Grants

The U.S. Business Group of Sun Life Financial Inc. announced its request for applications in five key U.S. regions for Sun Life Rising Star Awards grants from nonprofit organizations that promote the academic achievement of underserved youth. Applications are available now at sunliferisingstar.com. The deadline for submissions is June 9.

What are foundations doing to make more efficient use of their grant making? The Chronicle of Philanthropy mentions four trends in current grant making that charities should be aware of: interest in tackling really big problems, making social services more effective, encouraging struggling charities to merge with or partner with stronger ones and spreading the ideas that work.

This new emphasis by foundations on pooling resources and bringing in multiple players to solve big problems could be a signal for nonprofits to look toward mergers, cooperation and cross-agency projects before even approaching a foundation.

As anyone who has researched grant prospects knows, the opportunities for funding partners are few and far between. No nonprofit can afford to leave a bad taste in the mouth of a foundation’s executives. Your grant applications will improve vastly if you keep in mind these 10 tips.

The online world is full of anonymous opinions: Diners review restaurants, students rate professors, patients evaluate doctors. Now fundraisers are getting their turn. A new website, Inside Philanthropy, is asking them to “Speak Truth to Money” and say what they really think about foundations, program officers and philanthropists.

The anonymous-ratings feature is part of a broader effort by the online venture’s founder, David Callahan, to penetrate philanthropy’s inner sanctums.

A typical error with small or fledgling nonprofits is they think fundraising equals grants, when, as you and I both know, grants are only a tiny piece of a much larger pie. Grants can make a difference for your nonprofit’s bottom line. Grants are useful in many ways. However, grants should not be a stand-in for all fundraising activities or depended on long term for operation funding. The majority of money comes from individuals. Even project funding could be much more easily obtained from individuals than from foundations.

Once the technical understanding of grant application components is accomplished, I strongly believe it is time to focus on enhancing the craft of grant writing. It is time to now focus and improve on how you tell the story of your organization and proposed program or project within your proposal narrative, cover letter and letter of inquiry. Below I outline questions to consider for each of the seven qualities of a proposal that, if mastered, will land you in the stack of excellent funded grant proposals during the next grant application review.

How do you create a “dream” grant-writing team for an organization or specific application that covers all areas of needed expertise in order to create a competitive grant application? I recommend approaching your team composition from a strengths-based approach. Think about the strengths that each of the potential players brings to the table assessing a strong budget developer or a strong program evaluator.

In my decades of running charitable foundations, I read tens of thousands of proposals. Many share the same characteristics I'll touch on below.

Since nearly all foundations are required to disburse some of their funds each year, grants are always made — to someone. Over the years, grant-seekers have asked me how they can increase their chances of being among the ones chosen.

Here are answers to the questions I'm most often asked …

Most online grant applications have strict character and/or word limits for your responses to each question. Enter one character too many and you receive a pop-up message saying you’ve gone over the limit, or your keystrokes are instantly stopped. You’ve been cut off, my fellow grant writer. But, take heart — with practice you can learn to do something you should probably be doing as a grant writer anyway — keeping your text concise while still retaining focus and meaning.

Foundation Source shares key findings from a recent survey of private foundation donors. Issued earlier this month to its 1,100 private foundation clients, the survey collected feedback from donors about their beliefs and perceptions about some of philanthropy’s current “hot-button” issues.

Results were derived from 198 respondents, the majority of whom have private foundations with less than $50 million in assets. Foundations of this size account for 98 percent of the approximately 86,000 private foundations in the U.S.