Rachel: We're focusing on Your 2024 Grant Strategy. You are in our How To Save Time and Win More Grants, and this is a part of our new grantseeking growth course. I'm really excited to start this program with you all today. You're kind of taking part in a little experiment that I've been working on, on building an educational module that will help hopefully improve your grantseeking skills, but also just build in some key learnings that we all are taking away from our day-to-day experience in the grantseeking world.
If you don't know me already, I know a lot of you, and I'm so grateful to see some familiar friends, my name is Rachel. I'm the events and community manager at Instrumentl, and I work to create all of these live events that we offer to our Instrumentl community. I come from the nonprofit sector. So, I feel you on all of the struggles and the triumphs that you might be experiencing at your separate organizations. I specifically worked in museums, most recently at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, where I managed the school programs. So I've had about a decade plus of experience in nonprofits, but I'm specifically running education programs, and I'm really excited to do this specific series because it kind of gets me back into my roots, back into the education world with you all. Awesome.
As an FYI for today, and I love that folks are still saying hello, I'll drop that link again in the chat to make sure everybody has that link for today, this is going to be an instructional course. I am your course instructor. However, I am not your only teacher here today. You're all going to embrace our inner teacher. Think back to maybe your favorite educator, if you have like your third grade teacher who was just a superstar and made you feel so inspired. We all are going to emulate some of those teachers today and both learn and teach each other on some of the things that we've been learning in our grantseeking worlds. You will get the recording. I'm going to make sure I'm recording. Yes, we are recording, and I'll share those slides with you afterwards. So don't worry if you miss something. Please step away as needed. Bring your water, your snacks. We're going to be doing a lot of brainstorming today. So make sure your brain is super energized and fed and hydrated. But make sure you're back in your seats by the end. I'll share a little bit more about how you can get some prizes today and get those CFRE credits, which I'll talk about in just a moment. Some of you requested closed captions for today. Those are toggled on. So please make sure to put those on on your side in Zoom.
Great.
Okay. So, as I mentioned, we have a couple of different things that we're doing today. Since this is an instructional course, I'm really framing this as a learning module. So you will have some homework. You will have some recommended resources. You will have your workbook. So I want to make sure we all know about the materials that we have access to today. I'm going to drop this all in the chat as well.
We have three things I want to highlight here, the first being that syllabus and workbook. All of you should have gotten that link. I will drop it again in the chat.
We also have our event resources page. Now, if you've been in our events before, you've had examples of this in the past. This is a repository of everything I've talked about today. So, if you're like Rachel, that was too fast, I lost track of a bunch of things or the chat box was just going wild and I couldn't keep track, don't stress. I'm going to put everything on this event resources page.
And lastly, I'm really excited to offer some one-on-one strategy sessions for folks who participated in our program today. You'll have a way to book those. I only have five spots. So it’s a limited offer here, but I want to make sure that folks have an opportunity to take advantage of this. I'll talk a little bit more about what you should actually be covering in a strategy session, and I have options depending on if you're currently a customer at Instrumentl or you're someone that hasn't used the platform before and would like to kind of experience a walk-through. So I'll drop those links in the chat. You've got your course syllabus and workbook. You've got your event resources page, and then the links for the one-on-one strategy sessions. I will make sure to touch on these all throughout the program. So don't stress. You'll get back to these as we go through our session today.
Okay. And a couple of other reminders of just the things you should kind of keep in mind while we're going through our course. You're going to use that workbook. I've mentioned it a couple times. So keep that up on a tab in your kind of Zoom window or you're nearby to where you can see both our slides here and your workbook. I'll call out some specific times when you should be using those. I'd love for you to add to the chat. I've already got some folks that are adding in some lovely thoughts and just sharing. Yeah. And Victoria, I saw your question about how we can earn a certificate. I will get back to you on that in just a moment.
I'm also inviting everybody to share your key learnings. I'm going to be doing some fun little Oprah moments, as I like to do in these events. So, if you're sharing your key learnings on LinkedIn, I've included a little hashtag to keep track of folks that are sharing. Plus, if you tag us on Instrumentl, I'll be able to easily find you, and you might end up getting a raffle prize right during our event, which I love. And a good reminder too that sharing your learning always reaffirms some of those key takeaways. You know, there's like studies that have proven that just writing down what you learn helps you remember and retain the information that will hopefully help us in our grantseeking.
You can invite your peers. This is going to be a fun course. I am really excited to share all this content with you all, and I think learning is more fun with friends. So I'll show a couple ways that you can invite your peers and maybe other colleagues in grantseeking who might benefit from being a part of our next session.
Hi Lacey. Thanks for dropping the link in the chat.
Paul, I'll get back to you about the PDF. I have to put that into a file, but I'm going to do that while I'm giving people a chance to kind of get their workbook started. Don't worry. I will make sure to get you on.
Pete, I'm dropping that link again. That workbook copy is going to be that first link for folks that are able to open it up in Google drive.
Okay. And then a last reminder here, you can snag those strategy sessions. I only have a couple spots left. There's only five. So, if you are interested in that, I encourage you to actually take advantage of it earlier in the program. I'll also call out a couple of other moments and especially what you might actually want to cover during the session at the end of the program.
Bonus. You guys are here for our first course session, which is great because I'm going to be doing kind of something a little new. Everyone who completes this course, and that means they're here today, they're here next Thursday, and they're here the following Thursday, will get a chance to earn a course certificate and a digital badge, proving that they were in the session and that they attended all three. So, make sure you're signed up. I'll share at the end of the session how you can make sure you're in all of these, but that's kind of a fun bonus today.
This course is CFRE certified. So, by submitting your feedback form at the end, you'll be able to receive that one CFRE point. This goes towards your initial application for certification or research certification, if you are already CFRE certified. I see a couple of folks in the room that already may be.
Okay. All those details out of the way. Let's move in to what we actually are covering today. So I'm going to start with a quick overview of our grant strategy workflow. This is something that will just help guide our kind of intentions behind what we're strategizing when we're talking about grant strategy in general, all the different pieces at play.
Then I'll be going into some key frameworks that we'll be using to guide our learning. I'll talk about the ROI framework, the PRO Strategy framework, and we'll dive into forming your own Grants Management Strategy using some of the lessons that you’ve learned from our key takeaways here.
And then we'll talk about how it's your turn, how you can take all the things that we've applied in this almost hour-long session today and bring it back to your organization and immediately take in some of the things that might apply to your grant strategy.
I'll wrap up with any questions, go over a couple of key action items, and we'll get on with our days. I'll drop in the chat again, some of those key links, just in case we had any latecomers, make sure you're opening up a copy of your workbook. There will be an emoji indicator when I want you to start working on some of those things in the workbook. So don't worry, I'll highlight that as well.
Okay, cool.
So just to kind of ground us in what I'm talking about when I'm explaining this kind of grant strategy workflow. When you're working on your grant strategy, you want to be talking about the grant entire journey and that means from the pre-award phase all the way into the post-award. So that's from research and applications to all the funding milestones and final reporting that you might be doing.
In the pre-award phase, here are the four sections that we want to make sure our organization has tangible goals around, has identified specific OKRs. Maybe there's objective key results that you want to reach in each of these. So, this is starting back in pre-award. We're going to be doing the search for our best fit funders and grants, cultivating those really valuable funder relationships, and submitting applications. We also want to make sure we're doing follow-up communication and waiting on bated breath for those applications that we've submitted, making sure we're continuing communication with the funder.
Once we’ve scored those funds - oh gosh, it looks I didn't realize I had that funny animation. Once we’ve scored those funds in the post-award phase, we want to make sure that we are tracking across the post-award life cycle, and this is something you should be thinking about before you've even applied for the grant. You want to make sure that you have systems in place for things like spenddown finance monitoring, tracking those deadlines and writing reports, ensuring that you're complying with all the grant terms. This is something that we'll talk about a little bit later, but you should make sure that your organization has compliance terms in place, so that you can make sure that you can actually fulfill what you've laid out in your grant application. And then having a clear strategy for evaluating impact. This might mean that you are writing up evaluation reports or you have an evaluation strategy. Maybe you're working with someone in your organization who specifically focuses on this. All those good stuff.
So I'm curious to hear. I know some folks maybe feel like, oh, I've totally got all of this. Or maybe there's one phase of your grant strategy that you are really strong in but others that you're maybe having some struggles with.
I'm curious. I'm going to launch a quick poll.
What phase is your organization or your grantseeking strategies’ biggest challenge? It might be research and prospecting, finding and documenting all those opportunities. It might be the applications and following up, so keeping track of due dates for new grant opportunities and all the documents. It might be the compliance and finances after you've won an award. Or kind of again in the post-award phase of the reporting and evaluation process, it might be all of the above or it might be something else.
I see some folks might add some thoughts in the chat. If you wrote something else, I'd love to hear some of the things that might be challenges for you so we can share with each other and learn from each other.
Tammy says, “Establishing new funding relationships.” Absolutely.
Yes. We've got compliance.
The AJ Foundation is saying maybe kind of part of one, approaching new relationships. Yeah. 100%.
Chris says, “Evaluating the impact.”
Meg says, “Getting executive director and artistic director on board.” Absolutely. That's so important. We'll talk a little bit about how that might impact your strategy in a bit.
Yeah, Morgan. Using something other than an Excel file for tracking for sure. We'll talk about how that might keep your organization in a bit of a survival mode cycle too, if you've got some of those systems in place that aren't really serving you.
Yeah. “Getting docs from other departments,” says Victoria. Absolutely. I'm sure some folks could plus one that in the chat, getting all the things you need from your peers and kind of chasing them down the hall.
Okay. I'm going to go ahead and end the poll. Feel free to continue to add thoughts. People can add emoji reactions to ones they agree with. I love that. And I'll share these results so everybody can see.
It looks like the phases that are the biggest challenge for folks in the room right now. It's pretty strong that research and prospecting is one of those biggest kind of phases that we struggle with. About 37 percent of you said it was that phase. And then we kind of got tied for all the remaining sections here. Oh, I had a choice 5 that I didn't mean to include. Sorry about that folks. And then 20 percent of you said all of the above. So, we're going to talk about how to identify some of those weakness points and strengthen your grant strategy throughout all these phases of your grants workflow. Thanks for answering my questions. I love to see these responses.
Okay. So, I'm going to dive into some of these key strategies. I'm going to help us focus on ways that you can get your organizations focusing more strategically and help us get out of some of these cycles that we find ourselves in. I’m sure many of you are relating in the chat on some of those cycles that we often find ourselves in at any phase of this workflow, right? So I've worked with our expert partners and our expert council that we have at Instrumentl to identify a few key strategies that they thought would be really helpful for you all to learn from today.
Our first we're going to focus on is the ROI Framework. So, this is courtesy of Teresa Huff. She's a nonprofit strategist and a grant writing mentor at Grant Writing Simplified. She's also one of our partners. And she has a great quote here that I thought identified something that maybe not all of our leadership or board or folks that are newer to the grantseeking world might understand.
Teresa says, “Just like training for a marathon, it takes a lot of preparation & work [to apply for a grant]. There's a better way to go about grant funding than saying ‘Just get a grant for that!”
How many times have you heard someone say, “Oh, well, it's easy. Just get a grant for that.” I am sure I have heard it. I have seen it in play. Yes, I can hear you. If you relate in the chat, you can say the same here, same or raise your hand. Yeah. So many times. And it's not that simple. So we want to make sure, when we're talking to leadership, some of you are experts in the room. I know you already know this. When you're talking to leadership, you should be identifying why it's not that simple, and I'm going to help you do that by kind of identifying this framework that Teresa is introducing us to.
Yeah, I feel you, Renee.
Michelle, just go after the low-hanging fruit. Easy for you to say, right?
Okay. So, we talk a lot about ROI, right? The term meaning Return on Investment. But what Teresa says is that the true ROI of grantseeking strategy is actually these three parts. The first being Relevance, the second being Optimization, and the third being Interaction. I'm going to break down each of these and talk about how they might be affecting your organization right now. But what she shares with this specific framework is that organizations that have all three of these clearly in place are the ones that are growing and thriving versus those who can't get the momentum they need to keep going. And I'm sure some of you have seen some of those moments where one of these pieces is just kind of making you feel like you're on a wobbly three-legged stool, right? You really need all of these to be super stable. And I'll talk about why that is so important in just a second.
So first, I want you to think about how each of these statements might apply to your specific lived experience. Each of us are coming from very different organizations or our own grantseeking consultation companies, right? So we might have different ways we're approaching this with our clients or with our organizations. Think about how this applies to you.
Number one for relevance. There should be a demonstrated need for your organization in the community. You have data that supports your cause and why it is so critical. So, think about if you have this in place for your organization right now, and I'll talk about what to do if you don't. Don't stress.
The second part of relevance here is that you've considered the relevance of the grantmaker, when you're applying, to your organization. You've clearly identified the gaps in the community need that your organization is serving, and you're making sure that's super clear to the grantmaker because they want to really understand, if they don't know your organization yet, why are you relevant, why are you connected to their interests and their initiatives that they have in your community. So, think about how these might be applied to your organization.
The next piece we've got here is optimization. Some of these might seem like no-brainers, but I want us to think critically about if our organizations are really satisfying these statements in the optimization phase. Number one, your nonprofit is fully up and running. There is a solid infrastructure with good systems in place and policies and procedures. Many folks sometimes think ahead to grantseeking before they have systems in place to support the continued growth and regeneration that grants can provide their organization. If you don't have those policies and procedures in place, you will often continue to find yourself in the grant chasing phase rather than having a strategic approach to your grantseeking. I'm sure some of us have seen that in action at different organizations that we've been parts of.
Yes, totally, Jason.
Oh, Phil, I just saw your question. Thanks for asking. Just double checking. Are you sharing slides or should we be following in the workbook? You can just be following the slides right now. I'm going to get to slide in just a second. That is going to tag you into the workbook. For folks that are struggling with workbooks, that's when I'm going to get into our PDF sharing. So, hang tight. I'll call out when the workbook is going to be addressed. Thank you.
Okay. The next phase of this optimization, your mission is super clear and the direction that your organization is going in is articulate. This is conveyed clearly in every possible touch point with a donor or funder. I know some of you are not the web administrators for your organization. Think critically about how your organization is portraying themselves online. Make sure you have control, of course, of your applications. Think about how your mission is identified in every application. And if it needs to be stronger, there are ways to do that.
And Teresa's point here is that, well with this, was that an investor is not going to donate to something that is confusing. That's not just true for nonprofits. That's true for any investments that anyone is going to make, right? You want to be clear on what their investment is doing.
Oh, yeah, Kathy. There's that workbook link again.
And lastly, this kind of third leg of our three-legged ROI stool here is Interactions. You are building authentic, meaningful relationships in the community. That means with your staff, your volunteers, your board, and other service providers, folks that might be great partners in your work, and that you could actually partner together in a grant application.
You are speaking to the “person” on the other end of the funding line. Teresa had just like a great line here that “grantmakers are people too” and this commonly quoted Forbes quote - ‘business moves at the speed of trust.’ So, we should be tailoring our approach to each funder based on their preferences, their communication style, and their expectations. You might want to think about developing engagement plan that considers the unique characteristics of each funding relationship. Think about how you're providing these kind of great touch points over time, not just in one application that you've sent in, but sharing your successes, your outcomes, and maybe challenges that you overcame as an organization. You want to be demonstrating that tangible difference that their support could be making. I know some of you already do this, but make sure you're extending invitations to funders to participate in site visits, get in and see your program teams in action, all those great things that strengthen your connection to the mission.
Okay. So, I want to think a little bit about, you know, we talked about our challenges in organization. I want to talk about where we're really doing the good work. So, I want to hear from each of you. I'm going to go ahead and launch a poll.
In which of these areas is your organization currently the strongest? When you were listening to me share a little bit about all these kind of three aspects, which one are you like, oh, we've got this? Is it the relevance piece? Is it that optimization? Is it that interaction piece? Or maybe you're still working on all three, and that's totally okay.
I'll give folks 20 more seconds to answer.
Yeah. Verlin, I'm happy to talk about this. Are you referring to kind of the optimization piece or interactions with other organizations in your community? Okay. Cool. Yeah, I'm happy to kind of share on that further. Also, I want to call out Verlin's comment in the chat box. If folks have had success on kind of demonstrating this within their own organizations, I love having grantseekers learn from each other. So, add your thoughts in. You can comment on her chat box question.
Cool. Thanks for participating in our poll. It looks like we're actually doing a pretty good job. We've got a pretty good spread here. So, go us, feel good about where your organization is strong right now. 35 percent of you said you've got that relevance piece down, about 16 percent said the optimization, and 21 percent said interaction. Now, we've got the remaining 30 percent who are still working on all three, and that’s totally fine. Hopefully, by this end of the session, you'll feel a little bit like you know what you should be approaching when you're thinking about your grant strategy.
Alright. Let’s take a look…
Okay. I'm going to share a really quick clip. So, Teresa wanted me to share this. This is her TEDx talk. I've actually linked it as a recommended resource in your workbook. So you can always watch the full 10 minutes if you're interested. But I'm going to just share a quick clip of what happens when organizations are missing one of the three and kind of how we can avoid some of that imbalance that happens when we're not embracing the full ROI framework. So I'm going to go ahead and play that. Let me know if there's any issues with the sound here.
[start of video clip]
Teresa: Now, nonprofits may have two of the three and they can make some progress, but there's still something kind of missing. So, if we look at this possible combination, they could be relevant and optimized, but if they're not interacting, then they're inauthentic, and this is not a good place to be. This is kind of like the nonprofit who said to me, we talked to that foundation. We argued with them three different times, and three different times they turned us down. I wonder why. That's probably not a good approach and not a good authentic relationship building strategy. That's why it's so important to have this piece in place. Now, they could be relevant and interacting, but if they're not optimized, they're terribly inefficient. The technical term for this is a ‘hot mess’ and it's also not a good place to be because then you're kind of all over the place and disorganized and nobody's going to quite trust what you're doing. And you're not going to seem like a good, solid investment.
I see a lot of new nonprofits that don't have programs up and running yet, and they're saying, where can we find grants to get going? And I tell them, you're not going to find grants yet. You need to get your programs running. You need to be stable and sustainable for the funders and the grantmakers to want to invest in you. So, they need to look at other sources of funding to make sure things are optimized and running efficiently.
And finally, they could be optimized and interacting well, but they're not relevant. And this is a tough place because then they're ineffective. The work they're doing is just not quite hitting the mark and people aren't understanding what they're doing and why it's so important.
[end of video clip]
Rachel: Thank you, Teresa, for your insightful expert tips there. So, I'm going to use this opportunity to jump us into our workbook, and I have the links here for folks. That gave me a second to download a different version of those links for anyone that was having trouble with our Google Docs. So, let me drop that in the chat as well. We've got a PDF version and a Microsoft Word version. I'm hoping these links will work, even if you don't have Google accounts. Let me drop those in the chat for anyone that's asking. Let me know, please, if it's working for you, so I can make sure you have access.
For everyone else, it's already, open up your book. I have a handy little table here. So we're going to spend about two minutes looking through this on our own. You're going to go to page 3 of your workbook. And I want you to ask yourself, is your organization truly maximizing the real ROI, that relevance, optimization, and interaction that's required for your grant strategy to be fully rounded, fully holistic.
So what you'll be able to do here is check off the box. You'll see on your worksheet there's a checkbox next to each of these statements that I shared from Teresa. And then if you want to spend a moment just writing down some scratch notes, maybe you have some areas of strength that you're really excited about, and then there may be are a couple of areas of growth. Again, we're only going to spend about 2 minutes here. You've got your chat box. Oh, yey, flawless PDF link. I love it. You've got your workbook that you'll be able to go back to. I'm going to play some kind of soft background music to get us thinking and add your thoughts on page 3 of the workbook.
Patrice Frazier in the chat shared a lovely, I think it only came to me. So, Patrice, I'm going to actually drop that in the chat for everybody. They shared a learning moment for them was this ROI lack of effectiveness, if you don't have all three, and that they're going to be taking this formula back to their C-suite leadership. Love to hear it.
Yes. Renee is sharing that optimization, the data used in your proposals, reflects the organization's year over year growth. Yes. That's so, so valuable. If you can look back and see where you've come from, instead of just kind of reusing that same data over and over, that'll really show to the funder what your organization is doing really well.
So, love to hear it. Keep adding in thoughts. Yes. And, Liam, happy to share some of these resources. Some of them I might have to get to after our session just because I'm running this program solo today, but I will for sure share some resources that might be relevant for you in our event resources page. And I'll share that link again for anyone that missed that.
All right. Okay. So you've already gone ahead here. I added some fun little animations that I forgot about. So, make sure you're adding in thoughts there. You can always come back to your workbook. This is your journal for your learnings today.
Okay. And just as a reminder of what we're doing today, we're using our workbook, you're adding to the chat, I'd love to see it. If you have any key learnings that you want to share on LinkedIn, I love to see those. Over the next little workbook session, I'll be pulling a live raffle of anyone that's shared on LinkedIn. So make sure to do that. I've already had a strategy session snagged. So, if that's something that's interesting to you, please make sure to get in there. I'm going to drop those links again in the chat just in case anyone arrived late. Yeah, and you'll be getting your course certificate and badge by sticking around.
So, we've got a couple of other frameworks I want to cover with everybody. I'm going to jump right into our next strategy.
We're talking PRO Strategy here and this comes to us.
Oh yeah, Catherine, I'm seeing your note. Absolutely happy to talk with you after the session. I'll drop those different versions here as well for you just in case.
We're going to be talking PRO Strategy. This comes to us from Patrice Shumate. She's the founder of A Village for Good, which is a nonprofit organization, and she's part of our Instrumentl expert council. She's also a nonprofit advisor. So, one of the quotes that she shared with me was that in working with nonprofit organizations starting or growing their grant program, she's usually finding they struggle with preparation, realistic expectations, and organization as she explores funding opportunities and funder prospects with them. So, sometimes she finds that organizations are jumping a little bit ahead of some of these key areas, the preparation, those expectations, and organization that need to be in place in order for the funding opportunities and prospects to actually come to fruition.
So how to become a “PRO”? We're going to break down each of these kind of three components here, just like we did with Teresa's. I've got some key questions. We're going to be asking ourselves. So, as I go through these, think about where you're at with your organization again, think about your lived experience and how you might be applying these as you leave the session today.
The first here is Preparation. Even if you have a whole calendar filled with opportunities that align with the mission and the services that you're providing, your organization still needs to be prepared to apply. So, here are a couple of key questions you should be asking yourself. Are your programs clearly identified?
Again, on the research side, the data side, do you have supporting research and a concise understanding of need? How is this articulated when you're writing your applications? How is this written on your website? How are funders understanding your concise understanding of need for the community?
Do you have a strong narrative already constructed to build from?
And Patrice says here, “I know people are eager to start looking for the funds to support important work,” but she says that “applying for those funds before these things are in place will likely only serve as a lesson of what not to do.” I thought that was really powerful. So, think critically here. Be really kind of narrow in your thoughts here. Are you meeting these three kind of key indicators for preparation of grants?
Patrice's solution here is that we should be spending dedicated time preparing for prospecting. I know our schedules are packed. We have so much going on in our plates. But making sure we actually truly learn what the organization needs will help turn those prospects into effective applications.
Patrice also says that “Most importantly, we should ensure you have internal structures that support continued grant work.”
So, I'm curious in the chat. Let's learn a little bit from each other. What internal structures that exist at your organization currently support your grant work? I'll give folks a little moment to kind of marinate on this. Think about what structures are in place that are supporting your grant work. These might be templates, documents that you share with your leadership or board on a regular basis. These might be policies that you have in place for timelines on grant submissions. Maybe you need to get an application or an RFP at a certain time ahead of the application due date. So think if you have any internal structures that are working really well for your organization.
Z says, “Data reports and grant calendars.”
Yeah, I love this. Dominique says, “A grant calendar shared out with program teams.” That is so valuable, the visibility there, making sure program teams understand when things are due.
Yeah. Julia says, “My strong volunteer support for research is in place.” I love that.
Liberté says, “Processes, dedicated staff, and templates.”
Yeah. Renee says, “Those boilerplate templates, those are so valuable.” And some of our experts in the room probably have their boilerplates that they've been going to many, many years now.
Oh, Megan has a really helpful hint here. Something interesting she's found is that “if you feed the mission and information about the grant into ChatGPT, along with your organization's mission, you can actually ask it to find alignment, build a shared narrative, et cetera. Now, you absolutely, of course, have to review, refine, and edit. It's a machine, not a person, but this is very useful.” I love that, Megan. Thanks for sharing that really great tip with us.
All right, I'm going to move us on to this next phase of the PRO Strategy. We want to make sure we're approaching this with realistic expectations. A strong list of prospects does not necessarily equal funding, right? It's not guaranteed. Grant work is this long game and requires some strategy to ensure efforts are meaningful, even if funding doesn't come from an application. So, is grant funding an intentional part of your larger funding strategy? Make sure this is in place.
Do you have dedicated staff that have the time to look for funders and build relationships/partnerships with them? I know there's some probably one-person shows in the room. Think about how much time you want to be investing in this aspect of your grant strategy. This is really key.
Are you prepared for the requirements and management once the funding opportunities are secured?
And are you ready for the time it takes to sort through potential funding opportunities? It all takes time. So, Patrice's solution here that she wants people to focus on, recognizing that philanthropy and grant work do require constant effort and can be competitive. You might also be having to educate some others on your team or in your organization on these thoughts here, that that this grant work is challenging and that it does not mean it's a guaranteed win, even if you put in a lot of time and effort.
So I'm actually kind of curious here because I've heard from other grantseekers in the room. How have you educated leadership on what grant work entails? If you have some kind of key learnings that you've experienced from working with your board. Or working with your direct leadership, what are some ways you've helped educate them on what grant work truly entails? The time, the effort.
And Park Hill says, “How important it is to have data to share, not just the narrative.” Absolutely. That's come up a couple of times, even just these slides here.
Jacqueline says, “I create an at-a-glance prospects and timelines.” Love that.
Janelle says, “Honest and respectful conversations. That transparency and relationship building is so valuable.”
Barbara says, “Sharing teams and leaderships insights as they come.”
Dominique does presentations to the board. Yes, absolutely.
Patrice says, “Taking courses such as these.” Yes. You want to be able to have some frameworks in place so you can go back to leadership and say, hey, here's what I learned in this course today and maybe why we shouldn't be applying for this grant or what we need to address in order to make sure our strategy is actually effective.
Love it. Keep sharing thoughts. I'm going to move us along to our last PRO Strategy phase here.
Organization. Once you find prospects, do you have a place to keep and update the information?
Do you have a person who's dedicated to starting relationships with potential funders? That might be a couple of different people who are involved in that process, but think about how you're being intentional there.
Do you have an effective way to share important prospect information and keep people informed over time? I see already some folks are doing that in intentional ways. Think about how you can bring that into your grant strategy. Maybe you need to have kind of a pitch deck on things that are coming down the pipeline for you that you want to share with your board on a regular basis.
And lastly, Patrice's solution here is making sure we're looking for tools to help keep and manage important prospect/grant application and award information. And she reminds us all that there are a lot of options outside of Excel and Google Docs, which I know many of us are still using regularly and have their benefits. But she also wants to remind us that your organization might require a more organized system in place to be strategic.
All right. And my last question for us to drop into the chat today. What tools are you currently using to stay organized? What are the tactics that your organization has in place to keep you on track?
Cool. Kate says, “Airtable.”
Kathleen says, “Notion.” Love that.
Yeah. Brie says, “Google Sheets and Asana 100%. All these things, shared calendars. Some people are using Monday.com.” Yes, absolutely. I've heard that as well.
Kelsey did a little Instrumentl shoutout. We love to see it.
Patty says, “Smartsheet.” Yeah, Airtable again. Oh, okay. Thanks for the Instrumentl shoutout.
Raiser’s Edge. Yes, absolutely. We have that integration with Instrumentl and Raiser’s Edge, which has been so helpful for people.
Shared calendars, Microsoft teams, 100%. And thank you for those, the Instrumentlists who are in the room that kind of shouted out in the chat. We love to see that you're benefiting and your organization is getting strategically organized by using Instrumentl’s tracker and grant prospecting tools.
So our key takeaways here that I want to remind us of, how to become a PRO. We want to make sure that our leadership and our organization understands that grantseeking is an involved process. It takes time. We shouldn't be starting until we're ready for the work, to be honest, because otherwise we're going to be ending up turning our wheels, stuck in the mud, and finding that we're often spending a lot of energy and effort on applications that may not ever see any sort of feedback on. And lastly, that staying organized will help you go “PRO”, as I mentioned here.
So, we've got another workbook moment for those of you who are following along in your workbook. This is a pretty easy little kind of scorecard here. I kind of made a little quiz. So, you can go through each of the questions that I mentioned. You can indicate YES or NO, if you feel like your organization is identifying with each of these questions. If you have notes, you can add some scratch notes in here. And then at the bottom, you'll be able to tally up your score and see where you've landed on my kind of scoring reference. You'll see that there's some points associated.
So, I'll give folks another about two minutes to go through this. Add your scratch notes. You can include your score in the chat box. I love to see some high up there. Love it. Yes. Okay. So, if you look at your worksheet, you'll see at the bottom what these scores mean.
If you're at the 1 to 3 points, I've got you as a little egg in your nest. You're a fledgling organization, you're learning to fly. You've maybe taken a few first steps, but you need to push some of those key levers, and hopefully this quiz has helped you identify some of those.
If you're in the middle with the 4 to 6 points, you've kind of flexed some prowess. You have some initial strategy in place, but there may be a few places you still need to address. Use the notes in your draft to plan in the next section, which is going to be our last wrap-up here.
And then if you're in the 7 to 10 points, you are soaring above the rest. Your organization or your grantseeking practice is a well-oiled machine. Think about if you had a couple of points missing, or maybe you had some notes to yourself. Think about how you might use that to improve your strategy.
Love seeing these. Awesome, Megan. These 8s and 9s.
Victoria says, “Any 7 to 10-point organizations hiring?” I love it.
All right. We're wrapping up. We're going into our last session here, or section of our session here.
So, I want us to work together to build our strategy plan, and some of this is our homework today. We are back in school. We are taking our time to learn together. So, we're not going to get through this section synchronously. You're going to take it home with you. You're going to look back at it. And when you're feeling a little bit bogged down by the inevitable things that come up in our grantseeking practice, look back at this strategy plan and think about how you're applying some of these great lessons learned from our colleagues and what we've covered today.
You're going to see this on the next pages in your workbook, but I'm going to highlight the questions here. It's broken into three different sections.
Research and Prospecting. What are the specific resources needed to serve your target population? What types of grant opportunities should you be focusing on that align with your mission and financial goals? So, again, this can be kind of scratch notes, I've been calling them, something that's just kind of shorthand, quick things that come to mind. It doesn't have to be a fully fleshed out narrative.
For this next section, Planning for Grant Awards. Are we currently measuring and compiling program outcomes and successes? I heard some of you talking about how you could maybe improve some of that. How are you currently doing that? If you were awarded grants, how will you manage the reporting and follow-up?
And lastly, Reflection on Your Strategic Development here. So, where are you going to take your grant strategy to the next level. How effective are your current strategies at aligning with your goals? And then what adjustments might be necessary to improve your grant strategy? You might have already identified those in some of your other tables up above this section here.
Oh, Megan, let me drop that in the chat.
Okay. And the one thing that I want you to leave today with, this is the most important, kind of taking a big summary. This is our big question. What is the number one thing you are hoping to improve in your grant strategy? You might have already identified it today.
I love to hear it, Gretchen.
Yeah. So, this is the thing I want you to really think about. It's also the thing that if you're booking a grant strategy call, if you are one of the folks that we’re able to get into that, you'll be able to use this to guide your discussion. So, think about your big takeaway. What's your summary here? What's one thing you're walking away with? So this is going to be on page 6. Draft some of those scratch notes, and then write your strategy call summary on page 6 of your workbook. This will be your place to reference.
Love it. I love these summary statements that are coming in.
Pam says, “Grants are only one part of my job. How can I balance it against other responsibilities?”
Oh, thanks, Morgan. I might have taken one out because I felt like they were a little redundant. So, the one that I have in the workbook is just going to be what types of grant opportunities should we focus on that align with our mission and financial goals? I'll drop that into the chat as well. Thanks for clarifying that.
Okay, great. Love seeing these.
Patty says, “Assessing grant readiness and how to have that conversation with our organization.” Yeah.
Andi says, “New relationships with potential funders.”
Tammy says, “we need to focus more on relationship building and developing new funder relationships.” Yep. 100%.
Awesome. Love to see it.
Okay. So, as a reminder of what we did today, you've used your workbook, you've been adding to the chat. I'm going to send around the chat box transcripts that all of you have access to this. So don't worry. If you're trying to remember everything everyone's sharing, you'll be able to read through that at a later time.
If you want to make sure you're sharing those key learnings, I'll be looking for folks that are adding thoughts on LinkedIn, and I'll be raffling off some fun little prizes. You might even hear about a prize that comes up at the beginning of our next session. So, add those thoughts in, we love to see it, and then your peers can learn from you as well. You can invite peers to join in these sessions. I'll drop a link in the chat so you can invite friends to participate.
And then lastly, you might get a chance to snag a strategy session. I only have two spots left. So, I'd love to see if folks have an opportunity to take advantage of that. You can snag a spot. There are two different options here, depending on if you aren't already an Instrumentl customer.
Okay. And then wrapping up, because we're at 11:56 Pacific Time and I want us to get back to our busy days. If you are clicking that strategy link, you'll fill out your information here, and select this button. It'll take you to a call page for you to schedule that strategy call. So that'll be the way that you book that. Let me know if you're having any trouble and I'm happy to help you out. They'll walk through that big, summary statement that you worked on today so diligently. So, it's great that you're preparing in advance for that.
This is just a quick screenshot for folks that are familiar with Instrumentl. You might see how I might be setting up my tracker. This is just to remind us that the ways that we can organize our grants, that's one of our key kind of levers that we're thinking about when building strategy here. So, if you want to kind of test out and see what the tracker looks like for your organization, you can use that same link that I've dropped in the chat a couple of times and you can build your own. You can see how I've linked four different grant opportunities here and Instrumentl source, the deadlines for those based on the parameters I set up in my search. So, really easy way to keep you all organized.
Okay. I have a couple of key things to end on. I'm actually going to jump ahead to the last slide here. For folks that want to take away some of these funding trends, these were our highlights that came up from our expert council. It's something I wanted to make sure to leave you all with today. These are some of our areas of focus that look like kind of we're going into for the remainder of 2024. So, if you identify with any sectors, I highly encourage you to pursue opportunities within each of these. Since we're running a little tight on time, everything took a little longer than I thought, I'm going to add the context for each of these funding trends and add that into our event resources, so that you can look at it and kind of spend a little time digesting it. But yeah, I'll add in all that information.
I will have time to take questions. I'm actually going to open up the room. I tend to do this kind of at the end of each session. Well, I'll just leave 15 minutes for the Zoom room to remain open. If you have questions for me, you can raise your hand using the raise hand feature and I'll go through and answer those. Because we're getting to the end here, I want to make sure folks can share their feedback and get that CFRE point. I'm going to drop that in the chat.
Let's see...I've got our feedback form going in here. Thank you so much. I'm so glad to hear folks enjoyed spending time with us today. If you haven't already, like I mentioned, if you join this first session, you could get a fun little digital badge and a certificate of completion if you sign up for all three sessions. So, you've already done one. You've got one done, two to go, and I'll drop that link in the chat in case you aren't already registered.
I hope to see you for our next two sessions. We've got a funder engagement focused on our next one since some people had questions about that. So, join that session to see how we might approach some of those questions there.
And then the final session is focused on post-award management. Even if you're not there yet with your organization, I encourage you to attend. We're thinking about grant strategy holistically, right? So before we even apply for a grant, we want to be thinking about how we're going to manage it post-award.
So, come on in. Join us for these final two sessions. I would love to see you all present again. And thanks as always for spending time with me on your Thursday afternoons, wherever you may be. Have a lovely rest of your day.
.svg)
%201.png)
