Rachel: All right. Thanks again for participating in our intro poll. I'm going to get us started with our presentation today. We are having a really fun program for you this morning. We're talking about Getting Your Board On Board: 5 Tips to Double Your Funding. And I've got some really special guests joining us today, so that's an extra perk for me, a couple of special people that I'll introduce in just a moment.
For our first-timers, this is a free grants workshop from one of our Instrumentl educational webinar series. We're currently running this Grantseeker Growth Course. These are multi-part series in which we talk about different grantseeking topics related to our grantseeking community.
So, today, we are diving in on engaging with our board and leadership. For those of you who are new to Instrumentl, we’re the most loved all-in-one grants platform for grant tracking, prospecting, and management. We currently help more than 3,500 nonprofits and grant consultants save time in finding and applying for more grants.
Many of you know this spiel already, but just in case you're new here, I'm Rachel from Instrumentl. I'm the Events and Community Manager here, and my job is to put on fun events and educational events like this one. So, I have a decade plus of experience in the nonprofit sector, specifically in museums, and I'm based in Los Angeles, California.
I'm also excited to bring on a friend of mine, a friend and colleague, Alia, who I'm going to actually allow to introduce herself. So, if you want to pop on the screen for a sec, Alia, I'll go ahead and spotlight you so folks can see you.
Alia: Thank you, Rachel. I'm really happy to join. This is definitely a topic that's close to my heart. So, I'm Alia, I've been at Instrumentl about two years and my background is in the healthcare fundraising space. So, almost everyone at our company came from fundraising. So, I think it's a little bit easier for us to know what your day is like and some of the challenges that you're facing. So, really excited to be a part of this program and hopefully chat with some of you later on about your grant strategy.
Rachel: Yey! Yes, I will talk a little more about how you can connect with our expert, Alia, today. Before we get to that, I want to share a couple of quick FYIs about our program. We're going to be together for about an hour. I have 55 minutes of content to cover with you all. This is designed as an instructional course with both individual work time and peer-to-peer dialogue. So you'll find moments to work independently. I'll get that link for the workbook for everybody, so you can open that up, and I'll call out when we're going to kind of specifically use that. You'll also get the recording and slides after the program. Please honor your personal needs. We know we’re busy. We probably don't have a ton of time in our days to fuel ourselves with our snacks and water, but grab what you need in order to stick it out for the program today. But don't miss the chance to win. I'll have ways that you can earn raffle prizes and other fun ways that you can connect with us at the end of the program. I'm also going to make sure that our closed captions are toggled on. Let me make sure that that is being shown in English. Great. So, folks can toggle those on in their Zoom settings to follow along with me, reading as well as listening today.
Okay, a couple key things you're going to leave with today. I've designed a customized workbook for you all. I'll send that link around in just a second. This is designed to help you brainstorm and document specific takeaways for the program today. So this will be your kind of repository for the things we've talked about, those little golden nuggets of wisdom that are sticking with you as you go back into your work days after the program.
You'll also have access to our Events Resources page. So I'll drop these links in the chat, so that you can access this. The first is going to be our course syllabus and workbook for today. I have both the Google Doc version, which will make your own copy in your Google Drive, or you can download a PDF version here.
And then for our Event Resources page for today, this is essentially a little website that I make for each event. So, this is specific to today's program. Right now, it's not going to have a ton of info on it because I go back in there and add in all the things like words of wisdom from the chat box, links to the slides and recording, any other resources that are mentioned by our experts that are in the room today. So that is something that you can bookmark and come back to later.
And then since we have a special expert in the room, I'm so excited to offer these strategy sessions. So, I'll talk a little bit more about why we're offering these and why I think these are so valuable. If you are interested in grabbing one of these 10 spots with Alia, you can actually get ahead of that if you want. There's only 10 available. We're a really small team at Instrumentl. I don't know if folks are aware of how scrappy we are. So, we really try and make as much time as possible for folks to help them out on their grantseeking endeavors. Alia has 10 spots available for that. That's if you sign up for a free trial today. So that's for our folks that are new customers to Instrumentl. I'll drop that link in the chat. And I will also share how Instrumentl customers can take advantage of a fun little perk too.
So yeah. Alia is going to be helping some folks optimize their grants game plan. I have a little layout that I'll share with you all to help you identify some areas of growth that you might be interested in chatting with her. Because of her expertise and her background, she's able to identify some areas of need for folks and then come up with some potential solutions. So those spots are available now and you can get ahead of it if you want to, or you can kind of see where we're headed and jump into it as we get into the program today.
So, as a reminder, this course is CFRE certified. So everyone will get a point towards our CFRE certification or recertification if you're already certified. Also, I'm raffling off $50 to Bookshop.org. So, if you submit your feedback form at the end of the program today, you'll get access to that raffle, which is super fun.
Another way you can get raffle prizes is by sharing your learning. So you can tag Instrumentl on LinkedIn and include the hashtag #GrantseekerGrowth. This is just how I'm kind of keeping an eye on folks that are posting their key takeaways and learnings from our programming. So, thanks for folks who have been sharing out with their peers and networks.
Our course today covers kind of these five areas. We're going to start with a case study. We're going to learn from my friend, Jan, who's going to talk a little bit about her personal story and her lived experience growing her grants program and strategy here. We'll do a live Q&A with Jan to talk through some of her experiences and take questions from the audience. I'll lead us through your initial creation of an outline to pitch and advocate to your board. So I'll talk a little bit more about what details will go into that outline there. I'll leave you all with 5 tips to help equip your board, and then we'll do some final questions and wrap up.
Per usual, I'll do a little office hour session afterwards if anyone has questions they want to ask me, dive a little deeper. Jan has offered to stick around for a little bit as well. So, if there's anything that's really sticking for you, we'll have about 15 minutes at the end of the program for folks to stay if they are interested.
So my first thing before we get to our special guest, I wanted to kind of hear from the room. I love hearing from folks sharing about their experiences, learning about what things they might be facing, challenges included. I'm wondering what your biggest challenge is in getting your board “on board”?
So I'm going to launch a quick poll. I've kind of come up with some ideas that I think might come up for folks. First being maybe misalignment of priorities, second is resource allocation or lack thereof, board skepticism or a lack of buy-in with the board, maybe communication barriers, maybe you don't have great access to the board, a lack of board engagement or motivation, or maybe it's something else, and I'd love to see what that might be, if you don't mind sharing that in the chat.
I'll give folks a few moments to think about it. I see some poll responses already come in, and I'll share those once we get kind of critical mass here.
Awesome. All right, I've got about 75 percent participating. I'll go ahead and end the poll. This is an interesting one. I'm actually seeing a clear forerunner here, and I'm curious if folks would have guessed this as well. It looks like over half of us, almost 60 percent of folks in the room, say that lack of board engagement or motivation is the biggest challenge. And then it looks like we've got kind of a tie for second here, some of resource allocation and maybe some of board skepticism or a lack of buy-in. This is really interesting. I like to see kind of that we're facing similar challenges that maybe we can take some of those lessons learned and learn from each other today. So yeah, feel free to add thoughts in the chat as we move forward, and hopefully we'll be able to address some of these challenges with our case study today.
So I'm really excited. I'm going to bring Jan up on screen here and introduce our special guest. So, Jan Spackman is the Director of Grants at Sleep in Heavenly Peace. She has been with Sleep in Heavenly Peace since 2017 first as a volunteer chapter president. She established the seventh chapter of Sleep in Heavenly Peace in Spokane, Washington. A big portion of that role is fundraising, and that's where her grants career with SHP began.
Jan, do you want to come on real quick and say hello?
Jan: Absolutely. Hello everyone. Thank you for having me, Rachel. This has been a wonderful experience, getting prepared for this. So I'm looking forward to it today.
Rachel: Awesome. We love having peers sharing with each other. I think that's such a valuable aspect of our field that we don't always get to have access to, is, you know, connecting with folks who've had similar experiences. So, glad to have you here today, Jan.
Jan: Glad to be here.
Rachel: Before we get into our questions for you, I wanted to just start by sharing a little bit about the organization that you're coming from. And feel free to chime in on any additional thoughts here. But Sleep in Heavenly Peace is helping children who need sleep better. So there are volunteers that are dedicated to building, assembling, and delivering topnotch bunk beds to children and families in need. The organization has over 270 local chapters nationwide, and Jan helped double their grant revenue from 1 million to 2 in 2023 and has some big goals for this fiscal year I've heard as well.
So, I want to start us off with just hearing a little bit about your history with this organization and any other context you think might be helpful for the grantseekers in the room.
Jan: Sure. So, Sleep in Heavenly Peace was established in 2012 and like many nonprofits in a garage, our founder’s garage. And one of our founders’ friends, childhood friends, I happen to work with. His name is Jordan Allen. He was very instrumental in getting Sleep in Heavenly Peace moving forward. And we were prior coworkers. And we had a water cooler conversation one morning after the first year that they'd done it, and he, you know, hey, this is what we did this weekend. I was flabbergasted that there were children that had no beds to sleep in.
So, around the time that Jordan was establishing the Boise chapter after the Twin Falls chapter, I was moving to Spokane, Washington, and I found myself in a situation where I felt like I didn't have any purpose and I needed some purpose in my life at the time. So, I talked to Jordan and his wife quite extensively and said, all right, I can do this. I can start a chapter. So, I did that in 2017. And as Rachel mentioned, fundraising is a huge part of…you know, it's the base of what we do. You raise the funds, you build the beds, you deliver the beds, and rinse and repeat. So, I started dabbling in grants for my chapter and then started working. We had a little team, but they weren't really organized with it.
So anyway, I just kind of kept pushing on and pushing on and pushing on in that. And Jordan, I remember having a conversation with him at one time and talking about some issues I was having. He's like, “you know, Jan, we don't need no grants. You know, the public funds, we're funded on general donations and we're just fine.” And I'm like, are you kidding me? There's so much money available. That's just ludicrous. So Jordan told me, he's like, yeah, okay, you know, play around with it, and see what you can do. And so, I did, and that was on a volunteer basis. And in 2020, I wrote a grant that actually funded my position for three years. And at that time, you know, got a little bit of attention, so that was terrific.
So anyway. Fast forward, yes, we doubled our grants revenue last year. And I know we're still exploring all areas that's out there. So, we doubled it. This year to date we're up 120 percent with grant revenue over last year. So that's really incredible. And in fact, we had a board member question that number this week and said, is this true? Is this really true? So, yes, there were some heated discussions, and yes, it is true. We're up, and I credit that success a lot to Instrumentl. As I said, when I started, there was only seven chapters of Sleep In Heavenly Peace. We were featured on the micro-Facebook show, returning the favor, and from then it just exploded. So we now, our grants department manages grants for over 300 chapters.
Rachel: Wow!
Jan: It's a lot.
Rachel: That’s, I mean, I think folks could probably relate to that, yeah, kind of arc of how you're getting your organization more invested in grants, and you knew the potential that was there and kind of ran with that. I'm curious if you could explain a little bit kind of backtracking to where you were at when you were starting the process of grantseeking, like how would you describe your organization's initial approach and what did you find that was maybe more challenging about kind of the way they were set up for grantseeking at that time?
Jan: Well, we had a couple of school teachers that were also volunteer chapter presidents. And, you know, they kind of kind of did some stuff, but it wasn't very productive. And once I started kind of delving into the structure of how they were doing it, and I'd done a lot of grants research. In fact, one of them, the proposal that we wrote that funded my position, she just totally was off base, and so we scrapped it, and I did it, and then we won, which was really awesome. But the initial approach was, yeah, you know, again, okay, you know, we're mostly funded by general donations, grants aren't that big of a deal, and just on a very small basis. And, you know, I don't know that any of us expected our organization to grow like it did, and then just have everything explode, and funding, again, is the basis to what we do.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jan: Grantseeking wasn't really a priority at all.
Rachel: And that I think is something that other folks probably in the room could relate to as well. I'm curious, I think you kind of have shared with me and my colleague Ryan in the past on some kind of key turning points. Could you clarify, for the audience, what were some of those turning points that you felt made the change for you in going from that 1 Million to 2 Million in grant revenue?
Jan: Well, I think the biggest one was the system that we were using, while it was a great, you know, very user-friendly system, and it was GrantHub, we were learning as we were growing our chapters, and the chapters were requesting things that it was very cumbersome to go from GrantHub into GrantStation, search for grants, and then have to copy and paste and put that information back into that system. Very cumbersome and a big time suck. So, when I started investigating other platforms, honestly and I thought FDO, Foundation Directory Online, was the be all end all. And again, though, it's a separate system from your grants management system. So, when I stumbled onto Instrumentl, I was flabbergasted and thought, okay. It’s everything. Everything is here. Everything. And I think that the robustness of the funders that are in there, that was a huge turning point for us to double our grants too, because we had it all in one place and over what? 250,000 funders is, I think, what you had at the time, and I'm sure that's growing day by day too. So, I think that was a huge, huge help, the, opportunity to save that time and be able to really spend it prospecting and then just zap, add it in, and having the plethora of opportunities that I don't think that GrantStation is that robust, and it is kind of difficult to drill down the prospects that you need, and Instrumentl is just so user-friendly and easy.
Rachel: I'm so glad to hear that made an impact on, yeah, your grant strategy as a whole. I know that you worked hard to identify some reasons why you thought your organization might need a more robust grant strategy, and you created a pretty substantial proposal for your board. You've told me a little bit about kind of what your board is like and maybe some of the engagement with your board. Could you tell us a little bit about that board proposal and why you think what you shared with them really hit the mark and kind of got you to that next level?
Jan: You betcha. I understood of the way our board and our executive team, I had to go through two levels, the executive team first and then the board. They're very data-driven, and so I wanted to give them as much information as possible to really pitch this and sell it to them. So, I wrote a 7-page proposal, which is a lot, but it worked. And I think the hit the mark on it was I did some comparisons with FDO and Instrumentl and GrantHub and GrantStation and really stressed how time consuming it was how those three other systems work, and how we could definitely streamline what we do. And you know, we anticipate adding 60 chapters a year. So, as that grows, so does our responsibility to them to find grants and prepare them effectively and get them submitted. And one other point I made was that, yes, it's a big chunk of money. I mean, $6,000, that's for the system. You know, put your money where your mouth is, Jan. So I assured them that the system would pay for itself, and we've definitely proven that it does. So I just think in all of that, you know, in using the system and reporting those numbers back, there's no argument.
Rachel: Yeah. You mentioned that kind of, I think folks probably can relate to that too, of wanting their leadership and board being interested in seeing clear success metrics and understanding the ROI on investing in certain resource allocation, like a grants management system, or maybe it's additional staff or maybe time, you know, investing more time in grantseeking. So, being able to demonstrate those metrics effectively, I think, is probably one of your biggest strategies here.
Jan: Definitely. And the sixth grant, I mean, there's a less expensive package that you have to, but that was the package that we needed to do. Yeah, we needed the pro package for the way our organization is structured.
Rachel: That makes sense. And if folks are in the room thinking about kind of how their departments might be structured, regardless of what you're advocating for, you want to make sure you're approaching this from the investment standpoint. Like we're investing in ourselves or investing in our team. You might need that. Whatever that next level of whatever software or whatever resource you're looking at bringing into your group, you want to make sure it's worth your while, and it might take that extra little chunk of change in order to do that, but you're advocating for the purpose and direction of why that's going to be beneficial. Yeah.
Jan: Yeah.
Rachel: Okay. I have two more questions for you before we kind of get into your PRO tips here. What has been you think the biggest factor in scaling your grant strategy? Is there like one or two things that you feel like made the biggest impact that you'd recommend to folks in the room here?
Jan: The purchase of Instrumentl, that's been the biggest one, we've been able to scale quite largely. I'm trying to think of the numbers. We wrote, we prepared, oh, 600 proposals-ish in 2022. Last year, it was nearly a thousand. So, we were able to scale that up because of Instrumentl. This year, we're pacing well over a thousand proposals with 300 chapters that adds up in a hurry. So, we've added two people to our grants team. So, we're pretty skinny on that side too, Rachel, and we’ve just been able to do it because we have the right tool, and that tool is Instrumentl.
Rachel: Yeah. I remember you mentioning too that things like time management and allocating time effectively, and the tool being a helpful kind of not crutch, but resource in that, like being able to cut down on time. That was one thing that really kind of helped you be able to prospect more effectively and apply to almost twice as many applications, it looks like.
Jan: Absolutely.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. Paul asked in the chat, “How many people work on developing 1000 proposals?” I think, are you saying it's three folks on your grants team?
Jan: We have, I'd say it's 3.5. we’ve got three full time folks, and then we have two volunteers, volunteer contractors.
Rachel: Very cool. Scrappy teams, I'm sure, yeah.
Jan: Yeah, very scrappy. And we work from a boilerplate that's been in development since I began, and it just, it grows and grows and grows as we grow too. So, that helps. I mean, a lot of these are just copy and paste, copy and paste. And you know, for lack of a better word, we are somewhat of a grant factory, but we do have a decent success rate too.
Rachel: And for folks that are not familiar with the ‘boilerplate’ term, I know many experts in the room will kind of have that down pat, but you might have a boilerplate sort of template or structure that you're continuing to draft your grant proposals around. So, that's one recommendation. I know there's resources out there on kind of starting your first boilerplate, but that's just a great little tidbit for some of our novices in the room on kind of getting started with your grant strategy.
Jan: Right. And when I began, I found that a lot of the questions were the same, that we're filling out and I'm answering it. Finally just one day, why am I reinventing the wheel? Let's start…and then, you know, we can modify the paragraphs for…but yeah. And the nice thing about SHP is we have one mission, and that's terrific. We build beds for bedless children, ages 3 to 17, who don't have a bed of their own, and we provide them those beds fully furnished with a mattress, sheets, pillow and blanket. So, that's nice. We have one program, one mission, and the boilerplate definitely works for us. But if I’d suggest, if you've got different programs, you could start a boilerplate for each of those programs too.
Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. That's great advice. And on that note, do you have kind of one piece of advice you'd give grantseekers who were in your shoes maybe in 2022 or 2023 when you were kind of starting to ramp up? What would you share?
Jan: The boilerplate. That's definitely huge. And I had it and it's gone now…No, advocate for yourself and for your sanity to your executive team or your board or both, because if you're in a larger scale operation, you you've got to. So, I’d definitely stand up for yourself and prove a case point that you need the proper tools to do your job efficiently. And doing that, it will twofold, pay for your software, and b) most likely pay for your staff too in the full circle, because, you know, if you can find grants for funding positions, like I did, and that, you just need to have the right tools to do it.
Rachel: Yup. That absolutely makes sense. And Jan has so graciously offered to share with you all the 7-page proposal, the actual proposal she sent to her board. So, I'll include that on our Events Resources page. I thought that would be something that folks might benefit from. So thank you, Jan, for being so open to sharing kind of from your lived experience with the folks here.
Jan: Betcha. Might save someone else some time.
Rachel: That's what we're hoping to do. And kind of on that note, I've synthesized kind of some of what you've shared with us today, Jan, into three core tips, which I'm going to kind of keep to the forefront as we draft our own board pitches in just a sec.
So, I want us to start thinking about, you know, we've heard Jan's story, we might have related to some of those experiences, maybe we have different experiences with our boards, different relationships with our leadership, but I want to think about how we're advocating to those folks in our organizations, and what are the three ways that Jan really approached her advocacy?
The first one that I had identified from our conversations was identifying kind of the “why”, why is the board initially skeptical or what are ways that you might address some of the skepticism ahead of the time when you're preparing a proposal for your board, regardless of what you're advocating for here. So you might want to be addressing things like risk aversion, maybe some concerns about the uncertainty of the ROI for investing in something like the grants management platform, or investing in other staff member. So looking at those risks ahead of time and thinking about how you might address those with the board.
Also, maybe there's belief that the organization's resources might be better spent on other things. So think about why or how you might address that thought process, and maybe there are things you can kind of address before the board has those types of questions.
Also, just knowledge, lack of knowledge maybe about the grants process and potential benefits. Jan was sharing that grants weren't really a priority for her organization, and she had to advocate for why she thought they would be particularly beneficial to the mission of the organization.
Anything you want to add on this topic, Jan, before I take us to our next tip?
Jan: Yeah. Definitely, no. That's great.
Rachel: Awesome. Okay. So, your next tip, I wanted to highlight how you built a case for grants. So you had some already examples of successes that you'd had with grants, you had successfully applied and won for grants, and you had some data to back yourself up here. So securing those initial grants made it easier to scale faster and get the supplies your chapter needed. And that also helped maybe show that other chapters could get the same type of benefits for theirs. So, I want to highlight this because I feel like it's important folks understand that they also need to be grant ready when you're at this stage of advocating for more robust grant strategy in your organization.
Jan: Yes. You have to kind of have gone through kind of the process to prove your point for sure.
Rachel: Yeah. Yeah. So you might need to have, yeah, past experiences. Or if there are other organizations in your region that serve similar missions, you might be able to even connect with those folks and learn from some of their previous grant experience. I know some folks have worked closely with other partner organizations in that sense. There are a ton of resources out there too about how to determine if your organization is grant ready, including some past webinars and articles that I'm happy to share with folks that kind of need to start from that place before they get to the board advocacy piece.
And so, kind of the last tip I've distilled here from Jan's story is planning for intentional advocacy, like writing a 7-page proposal and education of the board. It can be tough to put yourself out there to advocate for the things you believe your organization really needs, and that's why Jan was really prepared with a clear proposal. It outlined the concerns and benefits of investing in a platform like Instrumentl to her board, and she was able to ensure the board saw that grants management tools are not maybe a cost or a deficit to the organization, but rather an investment in her, in the team and the potential for the org to scale more broadly, which it seems like it has kind of been the storyline that you've shared with us today.
Jan: It sure has.
Rachel: Awesome. So before we get into creating our own and thinking about how this might apply to our own organizations that we're coming from today, I wanted to give folks in the room an opportunity to ask Jan a few questions. So, I'll go through the chat and I'll live moderate. If folks want to think about one they might have, please feel free to add into the chat, and I'll pitch it back to Jan.
One that Mark asked was about boilerplates. Do you ever use tools, whether AI or not? And if you do, what are they?
Jan: I use Grammarly all the time. I just, I think that, you know, we, we speak differently, then things need to be written, and the punctuation and grammar, I think, is huge, especially because we need to present ourselves professionally to these potential funders. And so, that's my big go-to.
AI, I have played around with a little bit. I'm still not there with it. And then there's some controversy over whether it's okay to use AI or not. I'm a member of the Grants Professional Association, and there's been a lot of discussions about that.
Rachel: Yeah, I think that will be an ongoing conversation, one I anticipate that will not end this year but will probably be something we continue to reckon with.
Jan: I think it can be a good tool, but you've got to absolutely review it to make sure that the information is correct and accurate because you can't just copy and paste it and slap it in. I've noticed some errors. I've put in Sleep in Heavenly Peace. I've put in some questions about us in it, and you know, you just, you have to be careful.
Rachel: Yeah. No, I think that's a great point. One of our experts, I think it was Krista Kurlinkus that was talking about AI being like an intern, like it's not going to be a PRO right off the bat. It may be taking your writing style, which is helpful. It's using your words and your authentic narrative but it needs review.
Jan: Definitely.
Rachel: So Arnold was asking, do you do other fundraising for your organization as well? So maybe outside of grants. He's curious at asking that.
Jan: We…oh, let's see. Yes. Lowe's has been a partner with Sleep in Heavenly Peace nearly since the get-go. And what started as a local store relationship has grown into a corporate relationship. And so, we work with Lowe's with their swing events and those are where they bring their managers and vendors to one central location. I think they do four or five of them a year. And so, we work with them. But they've also got a…I can't think of what we…This is bad. I can't think of what it's called. We've got a fundraising opportunity with them, and what we do is set up bunks in the store at the pro desk. And then when people are checking out, they can purchase a piece of lumber. If they want to purchase a full bed of lumber, Lowe's has set that up. If they want to purchase just one 2x6, they can purchase just any pieces and parts. And that’s been, I mean it's not necessarily a fundraiser, but it is, because we're getting the materials versus actually the funds.
As far as formal fundraising goes, like galas and that, we don't do those. I mean, the ROI is not that great. That's a tough one. And honestly, our build day activities where we gather the general community together to volunteers, we take all the raw lumber, start out there, cut it, sand it, drill it, and then stain it and then we brand it with our branding irons with our SHP logo on it at the end. Those really act twofold. It creates community awareness, and it is a fundraiser without being a fundraiser because we'll…you know, I had a guy come up to me at a build in Washington and said, “So what do these beds cost?” And we were talking about it and just everything that goes into it. He's like, “Oh, okay, great.” Well, he leaves, he comes back, and he gives me a check for $5000. So, yeah.
So, without being a formal fundraiser, our build days do serve as fundraisers. We have what we call a Bunkhead Club. You can join for whatever amount. A month, you get newsletters and keychains and things like that, and that's been successful. We also do a national pajama day that each chapter can work with our local school districts and for I think, I don't know, $2 a kid or something, they can wear pajamas to school that day. And we've actually had some folks in the community that know about it, and they'll toss in the funds, so that every child in that class or whatever can participate in it, because some of the kids might not have $2 or whatever.
Rachel: Yeah.
Jan: But in the whole scope of general fundraising, we don't really conduct a lot of formal events.
Rachel: Yeah. I think we're going to wrap up here because I want to get to, some brainstorming time for folks. But one more question came in from Abigail and I think this ties well with your conversation that you were just having about Lowe's. Could you talk a little bit about how you maybe, I don't know if that was something that you kind of directly were responsible for or other corporate sponsorships that you've navigated, what does that look like for your organization?
Jan: Yeah. Well, the Lowe's relationship started locally in Twin Falls, Idaho, where Sleep in Heavenly Peace was founded. Luke, our founder, went into Lowe's and talked to the store manager and said they were able to get some materials that way. And again, just that beginning and it's morphed into the chapters that's really their first point of contact. We set them up to go talk to their Lowe’s store manager and it's just, like I said, blossomed into this really great relationship. In fact, the CEO of Lowe's had this fantastic idea. They wanted to build 1000 beds in one day. At the swing events, we've been hitting like 500 or so. And when the Lowe’s CEO wants to do something with you, and Lowe's has been so generous, they've given us millions of dollars over the years in cash and in kind and discounts and that. So, when they said they wanted to do this, we said, okay. And so that event was last month, and they had a thousand volunteers show up, a thousand Lowe's employees that volunteered one day, and this was at their corporate campus in North Carolina, and they built 1,023 beds. It was insane. So, that's going on.
And now, I've…Oh, the networking. You know, I'm working on something right now with PMC. It's a parking lot management company. The regional finance director got involved with SHP in her local town with a youth group that she also. And so, I've been working with her now. This is not necessarily a grant, but she's got 12 build days set up with 12 different chapters, I think, in her region and now we're going to take that to the next, this is coming up, I think, this month. And now, she pitched it to her board or executive team, and they'd like to do more. And so, Luke and I are going to speak and pitch to them, I think, next month, doing that on a national scale.
As far as the networking, as far as like that and the corporate relationships, that really, we let Luke do a lot of that. And then if there's a proposal involved, then I'll write the proposal. But then these other things, I couldn't even tell you how Amy from PMC got my contact information. I don't even know. So, anyway. And David Weekly Homes, same kind of thing.
Rachel: Yeah. I think that's just a great testament too, to the power of seeing your organization in action, and I'm sure folks are intentional about cultivating volunteerism, among potential funders or like these corporate volunteer days that it sounds like worked out really well with Lowe's. I know that that's been successful for other organizations when they're looking at kind of that in kind or tangible resource support from different funder opportunities. So, thanks for sharing those, Jan. That's just fantastic.
Jan: Sure.
Rachel: I'm going to give us a moment to think and we'll just do a little quick like applause and thank you for Jan. Really appreciate you coming on and spending time with us. I know this has been a busy grants week for you. So, thank you again for taking the time to join.
Jan: My pleasure.
Rachel: I'm going to take us into our next section as we wrap up here. I want us to think a little bit about how some of the lessons that Jan shared today may apply to your organizations. And so, I've worked on creating an outline for all of you to basically start drafting some ideas of how you might pitch or advocate whatever resource you're kind of looking to bring into your organization, to your board.
And so, if you go into your workbook, I will drop that link in the chat one more time for anyone who joined us late or had trouble opening that up, you're going to see on page 3 I have put a little blank template for you and broken out into the three sections that we kind of identify it as part of Jan's strategy here.
So, the first one. I'd love folks to think a little bit about how they might identify the “why” of board or leadership skepticism. So, think about in each of these boxes, I have kind of a space for you to brainstorm or jot down some notes about maybe risk aversions, concerns your board currently has with this proposal, and identifying the resource allocation intention, why should we invest time and funds on this.
In the next box, you'll see a kind of building a case for grants. So, we're going to identify maybe one or two success stories with grants that exemplify our goals as the grantseeker in our organization. Also, maybe thinking about the benefits. So, we might be really aware of those, but the board might need some additional education on that piece. Why will what you're advocating for be beneficial to the organization? And then using clear metrics as much as possible will help build that buy-in. And the third category here was that intentional advocacy and education. So, you might want to think about maybe communication tools that you're currently using with the board. What reports are you currently providing to them? How often? I know in my previous experiences, I would often have to prepare that quarterly board report, but it always came out like a little down to the wire and we wouldn't always be exactly where when the board was meeting, and then the week of, we’d scramble to get stats across all the counties that we've served and things like that. Think about what you might be doing in that vein too and how you can get a little bit ahead of some of that communication to leadership. And lastly, what is your advocacy strategy here? How are you going to determine if your plan is successful. And draft some of those metrics for success.
So, we're getting a little close on time here. I'm not going to set aside time for you to jot these down while we're in the event because I want to get to our expert tips as well. But this is your workbook to take with you. I'd encourage you, if you're already thinking, maybe you had some good thoughts bubbling around while Jan was sharing, jot down some quick notes of these kind of areas of growth and think about how you might use this outline to advocate for an allocation of additional resources, like staff, time, and/or budget. It could be for investment in tools like Instrumentl. And I've written out the goal here as well. So, you can spend a few moments as I'm kind of getting through our next session jotting down some ideas, but come back to this and use this as your repository to remind yourself of why you're advocating for certain needs for your organization.
I want to remind folks too, as you're jotting down some of these needs, you might be feeling a little overwhelmed. You might be thinking, I'm not exactly sure what I need to do next. And that's why I brought Alia in today. And she has so graciously offered to have some of these one-on-one sessions for folks who are new to Instrumentl to identify some of those areas of need and then brainstorm solutions together. So, the link I dropped in the beginning of the program is the one that you would use to snag a spot with Alia. It'll take you through the signup flow, so I'll show you in a second what that will look like. But you'll just fill out a little bit of information about your organization, so we can get a sense of who you are and what you might be looking for in your grant strategy.
And then, there's only 10 spots. She's a busy lady. So, I'd encourage you, if you haven't already, had a chance to check out Instrumentl to snag one of those. If you're already a customer, because I know I see a few customers in the room, I want to highlight that we have an opportunity for you to join office hours. These are really in small group intimate settings where you can sign up and get a chance to chat with our customer success team about some challenges you might be having, or even some successes that are working really well for you and want to share with the team.
If you need to restart your trial, maybe you used to use Instrumentl but it was a while ago and you're thinking you'd like to dive back in, you can fill out that form. So I've dropped that link in the chat as well, and request an extension there. You'll just need to put in the email address that you used to sign up for Instrumentl.
While I let folks do that, if you're interested in kind of getting into Instrumentl today, I know Jan talked a little bit about how beneficial it was to her organization, you'll use that link that I shared to connect with Alia, and it'll prompt you to sign up through our signup flow, which looks like this. So you'll get to the homepage, you'll fill out your information, and it'll automatically get you to the scheduling page, where you can sign up for a time slot with Alia at a time that's convenient for you.
After you get to that point, you'll actually be able to dive right into the platform to explore. So you can even do a little digging on some of our funders. Jan was talking about how many opportunities there are in there. There are like, gosh, a crazy number. I think it's now, it's definitely over like 15,000, I think 17,000 grants in there, maybe even more than that now. So you can take a look at some of those that might be good fits for your organization in preparation for your meeting with Alia. So, you’ll fill out that info, and you'll get to this call booking screen, where you'll be able to schedule a time with her.
You can start creating your project, if you'd like. This is a little more in depth. And I'll let folks spend time, if they are going to start a trial today, on doing that on their own, but your project setup will essentially help Instrumentl source the best opportunities for you. So, if you spend a little time getting your first project set up, Alia will be able to go into your account with you when you’ve set time and walk through how to make that the most efficient for your organization.
Okay. As we wrap up today, I want to end on some successful stories. If anyone was willing to share in the chat, what's one way you feel you’ve successfully collaborated with your board?
So, if anyone has some thoughts in the chat, I know Jan shared some really great tips. If there's any kind of tactics that you're currently using to collaborate, you feel particularly successfully with your leadership, feel free to share those ideas in the chat box, so we can learn a little bit from each other.
And as people think about that, I'll take us through our kind of 5 tips to leave us with today as we want to equip our board and make them feel connected to our grantseeking efforts within our division or for the one person team on our grants team within that individual.
Oh yeah, I'm seeing some good ones. Joanna says, “Board training on a regular basis, so to keep them engaged.” Yes, that's definitely one of my tips here as well. So you are a mind-reader here. Continuous education being my first tip. Regular updates and training for board members. Some of this might be on your boss. But thinking about how you can provide as much tangible and concrete information about your grants, maybe making sure that they're fully understanding the processes in place for grantseeking. It's not just finding and applying for a grant, right? There's so many steps involved. So making sure they fully understand the life cycle of grants and making sure they stay up to speed on that.
Hi, Joanna.
You can also make sure that you're emphasizing that you're making data-driven decisions. So, you can use metrics from your grant proposals and your reports to demonstrate progress or success. I know some folks use the reporting tool in Instrumentl. It's a great way to just easily download a quick Excel file to show which grants you are interested in pursuing or the ones you've already applied to and just give them a general sense of your approach and strategy there.
Also, make sure you're collecting those success stories from grants that you've won. And I'm sure they're hearing about some of those, but think about what real life examples, maybe even some of these like fundraising tidbits like Jan shared with, that individual that happened to be at a volunteering situation and then managed to kind of take that fundraising opportunity to another level. Think about how you're collecting and archiving kind of those stories that they're regularly accessible to your leadership.
You again want to make sure you're transparently communicating as much as possible. I try to set reminders for those board updates to talk about, like I knew those quarterly board meetings would happen sometime in April or something, but making sure you're getting a little ahead of the curve there and having things prepared in advance, so you know it will be requested. You can use tools like Instrumentl also to clarify tasks that are coming up, and even assign people if you have folks that you want to be really aware of what's going on with each step of the grants process.
And lastly, building those opportunities for intentional collaboration. I know sometimes we have maybe overly involved boards, so this can be a catch 22. But I think it's great to think about how we intentionally want to create opportunities for board involvement, and that might also alleviate some of that kind of over-involved board member, if you're being a little bit more ahead of the curve, a little more intentional with your, communication and collaboration, so that they feel fully in the know of your grantseeking journey.
Okay. So, we've covered a lot today, and we're just about at time. So I want to wrap this up and make sure I catch any last questions that come up in the chat. We covered Jan's case study today. We did a little live Q&A. You've got an outline to now create your pitch. You'll also see in the workbook below that kind of outline template that I provided you. There's also a Pitch Your Board letter template. This one is specifically designed to pitch Instrumentl to your board, but that could be modified and used for any resource allocation that you're looking to advocate for on behalf of your organization. I will also follow up with Jan's specific proposal, so that folks have access to that. That one has a lot more detail, but I know she took some tidbits from that template. So, you'll have access to that as well.
If there are any final questions, please feel free to drop those in the chat. We can also take those during office hours. As mentioned, you can fill out your feedback form and you'll be able to be entered into that raffle. I'll drop that link in the chat. I would love to hear what folks have to share about our program today. And as a reminder, you're being entered to win $50 to Bookshop.org. So thanks for sharing your feedback. I really appreciate hearing everybody's thoughts there.
We have one more kind of formal event for June. We're getting into summer, so I hope folks are excited for their vacations coming up and getting a little bit of time to themselves hopefully. Our next one is a special one. This is our Grant Chats program. It is an invite-only program and it's limited capacity. I'm almost actually at capacity already for this program. We are doing these the third Friday of every month now, and they are small intimate group settings where you'll go into breakout rooms with folks in similar sectors of yours to discuss a particular topic. Friday, June 21st, we're talking about funders. So that's the topic for that. In July, I'll have a different topic. You can see all of those upcoming events on the link I just dropped in the chat box.
Otherwise, thank you so much for being here. Thanks again to Jan and Alia, my friends joining me in the room. It was so great to be with you all. I will let folks filter out. Feel free to add questions in the chat. If you want to ask something during office hours, go ahead and raise your hand using the raise hand function and I'll get to you in order of our raised hands there. Otherwise, thanks for being here.
Thanks, Patty.
Thanks, Kim.
Thanks, Joanna. Great to see you. I really appreciate you all spending time with us today.
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