketing, through your broader communication so that when they hear about you, “Oh, yeah, I know them.” When they get that proposal, it's not just, you know, who are these people, even though you might be the best at what you do.
Teresa: Yes, I so agree. And it's about the people. I've heard of grant writers or even executive directors afraid to call a foundation, but it's just a person after good work and trying to do good missions too, just like you. So, don't be afraid to talk to the person.
Matt: In fact, that's something else that I think we undersell ourselves in terms of what nonprofits bring to the table. Each of these foundations will say “as a mission,” but they don't work to carry out their mission except through your legs and arms. So, they might bring the resources, but you bring the best way to get done what you do. And so, don't short-sell yourself. You are not in a diminished position here. You are pretty equal to them because they can't do their mission without you.
Teresa: Exactly.
Rachel: Yeah. A good reminder, there's people on the other end of the line. It's something to kind of continue to keep at the forefront. This is, again, a great segue into your question here, Matt. What's one tip you'd share for maintaining those long-term relationships with funders, especially when dealing with high-competition grants? I also have seen some questions in the chat about just kind of how you're starting those relationships with funders and maybe some of the ones that are saying, like, don't call me, we'll call you, that invite-only funder conundrum. If you have thoughts there.
Matt: Yeah. I mean, the long-term relationship, I think, is becoming a resource for them. So, can you be their go-to person for even things that have nothing to do with what you do just by opening up your network to them. I think one thing we don't do as people who seek funds is look at the world from the funder’s point of view. Right? They have jobs. They need to look good to their boss. They need to find people to do things that help them move their program along. What can you offer? Can you be that person, through your network, to say, hey! oh, I spotted this, whatever resource I thought you might like to do, put them together on LinkedIn or whatever and walk away. But now you are the person they think of as the one who's going to bring good things to you.
Oh, this is a terrible thing that just hit my head. And I guess it's being recorded. But in some ways, like I think of my cat, you develop a relationship with other people, but also your animals in your life by having them associate you with good things. The cat associates me with food and a scratch behind the ears.
Rachel: I like that. I think that's okay to say, Matt. I appreciate that.
Matt: So, have them associate you with good things. Yeah. Yeah, you mentioned that. I'm sorry. Go ahead, Teresa.
Teresa: Sorry. The barrier to access is a lot different than it used to be. In some ways it may be harder, but in other ways, we have LinkedIn, we have webinars like this. We have so many opportunities to connect with people, to show interest, to follow what they're doing and comment, expand on it, tag them because we like something they posted. We have so many more options now than we used to to be able to connect and have those conversations, or to at least find people along the same lines. And so, it's not quite the same closed doors that it used to be. It is more challenging sometimes, but at the same time, we have a lot more tools available to us.
Matt: By the way, can I jump in on one of the thread questions here? Because it hits something that's really kind of, something I advocate on. Stacy, who mentioned about fiscal sponsors. And, Teresa, I'm sure you have some really good thoughts on this. I'm a big advocate of fiscal sponsors but not everybody knows what they are, which is these are organizations, nonprofits, who are set up to be umbrella organizations for programs that might otherwise be their own nonprofits. And so, they serve as a board and all that. I mean, it's a great concept. And when anybody comes to me and says, I want to start a nonprofit, I'll point them to a fiscal sponsor thing first. But my experience with this is that they have to know that about that. And so, yeah, it's okay to put that in, but you have to also kind of explain what a fiscal sponsor is a little bit and why it's such a good thing.
Teresa, maybe you have some thoughts on that.
Teresa: Yeah, that can be a great opportunity. And I think, again, a lot of people are afraid to collaborate, but often that only makes all of you stronger. I'm a big fan of collaboration where it makes sense, where you can support each other in different ways. You can help a newer nonprofit or you're doing very complimentary work and you can pool your resources. Why not? And then it also shares load. But it goes back to having good systems, good communication, making sure it makes sense for everyone so that those expectations and goals are clear upfront. And then fiscal sponsorship. I'm glad you brought that up because that's an often overlooked strategy that can really be powerful.
Matt: Yeah. Yeah. I see Jordan's note here about a consultant, “Build a reciprocal relationship as a consultant or representative nonprofit or both.” You know, it depends. I would say sometimes the state makes a difference because how, if you are a consultant, does your state require registration if it requires registration and you are directly fundraising, like contacting somebody, you have certain parameters on that you have to go through. And over time, I mean, you will build up. People will get to know you because you work in that area among the funders, and you might even be a positive for a nonprofit who says, oh, you're working with, you know, Jane here. Jane's really well known. They must be good. I don't know, Teresa?
Teresa: Yeah, I agree. I think it goes back to everything we've said so far, really having that solid foundation upfront and building those core relationships in place, having your CIA, your ROI. We're throwing around a lot of acronyms, but really just simplifying it down. We tend to get all the board member input, all the other ideas and people's things but really just coming back to what is our core purpose here and making sure we're ready and know what we're working with and why.
Rachel: 100%. I'm going to wrap us up with our last pre-prepared question for today, and that's going to pitch back to Teresa. We had actually some questions about this in the chat. So I think this will be helpful for some folks.
What are emerging trends in grantseeking or fundraising that seasoned or maybe some of our novice grant writers should be aware of in order to continue to stay competitive?
Teresa: Yes. And of course, we've talked quite a bit about technology. And also, as far as fundraising in general, Matt kind of alluded to some of this earlier too, is just changes in fundraising trends, as far as moving away from big events and galas and some of those heavy lifts into more recurring giving and more of a subscription model. And even some of the research is showing the younger generations want to give. They're just struggling a little bit to figure out where and how. And so, if we can connect the dots, they want to give smaller amounts more often. And so, that's where that shift to that connection and finding that resident point within your mission and what they're looking to do in the space can really help. And then if you have a couple funders drop off at that smaller giving level, you have more funders and that's a solid base. So it's not quite as devastating as if a major donor or if your event shuts down and something like that goes away and you're out a huge chunk of your budget. It's more of that consistent base.
So I really think it's starting to pay attention to those trends as well because that also affects our grantmaking, our overall fundraising, the health of the organization. And as grant writers and experts, we have to look at the overall health too, so that we can understand what are their challenges, how can we better explain those and convey those in our grant applications to make sure it's accurate and staying current with those changing trends. So, I think those are a couple of big ones that we need to pay attention to.
And, I mean, a lot of times, even though my expertise is grant writing, I'm in a lot of conversations about fundraising and strategy as a whole, strategic planning, thinking ahead, thinking about your big goals, and how do these grants fit into that bigger picture. So, we need to really stay in that space too, not just the detailed weeds of Times New Roman 12-point font but also the big picture, where are you going with this thing and how are you building it to last for generations.
Matt: And only I could add to this is, I mean, trends, we need to know the trends. That's really important. But a lot of trends come back to basic, you know, what we always knew worked. Like peer-to-peer campaigns kind of going off a little bit here, but the point is, though, that if you plan a peer-to-peer campaign, like a regular fundraising campaign, you are much more likely to be successful. And it's the same thing with proposal writing. You've got to do the basics regardless of whatever the trend is because we can't rely on technological wizardry or these other things to make that happen. You can't forget about that.
Rachel: Great tidbits. Great insights. I love everything we've already covered, but we also have some questions in the chat that I want to give us time to answer before we wrap today because we've spent a long time together as a group. I appreciate everyone sticking it out.
I'm going to transition us into our live Q&A. I've been compiling the questions that have been added to the chat box. So, I will moderate them live. Matt and Teresa, you can feel free to chime in on these answers, and I'll try and cover things that we haven't already talked about in the chat or in our discussion yet.
The first one here is from Elizabeth. “What do you recommend when a long-term relationship with a funder changes due to things like staff changes or funding pillar changes? How do we get back in the door to build in that reconnection again?”
Matt: Teresa, go ahead. I'll put up whatever you're going to say.
Teresa: Good. Yeah, good question. I think it goes back to leveraging your history with them and leaning into that and using that as a starting point for the conversation and saying, “We have really enjoyed working with you guys for this long. Here are some things we've done. We'd love to meet you, see what your goals are.” And coming at it with an exploratory, curious, collaborative mindset. Not fear of, oh, no, it's the new person. They're going to change everything and cut us off. But instead, just saying, “We have so appreciated working with you guys. We'd love to continue the collaboration now that you're on board. We're excited to hear your ideas.” And keep that conversation going.
And also, just keeping the expectations very loose and open. Hold it with an open hand. Don't be afraid of, oh no, what if they cut us off or change everything. Maybe they do, maybe it won't be the end of the world if that happens, it's okay, but just not approaching it from that scarcity but more of a collaboration. How can we support you in your new role? We'd love to continue this relationship and see how you can keep collaborating together.
Matt: And what I like about what you said is that it’s a whole lot less stressful than the other way of looking at it.
Teresa: Yes.
Matt: And I might only add, try to get an idea of why that change was made. It wasn't made because they are changing priorities or that there's something going on in the funder that you need to know about. Or maybe did the other person move up or move to a better job someplace? You might, even if you have a chance, try to connect to that other person, that is another great reason to have LinkedIn, to get to know the landscape a bit because you can adapt, but the more information you have, it won't be perfect, but you know, that'll be really helpful.
Teresa: Yeah. Yeah. And I'm sure, even coming on board, sometimes they appreciate understanding a little bit of a history of the organization and how you work together. But again, not doing it in a way of here's how we do things here, but more like, “Hey, we're so excited to continue working with you and would love to get to know you and your goals.” you know, coming at it very collaboratively. And I love what you said about staying in touch with the person. Just because they move organizations doesn't mean you can't ever speak to them again. That just helps build your network even further into other places.
Matt: And become a resource, like I said before, to this new person. I mean, especially if they're new in town or something, right? Be helpful to them. Remember, they have a job. They are trying to be successful in their job. You can help them be successful. That will make you stand out.
Teresa: Yes. Great point.
Rachel: Love these. I have a question here about these kinds of generational shifts that are happening within foundations. The question is, has there been a tactical approach that you've seen developed to meet some of these generational shifts that are happening in foundations at this current time? I don't know if either of you kind of have a sense or have your kind of finger on the pulse for that.
Matt: Well, I think it's important to realize, I mean, if we're talking about generational staff or they're talking about generational boards. If it's staff, then, or both as somebody would come up here. I mean, staffing, it's again what we just said, right? New people, understanding where they're coming from, understanding what their background is as opposed to, because it's not going to be the same, they're not going to have the same life experiences. Maybe even connecting somebody. You may not be the best person to connect with them, consider that. Board changes are going to occur more slowly if it's the next generation of a family coming in. You’ve got to look at that. If you have not studied generational wealth patterns, that's important to do. You know, there's this thing that says that somebody will found business and it will be small, the next generation will really explode it out and make it huge, and the third generation wants nothing to do with it and will move away to do other things.
And so, where is that change? Where are they in that cycle of this in the foundation? Are they the founders and then the next group wants to take it out? Or is this a third generation who just wants to do something different because they're tired of hearing the stories from their parents and grandparents?
Teresa: Such a good point. And I love that and what you said, and at the same time, considering based on generation and their communication preferences. I'm seeing that a little bit too of considering, like this one prefers to just send a quick text where that one it's like a phone call or email-only. Like I'm seeing a little bit of that too. And so, being adaptable to that, and also aware of that. Social media, some people think that's rude to reach out; others, that's their go-to preference. And I see a big difference. Yeah.
Matt: Yeah.
Rachel: Yeah, and adapting to that. And I think one thing that we talk about a lot in our programming is also about tailoring some of these communication strategies, depending on which funder you're talking to. I think this applies perfectly well with what you're both sharing, that some are going to have different communication preferences, like how are you documenting that in your CRM or in your grants database or wherever you're keeping track of that information, and then actually adhering to it and encouraging not just yourself, but your colleagues that may be working with these foundations to connect with them in the way that they best prefer or best maybe interact with you.
Matt: Well, the good news is that we have all sorts of communication methods. The bad news is we have all sorts of communication methods.
Rachel: It's a double-edged sword, I would say.
Matt: Nobody just picks up the phone anymore.
Rachel: Yeah. It's, no, totally. Okay. I think we have time for maybe two more questions. Let me see where we get with this one, and we'll see where we land with our time. We're getting a little close.
Miriam had a question about managing expectations, and she's reflecting on a totally new organization with maybe not that much funding history. What should be the expectations regarding kind of getting those first grants? Just I guess a general sense that you can leave folks with that idea of what they should be like sharing with regards to expectations to their leadership.
Teresa: If you don't mind, I'll jump in. I’m glad…
Matt: No, please. Go.
Teresa: I'm glad you brought this one up because I hear it so often, whether it's the nonprofit or the board or someone pushing for grants right off the bat. “Oh, we just started our nonprofit, let's go get grants.” And really, that's one of the later higher-level strategies to work on, not right at the beginning. And so, really clarifying those expectations, building your ROI, making sure you're relevant, you're optimized, and you're interacting so that you can go for grants. But you need to have the program in place, you need to have things running. Grantmakers don't want to be your first dollar or your only dollar. And so, that also is an opportunity, as you're building, to start building relationships with local community foundations and local nonprofits and local giving opportunities through fundraising and smaller grants that helps you get your processes in place, learn, and build the relationships with those so that you can build trust with the funders as well. And then work up to bigger grants. But if you're brand new, I wouldn't worry about grants right off the bat. If you've got board members pushing for that, send them to me and I'll set them straight, and so will Matt, I'm sure. Yeah, that's a common challenge I hear.
Matt: Yeah. You know, I love the idea of starting, like with community foundations because that's what they are for. A lot of them are for grassroots work right there in the community. So that's super.
The other thing I would say is don't lean on your organization's experience, lean on the organization's people experience. So, in other words, you're pulling together a new team for this nonprofit, whatever it is. You know, so and so has this experience. So and so has that experience. Throw out those because you will now, in fact, you'll probably surprise yourself at how much experience you have in the organization, even though, as an organization, you haven't moved forward on some big project. So, yeah, lean into the individuals on your team.
Teresa: Yeah. When I start working with nonprofits to go through and do a diagnostic or audit of other things, they're always sitting on a gold mine of resources that they did not even realize. And things like exactly what you're saying, the experience, the credibility, the skillsets. There's so much there that they're not even talking about or tapping into, when that could be a huge credibility boost.
Rachel: 100%.
Matt: Yeah.
Rachel: Okay. Well, I could probably talk with you all for many more hours. We should start a podcast or something.
Teresa: Should we? Yeah, totally.
Rachel: I love hearing all of this, and I really appreciate both of you taking the time. If folks in the chat can just give a quick thank you to our presenters, Matt and Theresa, for such wonderful insights.
Matt: And now, just I imagine you'll cover this, but just in case, you can get a hold of me on LinkedIn. Just look up Matt Hugg or www.nonprofit.courses, and you want to go grab my newsletter at www.nonprofit.courses. Easy to sign up. And Teresa, I'm sure you have the same.
Teresa: Yup. Same. Find me on LinkedIn or YouTube or Grant Writing Simplified Podcast on any podcast player and shoot me an email, www.teresahuff.com. There's a contact form. So yeah, we'd love to hear from you guys and what you're working on.
Rachel: I’ll definitely share on that. We have an event resources webpage that I send out to everybody afterwards. I'll include all these links to your LinkedIn, to your emails, all that stuff. So, never fear for folks that are looking for that info. I'll make sure to hand that out.
Matt: Happy to hear that.
Rachel: Yeah, of course. Also, I want to wrap up with some fun. We did have some folks that won some raffles during our event today. So I just want to highlight some winners. I'm very excited to announce Sherry Baza. Sherry posted on LinkedIn and she's got a coffee on us. Thank you for sharing some of your key learnings today. Yey, Sherry!
I also have another raffle winner, Roseanne Brown. She also is getting a coffee on us for signing up and testing out Instrumentl today.
Matt: Coffee is good. Hey, coffee makes grants happen.
Rachel: It should be a T-shirt, if it isn't already. And the last winner that I want to announce before we wrap, Kellen Summers is the winner of our office supplies gift box, and Kellen signed up also to check out Instrumentl today. So, congrats to our raffle winners. If you were like, hey, I actually still want to, I want to be eligible for that, I am going to go through and raffle off some more things. We still got that $100 donation to our nonprofit. So the way that you can enter is by signing up for Instrumentl today. I'll drop that link in the chat again. You can share your learnings on LinkedIn. And also, submit your feedback. I love hearing what folks thought of our event today. I know we had a couple of little snags with our technology. So, that is fair. If you are going to report on that, I’ll definitely do that.
Matt: I thought technology was supposed to make our lives easier.
Rachel: That's what we say, Matt, but, you know, sometimes that doesn't happen.
Matt: That was the promise, really.
Rachel: So, I would love to hear what you thought. I'll do a recap session, like a remake session. For folks that missed our first hour, I'll send out information about that to everybody on my list. Thank you again so much for spending time.
As a reminder, we've got a few other things coming up. So, if you want to see what's on the docket, I'll drop a link for our next events. Love seeing your friends in the room as well. And lastly, have a great rest of your Wednesdays. Thanks so much for being here, everybody.
Matt: Bye all!
Teresa: Thank you!
Rachel: Bye Matt. Bye Teresa.
Matt: See you, Teresa. See you, Rachel.
Teresa: This was a lot of fun. Talk to you soon.
Rachel: Thanks everyone. I'll stick around. Like I said, I've got some office hours. I'll hang out. Our presenters, feel free to step out of the room. It’s so great to have you with us today. But anyone that has any questions, I'll use the raise hand feature. You can stick around and ask me any questions that you might have. Otherwise, thanks again for being here. I’ll see you next time.
Matt: Bye!
Rachel: Bye folks!
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