Nia: Everyone and welcome to our event: Are you grant ready? 4 Ways to Identify Your Grant Readiness Profile. Thank you for spending your morning, or your afternoon with us.
This free grant workshop is one of our Instrumentl educational webinars. For those of you who are new to Instrumentl, we're the most loved all-in-one grants platform for grant prospecting, tracking, and management. And we currently help almost 4,000 nonprofits and grant consultants save time in finding and applying for more grants.
Hi, Annie. Hi, Carolyn. Hi, Bridget. Thank you so much for spending your morning or your afternoon with us. It's really nice to see so many of you in here today.
Today's webinar is hosted by Jennifer McKenzie from Organized Synergy, and we'll be diving into ways to assess grant readiness and exploring how your organization's grant architecture can build more intentional strategy and infrastructure to set you up for grant seeking success.
Before we dive into today's content, just a couple things to cover. First, my name is Nia and I'm one of the newest team members here at Instrumentl. I'm an events and community manager. And my job is to develop helpful and educational events to share with our Instrumentl community.
So many of you have attended webinars like this one with my colleague, Rachel. And now, there are two of us. So you'll be seeing a lot more of me over the coming months. Prior to this, I worked at a rainforest conservation and research nonprofit building events like the annual World Rainforest Day summit. This is one of my first events with Instrumentl. And it's so exciting to already see so many familiar names in the chat box. Thank you so much for being with us. And if this is your first Instrumentl event, welcome.
And I'm so excited that you get to share it with me. Some quick FYI about today's event. It is about an hour long. This includes the presentation and then a live Q&A at the end. So feel free to ask questions in the chat box as they come up, and we will circle back to them before we wrap up.
This event is being recorded. So you'll get the recording and slides delivered straight to your inbox after the event. I want to make sure you feel free to take care of your personal needs during our event. So if it's grabbing a quick snack or stepping away for a break, you do you. We'll be right here. And we do have closed captions enabled. So if you'd like to read along, you can toggle those on in your Zoom settings. And I want to call out that in about 3 weeks, we're hosting the Nonprofit Growth Summit to explore indicators of high performing nonprofits and strategies you can apply to your own organizations to scale impact. Registration is free if you invite two colleagues. And so, spots are filling up really fast. I would urge you to register sooner, rather than later. Just to secure your spot, I'll remind you again at the end of today's event.
And lastly, make sure you stick it out till the end because everyone who fills out our post event feedback form today will get entered into an exciting raffle.
And with that, I'm excited to introduce today's speaker. Jennifer McKenzie, as the managing partner of Organized Synergy. Jennifer leads a team of experts specializing program design, grant writing, and impact measurement. They empower organizations to move away from doing more with less to a more sustainable funding model.
Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us. You have a presentation that is packed with insights. And I'm excited to get to it. So I'm just going to turn it over to you.
Jennifer: All right. Great. Good afternoon. I think the hardest part of the presentation is done, which is getting situated with technology. But I'm so grateful to be here.
Thank you Instrumentl for giving us the space to share a little bit more about our philosophy and, really, my experience. So like they shared, I have been in this space. Right now, we are Organized Synergy.
We're a consult firm, but have 10 years in the nonprofit space serving as an executive director, an associate vice president, and now a consultant. Over the last decade, I've been able to raise $10 million for nonprofit organizations. And we're really excited to share the three things that we learned in this space, as well as what our design is to getting people to more sustainable funding.
So that being said, please bear with me as I -- my clicker to work here.
All right. So today, we're going to be working on something called Ready, Set, Grant. And because it is the Olympic season, or at least the end of it, I wanted to kind of take some philosophies from performance athletes and really think about this from the perspective of getting fit for funding. So like I shared about my experience in this nonprofit space, I have the perspective of an executive director. I have the perspective of a great writer, and also have the perspective of a consultant. So I'm going to be bringing all three of those perspectives to this conversation today.
But before I jump into that, I want to kind of get a good sense for who's currently in the room, what perspectives are you bringing so that we can make sure that we're sharing things that are relevant for the role that you're currently playing. So it looks like we have in-house grant writers. We have some current grant consultants, definitely development teams, which we work with, and then some nonprofit leaderships. And I can imagine, some of you are probably thinking like, "Well, I'm nonprofit leadership, but I'm also the person that writes grants as well." That's totally okay. Don't feel like you have to pick between the hats that you're wearing.
I know that when I was in this space. I definitely couldn't pick the hat. So the one that's most relevant for you today, the one that you are bringing to this space is great. We'll give a couple more seconds. I know there's a couple people that are still responding.
Okay. Great. It looks like we have mostly grant writers and grant consultants.
All right. So the three things that we're going to be really getting into is, one, I want to share with you from my perspective as an executive director, as a consultant, and as a grant writer, I want to share the three pillars or the three things that we found in common between all of the grants that we were able to write and successfully secure.
We're also going to talk about why some organizations thrive in the grant market, as well as why some others might be struggling. And we want to see if you can identify yourself somewhere in that space. And the third thing we're going to talk about and the thing we're going to spend the most time on is becoming fit for funding.
Next slide.
All right. So as I shared, we were able to raise $10 million over the last 10 years. But I also was responsible for designing programs. And we served about 7,000 individuals across my time as an executive leader. So I have experience working small teams from two individuals and a volunteer force of about 150 to large nonprofits that have about 110 employees, as well as some very complex structures as it relates to partnerships. And then a new kind of like way in working in this space as we're figuring out how to not duplicate services and not work in an oversaturated market is really building collaboratives that allow us to operate in the space that we're most gifted in and the place that we're most effective in.
And so, I want to bring those perspectives into this space as I share more. Next slide. All right. So the first thing that I will share as the thing that I believe most of the grants had in common was strong relationships. And the thing that we like to share with our clients is that no well-written grant is going to trump a well-developed relationship. So what does that mean? That means that you can have two executive directors. One has spent a lot of time perfecting the grant, perfecting the way that they are communicating their program model in written form, which is amazing. We have to do that in order to get money. And we have another executive director that has really spent the bulk of their time building the relationship and building rapport with their funders.
And so, if you can click maybe advance two times. Thank you.
So what we found is that relationships obviously are the key. We're not going to spend a lot of time here because we have some experts in the room. And we know that relationships are important. But one of the things that I think people who are new to the space don't understand and get is that you can have a mediocre grant and the funder will circle back with you and tell you what things they want you to change, what things they might want you to refine.
If an organization is interested in funding you, they will find a way to fund you. Whereas if you spend a lot of time writing the grant and you haven't done the relationship development, there's not a lot of room in there to get you -- to give you an edge.
You can advance it to the next slide. Thank you. And then these are some tips and tricks you can keep going. These are some tips and tricks that we'll share with you in the presentation once you receive the slides.
Next slide.
The second thing that nonprofits have been effective, at least in my experience, in receiving grants have been the program design. So the program design is really about how do you demonstrate how you're going to get from intention to implementation to impact. And so, in my experience, having taken the time to really think about how are you going to structure it, how -- what resources do you need, what are your core activities and what are your key outcomes, taking the time to work on the design.
What's the way that they say that, you know, you want to measure twice and cut once. And I think it's the same concept here when we're thinking about how are you going to design, how are you going to articulate it so that you're not taking the time, at least in my experience in working with nonprofits, where we are writing to the funder versus writing to our strengths.
And I think when you have a program design, it gives us an opportunity to do that. The third thing is having a compelling narrative. Or this is where we spend the bulk of our time on grant writing.
Next slide.
The bulk of our time is going to be spent on grant writing. Here's what I know. If your program design is not well-developed. You can advance it six times. I think there's -- your program design is not well-developed. There's only so much you're going to be able to articulate in your actual grant proposal.
I believe that you can only really write a good grant if your program itself is well-designed. And so, with those three things, next slide,
Next slide.
And then advance it three times. Sorry, guys. Thank you, guys, for hanging in here. So what I understand is that there are for every award that we were able to receive, there were three things that we had in common. There were strong relationships. There was a good program design and, of course, we were able to articulate that in our grant proposal.
We're going to spend a lot of our time next slide. We're going to spend a lot of our time today talking about the program design. But until we do that, let's think about there are three different types of organizations that we have seen within our organization today.
Type C are really those organizations that are struggling to launch and to sustain themselves. That's usually because they have some relationships, but those relationships don't necessarily turn into insights about how should they be refining their proposal, what are the things that that funder cares about. And not the funder as an organization, but the funder as an individual. You know, I remember, you know, working with, you know, an organization that was specifically focused on youth and foster care and taking the time to meet with the funder to understand what they cared about. And they were doing a lot of research. They were doing a lot of charettes on resiliency.
Well, yeah, our organization had a program that was focused on adverse child experiences and understanding how youth can respond to those. But we weren't necessarily using the terminology "resiliency and agency." It wasn't until we met with that particular funder, and they were sharing all the research that they were doing. They were sharing a lot of the community development and work that they were doing around resiliency. So, of course, I took that information back. I figured out how do we leverage the same type of information and insights and data that they're using and build that into our program design, and then share that back with the funder.
So by the time the RFP came out we had re-written our program design not to get the funding, but to make sure that the way that we are articulating our model, the way that we were articulating our impact was aligned with what that funder was intending to see in the community. And so, after we made those changes, we were awarded as six figure grants over multi-years, which is the best type of funding. We all know that, right?
Best type of funding is multi-year funding. But all of that to say, it was through that relationship that we were able to understand how the funders saw that problem, but also how the funder was leveraging data to understand the solution. And so, we articulated our program a little bit differently. And we were successful in receiving funding.
I would say Type C organizations also have a program design. But they don't necessarily have a mechanism for measuring their impact and showing how that impact is leading to an ultimate community change. And so, I would say that those types of organizations typically receive pilot funding, they receive startup funding. But they're very hard. It's very hard to find funding that's going to sustain their operations because their operations aren't very well-designed.
Type B organizations are what we consider Treading Water. These are organizations that are living really grant check to grant check, and they have relationships. They are being invited to submit requests. They have long-standing relationships with the funders, but their program design is also inadequate. Inadequate in the sense that it focuses a lot on the activities that they're doing. So they might be able to say yes we serve 150 individuals or a thousand individuals. They might be able to say, "Yes, we've been able to deliver, you know, 18 workshops. So it's really numbers based and output based, but not necessarily focusing on the outcomes themselves.
How did that change the community that you're working? And how did that change the lives of the individuals that you're working with? And so, Type C organizations typically don't have the mechanism in place to really speak to the impact of their programs. I would say the third thing would be their grant proposals. Their grant proposals are receiving some level of funding, but they don't really demonstrate the value to the community. They're not really speaking to the social return on investment for the community or for that particular funder. And so, those types of organizations, they receive just enough to get by, but not enough to scale their operations.
Type A organizations are typically those that you see that have very, very strong relationships and they're strong because the funder is sharing insights with that organization. The organization has -- is the go-to for insights of what's happening on the ground, which is the best, right? You're considered a thought partner with your funder.
I would say their program designs are very well-developed, not only have they been able to articulate how they're going to get from intention, to implementation, to impact. But they also have been able to articulate what their overall evaluation model is, what are the tools, what is the evidence that they are -- that what is the evidence that they are able to make good on their brand promise. And so, I would say Type A organizations are certainly thriving and scaling. And that's if they want to scale. Not every organization wants to scale. They have the opportunity to, right? They're not living grant check to grant check. And so, I would like to take some time to see who do we have in the room.
Type C organizations are those that are considered struggling to launch or sustaining. Maybe you were able to get some initial funds in the door but you're kind of struggling and figuring out, "Okay. How do I get funders to continue to sustain our operations?" Maybe you're Type B organization where, "Yeah, you're getting money, but it's not enough," and you're living grant check to grant check. Or you are a Type A organization where you really are thriving, you're scaling, you have a good team, you have a good culture, and you have the money in the bank to do the necessary investments and development to meet the needs of the community.
All right. So it looks like we have a good portion of the room are going to be Type B, which is, you know, what we see all the time. Type B organizations. And so, I would say just hold on. We're going to kind of get into the four things that we believe are really relevant to your organization to take you from being a Type B organization to a Type A organization. And those Type C organizations, I think you're going to learn a lot through this process and the things that we know work.
Okay. So, what have we shared so far? We've shared that, you know, for every award, there are three things that our organizations have in common. They have strong relationships. They have strong program designs, and they also have really good grant proposals. But you have to be able to get to the grant proposal stage. And a lot of it is through relationships and having a good program design.
We also talked about the three different types of organizations: Type C, Type B, Type A. We have a lot of Type Bs in the room. And again, that's also based off of the level and your strength of your relationships, the strength of your proposals and also the strength of your program model. So with that being said, we're going to jump right back in. So what do each of these individuals that you see in this picture have in common?
And you can't say an Olympic medal. That doesn't count. That's not the question there. But I want you to really look at them and think, "What is the thing that each of these ladies have in common?" Yes. I see strong core. I see fit. I love that. Right. Drive and determination, work ethic, a good foundation.
Okay. All right. Good. So this analogy won't be lost on you, guys. I definitely appreciate it. Practice, practice, practice. That's good as well. All these are great. And I'm sure that these are certainly it.
So lately, what I've been doing is I've been watching a lot of Netflix. I've been binging for some reason, performance sports, athletes, right? So I've watched Simone Biles rising, which is an excellent docu series about her journey and her getting the twisties. Also, I watched SPRINT with Sha'Carri Richardson. And then there's also a couple of NFL ones on there. So one is called receiver and quarterback. Now, I'm not a sports person. I mean I was a cheerleader in high school and I dance. But beyond that, I'm not a sports person. And I can really appreciate the performance athlete, right? That's really focused on building strength in their area and building performance in their area.
And so, one of the things that I found across all the performance athletes is that they have a strong core, right? And so, as I was thinking about the analogy of what a core allows you to do because you don't even really think about that, right? You think about, you know, your legs are going to make you run really fast, right? If you're lifting weights, you're going to be really strong. Like, this is great. Right?
But at the end of the day, you know, what we end up finding is that in a nonprofit organization, if we use the body as an example, right, the relationships will be the lifting that you do with your arms. I would say your proposals is, the running that you do with your legs, but your program design, your program model is your core. It's the thing that allows you to be able to move fast efficiently, and it allows you to be effective. It allows you to gain overall performance. And so, this is where we're going to spend all of our time for the rest of this afternoon.
But before we jump into the program model, I want to talk about why it's important as you think about all of your different stakeholder groups. So from a funder's perspective, you know, having your logic model is going to really inspire confidence within them, right? Your funders want to know that you are the person to get the job done. And the best way to articulate that you can get the job done is have a clear pathway from moving from what the community issues are and your ability to achieve the results that you're promising in your brand promise.
From a staffing perspective, you know, your program model allows you to understand their contribution. And for them to understand their contribution -- and you'll see a little bit more about what we mean by that.
But as you think about how their activities connect with the overall outcomes -- especially in the nonprofit space, a lot of us come to this space because we're passionate and we want to help people. Well, you have to show a pathway for how they're going to be able to do that within your organization. From a board's perspective, I'll skip that just because they're not necessarily focused on a program level. But you can see how the program model also can be looked as your organizational model.
And that's where your board is going to come into play. From a partnership perspective, it helps you to be able to identify where do you need the most support. In activating your mission, where do you need the most support in creating wraparound services? And so, it allows you to look at your entire model and to see where maybe your local, you know, urban league or your local united way might come into play to be able to support your organization. And, of course, the program participants. It helps you to really think about and to manage expectations.
A lot of times, we make a lot of promises in a nonprofit space about, you know, maybe in a workforce development space we're going to place you in a job. Well, at the end of the day, it's really a lot of what the individual is going to bring to the table and their ability to get placed in a job. Your organization can certainly help to increase their knowledge, increase their skills and actually make the connection points. But having a clear program model allows you to make the right types of promises.
All right. So we're going to get right into it. There are four aspects to your program model. There's your mission impact model. There's your evaluation framework. There's your revenue model and your sustainability plan. So we're going to spend most of our time talking about those four aspects. So for your mission impact model, let me see kind of like in the chat who here has a written logic model? Like, you've taken the time, you guys maybe worked with the consultant. Maybe you worked internally with your team. Yes. Oh, yes. We love a good logic model. So, this is great.
And I'm glad to see that a lot of you have logic models. What we've done in our organization is we try to think about the logic model in action, right? So I remember working with an organization. They had 27 different programs that we needed to redesign with them. And so, we needed to um invite them into that process. And the logic model as it was currently designed can be a really difficult -- thank you. It could be a really difficult and overwhelming document to look at. It's taking your entire organization your entire program and putting it on one page.
And so, your traditional logic model has your inputs. So inputs typically are going to be things like what human resources do you need, what are your facility needs or what supplies and materials do you need? And, of course, what type of financial resources do you need. So, that's going to be all of your inputs. Whereas your activities in the traditional logic model, it typically just focuses on your direct activities.
And so, that might be the number of workshops that you're delivering. It might be the number of meals that you're delivering to individuals in your space. But it doesn't really speak to your support activities, which we think is critical. We know that without proper planning, without proper coordination none of those activities get done well. And so, in our space, key activities really are both your support activities and those things that you were doing directly with your program beneficiaries. And then your outputs are exactly that how many people -- how often, how much, and then your outcomes are typically built into three different spaces. There's your immediate outcomes, which are the things that your organization can do -- can specifically take advantage of. These are -- or your organization specifically have control over. So this is going to be -- we help to, you know, increase the reading score of third graders, right?
I would definitely say that those are things that you're going to be mostly responsible for. Whereas your immediate outcomes are going to be those things that are -- that takes the free will of the individuals that you're supporting for them to achieve their particular outcomes. So, that might be mean that, you know, if you are building a workforce development program that's designed to increase someone's skill in a skilled trade, well, that's great. They have the skills, but they still need to be able to go out and get a job. And so, they need to be able to interview well. And they also need to be able to network well, right, and also do a good job so they can keep the job.
And then, of course, your long-term impact is going to be your ability to sustain that change over time with a larger group of individuals. What we've added on the mission impact model though is starting with, what are the barriers, the problems and issues that your organization is designed to solve? That's the reason for your existence. That's the reason why your organization does what it does every single day.
And so, it has to be incorporated in what you do so that your team doesn't lose track of why we're doing this work in the first place and lose track of the real core issues that exist within the community so that we can look and say, "Are these activities actually changing those issues? Is it really making an impact within the community?" And, of course, we added the mission itself.
A lot of times, we have organizations that are engaging in this work and they end up in mission creep. I think the mission impact model allows you to ensure that you're staying on track and you're doing the things that your organization does well. And your organization is funded to do and intends to do. The next element is your evaluation plan.
And in our experience, there are kind of two things to think about with your evaluation plan. There is the tracking and then there's the tools. So from a tracking perspective, we want to be able to track the program performance. So the program performance is literally, did you do what you said you were going to do? You were contractually obligated to provide 18 workshops. Did you provide 18 workshops?
You were contractually obligated and a grant is a contract, right? You were contractually obligated to support a thousand individuals or 100 individuals. Did you serve a thousand people? Did you serve a 100 people? So really, just getting to the core of, "Did you do what you said you were going to do?" Where's the results? Are mostly focused on your outcomes, right? If you said that you that -- if we did these three activities, then we -- then individuals are going to become more self-sufficient, then you have to have a mechanism to see that your efforts led to that outcome.
And then the third thing is mostly focused on a participant satisfaction. And I think that's one of the things that a lot of organizations miss. They're not really thinking about their overall impact on how people might be perceiving their program or the participants referring them to other participants. So a lot of organizations, they're getting paid to support individuals, but they might have an issue with recruiting people to participate in their program. And sometimes what we do is we'll change our activities. We'll try to do a lot of marketing. But we really didn't get at why aren't people coming back or people may be enrolling in your program, but they're not completing your program. And so, doing, you know, evaluation on the satisfaction of your participants helps you to be able to see where there may be a breakdown, perhaps in expectations or in their experience.
And so, those three things together is what creates a really good measurement framework. And then the fourth thing is around tools. So in my experience, I've been with organizations that have tried to create their own individual tools, right? They create their own assessments. And all that's great. And sometimes it's necessary.
But what I found to be most effective when you're trying to seek grant funding is to meet with the funder to see what tools do they recommend? If you are operating in a youth workforce development space, are there any tools that allow you to track workforce readiness? And if so, perhaps using those tools so that those tools allow you to benchmark your performance against what other organizations may be providing in the field. And it's a way to really just gain credibility and authority in the space very quickly. This next space is considered -- let's call it a revenue model.
But I'm going to talk a lot about the program budget. So a lot of organizations have multiple types of funders. And so, this is where your braid funding comes into play. But -- and we won't talk a lot about that today. But we will talk about budgets. And it's important to note that we can understand an organizational budget includes your revenue, your expenses very, very broadly. And then your grant budget is typically going to be really specific to that grant. What revenue are you generating from that particular grant? How are those resources going to be used? And a lot of times grant funders might also ask, "Who else is supporting your organization?" So generally, they want to know what your other revenue sources are. But that's probably about as deep as they go.
What I found in the grant space is having a program level budget has been game-changing, a program level budget, yes, it has revenue. Yes, it has your expenses, and it also identify your revenue sources. But it also identifies what expenses are directly tied to that specific funder. So let's say you have your professional services line. You have your personnel line. You have your supplies and resources line.
Well, you want to be able to say, "For Funder A, Funder B, and Funder C, who's paying for which aspect of that grant? And then what it will also help you to see is that there is a miss or there is a gap in your funding. And so, maybe you're really, really heavy and having a lot of resources that are going toward, you know, professional services or personnel. But you don't have enough money to cover your administrative line item, or you have enough money to cover your supplies and materials but you don't have enough money to cover your professional services. And so, you want to be able to have a way to see where there are funding gaps within your specific program.
And you can't do that by looking at an organizational level budget because it's too broad. And you can't do that by looking at a grant level budget because it's too narrowly focused on this specific grant. And so, a program level budget allows you to see the program in its fullness and allows you to see what resources are currently being used, what resources are needed.
So I remember working with an organization and they had, you know, a lot of funding sources for one specific program. And they were overallocated in some spaces and under-allocation in others to the tune of they had allocated $220,000 in supplies for this program. That program didn't need $20,000 in and supplies. But because they kept just writing grant level budgets, they weren't able to see that, "Wait a minute, this line item is overallocated." I would like to see here who all has developed program level budgets in your operations? You can put that in the chat. That's great.
Who hasn't done a program level budget? I also hate budgets too, Angeley. It's not my favorite part of the job. But I do recognize in having that budget, it allows you to have a really good conversation. I see some yeses. I see some nos. I also see some questions. I see that there's a struggle. And I would say, in our experience, spending time on the budget, really, you should be spending more time on the budget than you're spending on the actual grant proposal. And the reason for that is we are asking for money. So we need to know how much do we need and from whom, right?
And it sounds, you know, counterintuitive to those who are currently doing budgets. And you guys are probably doing a great job. But as you can see that there are other people who aren't necessarily building their budgets in that way. So I would say spend that much time on your budget, and I would say, early on, I would spend four to six hours very easily just on the budgeting process being very clear about what the resources are. Because ultimately, when you go back to your logic model or your emission impact model in that section that talks about inputs, right?
So your human resources, which would be your personnel, your supplies and materials, the supplies and materials, right? Those things also show up in your program level in your mission impact model. And so, you can see how your program model and your budget go hand in hand. If you can't see the connection point between those two things, your funder also will not be able to see the connection point between those two things. And so, it's really critical to get clear in that space.
The next and the last thing that we are going to share is around our sustainability plan. We work a lot of with organizations now who are looking for as many grant opportunities as possible, as many funders as possible, right? And what we learned is having a targeted fundraising action plan or targeted prospecting list helps out a lot.
And this targeting prospected list is based off of two things: their current relationship status with funders in their space and their accessibility to funders. Target prospecting is just a way to take a lot of grand opportunities and narrow it down to the best fit opportunities for either your organization or the organization that you're working with if you're a consultant. And so, I would say that there's four different aspects to this work. It's tier one. It's considered existing funding. We want to know who's currently funding you because we know that you've struck gold.
And if you've ever watch any cartoons, if you struck gold in one place, you keep digging to see if there's more gold there. And so, identifying who your existing funders are as a starting point is great. These are going to be the individuals that you have a great relationship with already. They believe in your work. They believe in your leadership, right? But there's also the greatest opportunity for renewing that grant or increasing the amount that they're giving you.
The next one will be considered best fit funders. These are organizations or funders that are potential funders for you. These are going to be people that you've already had conversations with, that they show up in the same space, you attend the same conferences. You've had a couple of coffees maybe to share a little bit more about your organization. They're asking good questions. They're interested in your work. They're just not quite there ready to make an investment. And maybe you haven't made the ask yet. I think some funders are waiting for you to make the ask. Sometimes when we're operating in this space, we just hope that someone's going to know that we need money. But it doesn't necessarily work like that.
So, I would say that those are tier two. And then tier three are considered good fit funders. And they're considered proximal because these are funders that are in your local space, right? They are accessible. You can go to their office. If you wanted to, they have information sessions. They host open houses.
So there's an opportunity to get to know them. There's an opportunity to connect with them. And if they're online, they post posted their grant's officer. You have access to their telephone number, their email address. They're interested in hearing from you. They're interested in learning about other organizations and what they're doing in the space. So, those are considered proximal funders.
And then your long-shot funders. These are going to be the funders that are mission aligned. Yes, they might say that they fund education, but they're not specifically funding things like early childhood education, which might be the focus of your organization. They also are going to be the ones that have not posted any contact information. In fact, it feels like a really huge virtual closed door. And they also say that we absolutely will not talk to anyone. It's invite only and you won't even know who we are. We don't list the individuals. You don't know who's behind our foundation. These are considered, I would say, long shot.
Other long shot funders would be national funders that don't necessarily have a direct focus in your local area. So the way that we have -- thank you. The way that we have leverage Instrumentl, Instrumentl has been great in our consulting business. A lot of organizations come to us for grant writing. And they may not necessarily have existing relationships and they may not necessarily have a -- not just great relationships, but they just don't have a good sense of what the market is. They know that there's grant opportunities out there, but they don't necessarily know how to find them. And so, of course, Instrumentl has been great in helping us to identify those mission-aligned funders with organizations.
I've given you a sample here. This obviously isn't our current deck. But I want to give you an example of what we were able to do with Instrumentl in our space. One is we upgraded last -- probably -- we got the tool a while ago. I think we upgraded maybe about two months ago because what we found kind of going back to our targeting and our targeted prospecting list, we wanted to have a way to create a tracking mechanism that aligned with our strategy and our approach. So our strategy in our approach, of course, helps us to identify who are the existing funders, best fit funders, good fit funders, and long shot funders. And so, when we are reflecting this work back to our clients, we want to be able to see what that looks like within Instrumentl and then turn that into a usable report for our clients.
And so, our clients typically see, "Okay. We've been able to -- while there are, yes, 300 grand opportunities out there that are interested generally in the work that you do, here are 47 prospects that have been identified specifically for you and then here's how they rank."
We were able to see that there are seven organizations currently that are funding you. But we would say that, you know, there's a good mix in the middle between tier one and tier two. So your potential funders and your local funders, that would be a good fit for you to start building relationships, reach out to them, ask questions, share more about your program model, see what things resonate with them, see what things don't necessarily resonate with them. And then long shot funders, we include that in there just because we know a lot of organizations are interested in national funders.
But we want to make sure that we manage their expectations. And so, yes, we put it out there, but we want them to know that it's going to be a long shot and there's some work yet to be done.
So as I wrap up here, I'll share briefly about Organized Energy. We provide strategic planning to organizations helping them to build out their program models. So their mission impact model, their evaluation plan, their revenue models working on those budgets that people hate. I saw that in the chat. And the sustainability model. We certainly help organizations through that process building out their program designs and development, and, of course, focusing on grant readiness, which at the core of grant readiness is your program design.
Please stay in touch.
This is my LinkedIn profile. I look forward to learning a little bit more about what your organization does, and how you guys might be leveraging Instrumentl in your practice.
Nia: Thank you, Jennifer.
So many valuable insights in that presentation. We do have some questions that I want to get to in just a moment. But before I do that, I want to do a quick share out in case folks haven't had the opportunity to hear about Instrumentl yet.
If you're a nonprofit, you're probably applying for and maybe even winning and managing grants. And so, with Instrumentl, you can do a lot of that work faster. You can find better fit grants and win more of them. You can explore new funders, manage your opportunities and collaborate with your team all in one place. So, there are a lot of reasons to give it a try.
Folks estimate that they save between 3 and 15 hours per week using Instrumentl. A lot of that is because Instrumentl does the work for you by matching you with best fit opportunities tailored to your mission and needs. If you're looking for funding for capital projects for Habitat for Humanity, for example, I know we have someone in the audience from there. Or if you're looking to fund education programs for a school district, you can let Instrumentl know and it'll pull a list for you. And all of that is sourced from our database of over 19,000 active public and private funding sources.
We have an incredible team of grant builders, and they're adding about 150 opportunities every week. So, there are constantly new grants for you to review. So if you haven't had the opportunity to explore Instrumentl, I highly encourage you to do so. And you should definitely take advantage of the discount code from Organized Synergy on top of that special link to save on your first month. So, make sure you save this code to reference later.
When you click on that link and you go into Instrumentl, you'll be almost instantly matched with best fit opportunities. So you can see here I got about 300 funding opportunities after answering just a couple questions about my nonprofit and our ongoing projects. And there's also a tracker to save and stay updated with relevant opportunities. And you can bring in any grants you're tracking outside of Instrumentl too so it all lives in one place.
So if you're applying for or managing grants, this is a tool to make your life just a little bit or maybe a lot easier. And with that, let's see what we have here. Let's just start with the most recent one that I see. Kate is asking, "When you suggest reaching out, as a grant consultant, I ask my client organizations to do that so the relationships are theirs, not mine. However, I often get pushback. What is your advice?"
Jennifer: Oh, man. We get this a lot. Thank you for asking that, Kate. We get this a lot. And even when we're upfront with them and we share that the relationships are theirs and not ours, we still get pushback.
And so, our team, what we'll do is we'll build resources for them. So Audrey's currently on the call right now. She'll build out, you know, some scripts. She'll build out the -- she'll build out the email campaigns. So, we'll share a lot of useful information that they can use. A lot of them are just hesitant, I would say, in reaching out. And so, we provide them with tools that they can leverage so they feel more confident in doing the reach out.
But then in terms of the direct pushback, the way that I share it is that we are a lot of times building relationships with funders based off of relationships that we have with our clients. And so, it would be inappropriate and a conflict of interest for us to be introducing Client B to Client A's contact. And a lot of times, organizations tend to understand that and get that. And so, maybe that's something that you can kind of share is just they don't understand necessarily the nature of what they're asking and how that might be perceived. And if they thought about it from their own perspective, like, they don't want us reaching out to funders that we connected with on their behalf right through their network to connect them with another client.
And so, a lot of times, they would typically get that.
Nia: That's a really good point, Jennifer. Thank you for diving into that. I think I want to just go off of that same answer. You talked a lot about the importance of cultivating those relationships with funders for your targeted prospecting plan. The best potential funders that you had in there are those that you have connections with or you have met with. And I know this is a super broad question. But I always like to hear what different experts have to say about this. But do you have some tips that you've seen nonprofits really find success with in this stage of cultivating those relationships?
Jennifer: Yeah. So I would say, if you're early stage nonprofit organization -- and again, I hate to kind of go back to the program design, but it really is a key and it's been core to our success. I think mapping out what your program design is -- and it doesn't have to be in the way that we talked about it. But definitely being clear about what is that you're trying to accomplish and what your ultimate goal is and your, you know, what are your outcomes. Yes. And what are your outputs? And then going to funders and having a conversation with them. "Hey, we're thinking about this." Or, "This is what we do in our space." And I would ask the funders for just insights, you know. What are you seeing in this space? What are some nonprofits that we should be meeting with? What research are you guys using? You know, what conferences should we attend?
I think having the conversations with the funder, that's not about money. And inviting them in to be a thought partner with you as you are thinking about your program design, as you are thinking about collective action in your space. Funders love that, right?
In my experience in doing that, I know the reason why I got early funding as a relatively new nonprofit was because we took -- we went to the funder and we invited them into our process. And they became a strategic thought partner and they saw their thoughts and their ideas show up in our implementation and our design of our strategies and our programs. And so, they had a vested interest in the work that we were doing.
And then, they therefore funded us.
Nia: Yeah, that's so true. Rachel put in the chat what you said about having conversations that are not about the money. I know from my nonprofit days, that was a really big one for us in cultivating those long-term relationships with funders was keeping those relationships going even when we're not actively seeking a grant.
We do have another question. So I've had a number of NGO clients asking recently about grants for infrastructure. For example, to build a school or community center in rural Guatemala. I've very rarely looked at grants for building infrastructure. Have you seen that many grant funders are open to funding this? Or do they need to be raising money from other types of donors?
Jennifer: Oh, that's a great question. That's a great question.
I would say capital building grants or capital grants or capacity building grants are really limited in the space. Most of the grant opportunities are going to be for direct programs. Very limited on administration and even more limited on capital. So a lot of organizations are building their capital campaign. And this is where I think the braided funding model comes into play.
If you can demonstrate that you were able to leverage and bring in maybe some private dollars, you can usually then go to government resources and invite them to match whatever that particular organization or what your campaign was able to develop. We don't have a lot of experience in capital campaigns. But from the ones that we've seen just as being in the space, that's typically what we see. But our organization doesn't do capital campaigns.
Nia: Yeah. And I can actually add something to that, the second part of that question was, does Instrumentl have a filter for this and its grant search capabilities? And we actually do. When you set up your project, you can search specifically by capital projects or or really any other type.
So if you're looking for education funding, for example. But, yeah, capital projects is one of those filters. So, you can search specifically by that. And I know that's been one that comes up time and time again. That is notoriously pretty hard to find funding for.
So there is that filter, which hopefully makes it a little bit easier. And I want to do just one final question here because I know we're coming up on time. How do you open these conversations? So those funder cultivation conversations with cold calls emails on the phone, et cetera.
Jennifer: Yeah. No. That's great.
So, I see there's kind of two things. There's, like, how do you open this conversation? And then the question is like is it cold calling? Well, I think there's kind of like two ways to think about it. So as you think about your breakdown or your targeted prospecting and you're focusing on, you know, those organizations that you don't have a relationship with. Somebody has a relationship with them.
And so, this is where you leverage your board. This is where you leverage some community connectors. So, like, for and us here locally, we have something called the human service chamber, right? And so, I think identifying those funders and then going into your network and asking.
If you have a board, share your list with them, you know. Who do you know that's in this space? And can you can you do an email intro? So I think finding other points of connection and using the network effect works really well. Cold calling, yes. I have done cold calling really early on. I'm typically finding something that is of interest to me that they did that's not grant related. So if they published a recent report or if they -- if they hosted a recent event, like, I'm reaching out to say like,"Hey, I'm really interested in the work that you did in X," right? You've recently produced a report on middle skill jobs in, you know, in the midwest, right? I love to talk to you about that. And so, that way you create the space to talk about something that they're interested in talking about. And then you can always have a "by the way." So I never, you know, recommend just kind of going in cold calling, "Hey, what grants do you have available? Can we submit a grant?" That's not a way to build a relationship.
So the same way you would build a relationship, I think, with any any organization find something that is of interest to you and then reach out. I have a friend that's an expert at networking. And one of the things that he says to me is, "It's more important to be interested than it is to be interesting." And so, I would think about it from that perspective too. What are the things that you were uniquely interested in that that organization does or that funder does? And I would use that as a pathway to building relationship and building rapport.
Nia: All right. Thank you, Jennifer.
That was a really robust set of takeaways. And a lot here that I think folks can take back to their teams and really start applying to strengthen their core in your words. I appreciate so much you taking the time to join us here today. And also everybody who joined us for the event. Really good discussions in the chat box and also in this Q&A. So, thank you everyone.
With that, I'm going to wrap us up. We'd love to hear your feedback on this program. We'll drop a link for that in the chat. This is a great way for us to get a sense of how you enjoyed today's event and things you'd love to learn more about in the future.
And as a reminder, everyone who fills out this form will be entered into today's raffle. I'll announce the winner in our post event email that will go out in a couple days. And lastly, just a reminder to register for the Nonprofit Growth Summit coming up, we'll be exploring actionable strategies to take your nonprofit to the next level and set yourself up for success in the remainder of 2024 and also going into the New Year. We'll have panel discussions, hands-on workshops, networking, a lot of exciting industry leaders speaking across all of those events. So you can hear directly from people who are finding success in their missions. This event will sell out. So I encourage you to register sooner rather than later.
And on that note, it was lovely to see you all this afternoon. Thank you again to Jennifer and Organized Synergy for sharing so much knowledge with us. Don't forget to use their promo code and try out Instrumentl for yourself. Feel free to reach out with any questions, and I hope you have a fantastic rest of your Thursday.
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