3 Lessons Learned After Receiving That Big Grant
Celebrating an incredible achievement, a nonprofit recently secured a $750,000 capital grant, marking a significant milestone in its journey toward expanding its mental health services for the community. This transformative award will enable the organization to break ground on a new facility in June 2025.
To set up nonprofits for success in the competitive world of grant applications, it takes a comprehensive approach — from collaborative brainstorming sessions to partnering with C-suite leadership. These steps ensure that every aspect of the application and proposal aligns with a nonprofit's vision and the grantor's expectations. Read on to discover a few key factors in helping your organization to win that grant award.
1. Do Your Research on the Funder During Your Grant Proposal Development
Crafting a winning grant proposal is an art that incorporates the integration of vision, strategy and data. For this case study, our approach hinged on strategic utilization of an existing feasibility interview with the current funder.
Understand your nonprofit’s operations and leverage insights from current stakeholder discussions to develop a compelling narrative that resonates with the grantor's objectives, goals and strategic priorities. Also, digging deep about the nonprofit’s historical relationship with this particular funder can help your organization imagine what would be meaningful for the funder to hear about in the proposal.
For this grant in particular, it was critical that our grant writer partnered with the executive director and development director as they shared critical details about the day-to-day programs, and leveraged the stakeholder interview with the funder to craft a meaningful recognition strategy.
Integral to any pre-campaign study is a feasibility study, which includes confidential interviews with organizational stakeholders and funders. The funder, due to their strong existing partnership with the organization, agreed to an interview during this stage. Perspective and information learned in this meeting informed the team on realistic expectations, funder priorities and preferences.
It was also key that our team could share supporting documents with our grant writer. These include previously written grant proposals and reports; details about the capital campaign construction including needs, timeline and budget; and already committed gifts.
Additionally, it was imperative that the executive director and development director be able to share about the critical outcomes and metrics over the past few years and projections for growth from having the new building in place. Incorporating meaningful metrics into proposals is something we know foundations want to see and read about.
The success of this project underscores the power of a holistic grant writing approach that aligns leadership and organizational goals with community needs and funder priorities.
2. Leverage Key Factors to Make the Grant Application Stand Out
Presenting a meaningful naming opportunity for the funders meant greater recognition for the funder role in the capital project and demonstrated the legacy that this gift will have. Additionally, leveraging the organizations historical relationship with the funder helped the organization showcase its incredible ability to steward these funds with the utmost integrity.
A crucial aspect of the grant-writing process involved managing the complex application requirements. This entailed addressing specific proposal questions, ensuring that detailed budgets matched the application requirements and gathering necessary supporting documents that are submitted along with the application. Additionally, everyone involved was operating under tight deadlines with agreed upon timelines for drafts, turnaround times for revisions and a clear outline of materials needed.
This structured approach ensured efficient coordination of all elements, and allowed the organization to submit a compelling and complete application within the given timeframe.
Additionally, to tie all of these points together, the nonprofit received this wonderful quote from the funder:
“We have been very impressed with the process you have taken with this campaign, from the feasibility study to the very clear and comprehensive in-person meeting, and the strong demonstration of support from your board and committee members — all of this really helped to bolster your request.”
3. Planning for What’s Next After the Award
Aside from the impact of the gift, one of the most important takeaways was the realization that the nonprofit and funder were true partners in the field. While the organization relied on the funder for investment, the funder relied on the organization to execute its mission in the community and to understand the field better. True impact in the nonprofit sector happens when these partnerships exist and are continually strengthened. The sky's the limit!
The preceding post was provided by an individual unaffiliated with NonProfit PRO. The views expressed within do not directly reflect the thoughts or opinions of NonProfit PRO.
- Categories:
- Capital Campaigns
- Grants
As a social good executive, Bethany Baron has over 20 years of experience driving and navigating nonprofit partnerships and delivering consistent donor growth to support broad organizational initiatives. Prior to joining RAISE Nonprofit Advisors, Bethany led the fundraising efforts for The Honorable Tina Brozman Foundation for Ovarian Cancer Research and built and led the corporate giving program at NYU Langone Health. She also has a love of teaching and was an adjunct professor at Fordham Graduate School of Social Service and Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College.
Bethany resides in the Berkshires and, in her free time, Bethany’s favorite activity is hiking with her family and their fun-loving dog, Jolene.
Mindy Opper is an accomplished leader, sought-after adviser in the nonprofit marketplace nationwide and lead consultant at RAISE Nonprofit Advisors. Having served in both professional and volunteer roles for more than two decades, she possesses a rare capacity to offer 360-degree perspectives to organizations with a public service mission.
Before her focus on strengthening nonprofits through board service, Mindy was the director of UJA-Federation of New York’s lawyers division. Earlier in her career, she raised funds for the United Way and the Medical University of South Carolina Children’s Hospital. Mindy is skilled at building relationships, motivating lay leaders to become fundraisers and developing boards. Her experience on nonprofit boards and positions of leadership make her an excellent conduit for professional staff and lay leaders.
Mindy holds a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Florida and a Master of Public Administration from the College of Charleston, where she pursued nonprofit management as an academic focus. Her first class was an introduction to fundraising and she was hooked. She resides in New Jersey with her husband and three children.
