Grants for Nonprofit Organizations

Keeping a nonprofit funded is becoming more and more difficult with tighter state and federal budgets as well as cut-backs in foundation funding. Many foundations lost money in the markets and as a result, have had to be leaner in the amounts they award. However, many foundations have continued their commitment to nonprofits by streamlining their mission statements and goals, or narrowing their categories for grant-writing. If a person is persistent and diligent, he can still find money out there; it just takes more work than years past.

Searching for grant opportunities is a big task if you don’t narrow it down. Foundations, for example, will have specific areas in which they will award grants. It helps to get on different list- serves in your field that carry grant information so you can go directly to the foundations or government entities that are related to your work. For instance, the Children, Youth, and Family Consortium at the University of Minnesota has an electronic newsletter which features grant opportunities in education, child welfare, literacy, and other early education areas. You can also sign up for notification of grants through federal government agencies which will then alert you to all new federal grant postings.

You can also pay for services that will send you grant ‘leads’ through emails but use caution when considering these organizations. Often, they are quite costly and the information you receive may not be specific to your needs, requiring you to sift through a great deal of data before you find anything useful.

Once you have found a foundation or government entity in which to propose a grant to, the details are very important. Grants are routinely discarded for the most minor infractions from what the grant maker has required, from no stapling to double-spacing of content. Read the directions carefully and follow them to the letter. The last thing you want to do is spend many hours writing a grant proposal only to have it thrown out for a mistake that could easily have been avoided. Each grant maker will be a little different too, so while you can often use the same idea for several diverse funders, you will have to adjust to the specifics of each foundation or government agency. If your proposal does not fit in the foundations criteria, do not spend time trying to change their minds. The only caveat to this would be to call the foundation first and ask if your proposal is a worthy idea; it will save you a lot of time to find out early that you shouldn’t even apply.

If you apply for a grant and find out that you did not receive funds, don’t stop there! Call the funders and ask them if they will give you any feedback on why your proposal was not funded. This can be incredibly helpful information for you as you revise and rework your proposal. Some foundations, but not all, will let you resubmit at the next grant period.

If you did receive funding, congratulations! Keep your funder happy by getting reports to them on time and be sure and ask them for continued funding when the grant period ends. Good luck!