First of all, who knew there was a Grants deadline season?
It turns out, based on an analysis of 17,000 active grants assessed by Instrumentl, “Grants season” is effectively March, September, and October. AKA, you are here. 📌(If you’re curious about their entire study on this, check out their article).
Let’s get into some quick tips to help you find grants that fit.
Tip 1: Get your house in order (if it isn’t already)
I’ve mentioned in past videos: It doesn’t matter how great a grant writer you are – if your mission isn’t compelling or clear, funders won’t fund it.
So before you can start your search for grants that fit your cause well, you need to check your organization’s positioning:
Make sure you have key documents complete and ready to go for grants:
- Your mission and vision statements and program descriptions
- Your organization budget and program / project budgets
- Ideally a strategic plan, theory of change, or at least a 1-3 year action plan mapping out your goals for the future
- A list of your board members, their board roles
- Metrics about your organization’s or program’s successes so far.
Check that messaging explaining your “gap” is super clear:
What’s the “gap”?
The “gap” is the difference between where your organization currently is and where it wants to go. The impacts you make now vs the ones you could make with more funding. The most compelling funding requests explain how funding will bridge the “gap”.
If you don’t know how to explain this to a funder, it’s important to get clear on it now.
Your “gap” statement goes in your case for support. Here’s the formula to write out your “gap” in your case for support:
- The problem (Example: There are 10,000 kids without computers in our city.)
- What we can do now (Example: We serve 200 kids with our current budget.)
- How much we need to increase what we can do now ($(Dollar Amount Here))
- How much MORE we could accomplish if we get that funding (Example: With your funding, we could serve 500 kids.)
Tip 2: Get Specific With Your Grant Search Parameters
Once you’ve clarified your position and “gap”, it’s time to search for grants online.
You can give a basic internet search a try (“grant opportunities for education in California”), but if you can access grants database tools, it will definitely save you hours upon hours each week (speaking from personal experience).
I am super appreciative to Instrumentl for sponsoring this newsletter, because they genuinely are one of the most robust grants tools I’ve seen. I’ve spent some time in grants databases and been able to research grants, but Instrumentl actually analyzes grant fit for you, too. Instead of looking up every grant foundation’s websites or 990 tax forms to get a list of their past grantees, Instrumentl gives you a full rundown and suggests matches automatically (click to expand the image):
(Here’s that free 3 week trial of Instrumentl again for you, if you want to give them a try).
So while you’re searching, be strategic:
1. Reference your Nonprofit’s Budget to hone in on types of funding needed. Is it for a specific project, operational costs, or capacity building? How much is needed for each? Do yourself a favor and make sure you’re assessing both direct and indirect costs for your programs – don’t sell yourself short by not accounting for the costs of infrastructure needed to help your programs run!
2. Search by Issue Area, Geography, and Funder History: It might seem like a good idea to cast a wide net and apply for as many grants as possible, but doing that can actually hurt your odds of success (and waste your time). You’ll increase your odds significantly with grant opportunities that are specific to your organization’s work. In my experience, there’s that special funder out there for every mission – you just have to spend some time finding them (or making yourself visible enough that they find you!).
3. Evaluate your Alignment: As you find potential grants, review funders’ criteria to ensure your mission falls within the Issue Areas and Geographical areas they fund. You can also review a funder’s giving history (via their 990 tax forms, websites, or using a tool like Instrumentl as previously mentioned) to find patterns showing the types of things they prefer to fund historically.
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(Example: This Instrumentl dashboard shows a funders’ openness to new grantees) |
4. Estimate Your Time Investment: Writing grants can take hours and hours. If the funder requires robust evaluation reports, and your nonprofit is too small to oversee that type of evaluating, it may not be the right fit for you at that time. If the funder provides small grants and your organization is large, it might not be worth it to spend time on that application, either.
Read grant applications in advance to weigh the time it would take you to complete it, and compare against both the potential grant award amount AND the odds of your success (even professional grant writers may only get 1 in 10 or 1 in 5 grants they apply for).
Tip 3: Get the Timing Right
Since we now know peak Grants deadline season is March, September, and October, how that that info help us? A few ways:
- If you’re a grant writer, fundraiser, or nonprofit leader responsible for raising money, consider blocking additional time on your schedule for handling grants during busier months
- And / Or: Go rogue with the opposite strategy 😉. Competition may be more fierce for grants during peak Grant deadline season, so you might consider a strategy of submitting applications for grants with off-peak deadlines, in the hopes funders will be more attentive then.
And like I said, if you want to give Instrumentl a spin, obligation-free, our friends over there gave us this extended 3-week trial just for our changemaker community here.
Go get those grants!
