What does Empathy have to do with Grant Writing?

As I step back to reflect, I believe all grant writing should be grounded in empathy; the ability to listen with curiosity, reflect, and see things from multiple perspectives can make the difference between a ‘good enough’ proposal and a compelling one.

There are multiple ‘stakeholders’ in the grant development process;

--The main grant writer and editor

-- The content contributors

-- The person or people signing-off on the application

-- The grantors aka your funders

As a grant writer, your job is to bring together the narrative, data, finances and supporting documents in a cohesive story WHILE balancing the perspectives of each of the people engaged in your grant development process.

Let’s take a moment to think about that.

Imagine you are writing your first grant proposal to raise funds for a program that helps young people who have aged out of foster care transition to independent living.

 If you simply want to describe the program and activities offered, my guess is that you will find existing language on the organization’s website and other communications. Existing template materials are timesaving and provide valuable context and framing. They can also be outdated.

But what if you took the time to talk to the program coordinator who works directly with the young people, and asked “tell me how the young people are doing?” you might hear how Angela who didn’t want to interact with anyone at first, is now thriving in pottery class; how the youth in group therapy are now supporting each other outside of therapy sessions.

If you talk to the executive director, she might tell you about their partnership with the local community center which offers so many free enrichment activities which have been a lifeline to the youth, while relieving financial pressure on the organization’s budget; and how a conversation with a local furniture store owner transformed a bare office room into a welcoming group therapy space.

If you have the opportunity to speak with Angela herself (and this conversation needs to be handled with great care for privacy) you may have the privilege of gaining a deeper understanding of how much relationships and kindness matter in creating safety-nets which prevent young people from falling through the cracks.

And if you take time to delve into the funder’s giving history (priorities and dollar amounts) and ideally have a conversation about their current goals and priorities, that’s when you find figure out where the intersection of both your goals and priorities lie—this is the center point of your proposal narrative.  

At this point, ask yourself; what is my pitch? And how do I make it in a way that respects the dignity of everyone involved?

Compelling grant writing guided by empathy takes time and intent.

It allows others the space to speak, and share what is important to them.

It stops to ask questions and delve deeper.

And sometimes it requires you to step away from your own preconceived notions of how things work.   

Strategies for Connecting with Invite-Only Funders

I’m thrilled to hear that so many of you found the spreadsheet of 40+ social impact funders committed to upholding justice helpful. I hope you can continue to use this information to keep pushing forward as you serve your communities in this incredibly difficult time. I see you and I hear you.

However, I found something troubling in the spreadsheet, and you probably did too—I’m sure you noticed that that the application process for a large number of these funding institutions was some variation of “invitation-only.”

This is problematic for many reasons— starting with if the FUNDER does not “discover” you, and THEY do not choose to connect with you, even if you’re work is a 100% aligned, your pathway to connecting with them is as clear as mud.

To me, this is an issue of equity and access.

If you find yourself in that situation, here are a few strategies and resources to try to crack that door open.

1.      Find a Way to Connect

If the funder has published their email and phone number or provides a ‘connect with us link’ your first step is done.

If there’s no visible way to get in touch (or even if you’ve got that covered), time to do some detective work:

• Check out their social media: Can you find their social media profiles on LinkedIn, Face Book, and Instagram etc.? Can you identify a staff or board member to potentially connect with?

• Look for recent press releases and news articles.

• Sign-up to receive the organization’s updates and newsletters—these can be give you valuable insights into the institution.

•  No luck? Check out their 990 and find their listed contacts.

2.      Find your Synergies

      Assuming you’ve been able to find a personal contact and have some intel.,  take some time to write up a short synergy report on areas of alignment;

• Which of your programs/activities are a great fit based on the funder’s stated priorities and recent giving history?

• Take time to create a short pitch-intro that represents your authentic work and voice:

  Version 1: A few talking points for a phone call

  Version 2: A 1-2 paragraph written introduction.

  Remember, you will need to tweak and customize this for each funder.

• Be clear on your ask to connect. Be ready to answer questions.

 3.      Reach Out

Barring any requests for **privacy, try to connect directly with a program contact or decision maker. Depending on your individual situation, plan out your outreach approach:

• Telephone call or email intro? Follow-up plan? No pushy messages. Respectful request to connect.

• Consider having a mutual contact or affiliated colleague make an introduction on your behalf.

• Evaluate whether a short direct messaging via the organization’s public social media with request to connect would further your case.

** ONLY use publicly and officially listed contact information. Do not contact people via their personal emails or phone numbers found on the internet. Also, if the entity specifically requests not to be contacted at all, or requests not to be contacted via a specific method i.e. no phone calls, respecting that request is key.

 If you’d like to dive deeper into this topic, check out these resources:

1. How to Engage with Invitation-Only Funders: from https://fundingforgood.org/how-to-engage-with-invitation-only-funding-foundations/

2. How To Have Conversations with Foundation Program Officers: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0YmTZkbkTE&list=PL7KMjiEftADzyVpEkrucjWNLYIrDquGlj&index=5

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Are you a social-justice focused or community-serving nonprofit looking for grant support? Let’s Connect! Schedule your free grant consultation.

Meet the Justice-Focused Funders

This is a spreadsheet of 40+ funders who are actively committed to advancing justice in 2026. In fundraising terms, think of this as your prospect research list—funders who have publicly stated their support for justice in the U.S. and are backing up those commitments by funding economic, social, racial, gender, environmental, and other justice- and DEI-focused work.

• Create your own copy of this spreadsheet in Google Sheets.

• View & download the spreadsheet in a new tab.

*One Community Grant Consulting, LLC kindly requests written acknowledgment of Sharmila Sitther as the original author of this document, in the event it is repurposed, adapted, or shared.

How to Use This Research for Your Organization

Follow the steps below to make the most of this research and tailor it to your organization’s grant-seeking needs.

1. Create a Working Copy

Create a “save-as” copy of the read-only file. This will allow you to modify the sheet as needed without altering the original.

2. Screen and Narrow Down Potential Funders

Review the list and identify funders that may be a strong match for your organization by considering:

• Geographic focus

• Issue areas

• Funder eligibility criteria

Next step: Delete funders who are clearly not a good fit. For those that remain, add funder contact information for easy reference.

3. Personalize and Organize the Sheet

Add columns or apply filters to customize the sheet for your internal use. For example:

• Identify whether opportunities support general operating funding or project-specific funding

• Filter by a minimum grant threshold

4. Find Deeper Synergies

Review funders’ public-facing materials such as annual reports, impact pages, and social media to learn more about their priorities. Look at past grantees to identify areas of alignment and potential synergies between the funder and your organization.

5. Add Notes

Edit or add notes in the “special notes” section to capture insights, questions, or follow-up actions.

6. Manage Long Lists Effectively

Large funder lists can become overwhelming. Consider funneling this information into a full-cycle grant management software or creating a custom workflow using a tool like Asana.

 And for folks who are curious about how this list came together, keep reading.

The Back Story: How I Created This List

1. I crowdsourced funder recommendations on LinkedIn
I gathered ideas for funders that met the following criteria:

·         Organizations with a publicly accessible website that clearly retains language about their commitment to justice and DEI

·         Funders that are actively supporting economic, social, racial, gender, environmental, and other forms of justice and DEI

·         Funders that support work in the United States

·         Funders with non-functioning websites or without clear descriptions of grant support for U.S.-based organizations were excluded

2. I excluded information that varies widely
To keep the list usable and manageable, I did not include funder deadlines, detailed eligibility criteria, or types of support. These details often vary by program—for example, deadlines and funding types can differ across a single funder’s portfolio.

3. I used ChatGPT to build the spreadsheet template and populate the initial data.

4. I fact-checked everything
Every cell was reviewed, corrected, and edited by me to ensure accuracy.

Important Notes

·         Unless specifically noted, the “giving history” column does not refer exclusively to grantmaking. Grant dollar amounts do not necessarily reflect total charitable disbursements; some funders include other forms of giving, such as investments.

·         Every effort was made to verify accuracy at the time of research. That said, this information is not static. Funder priorities change. Giving methods change.

** If you choose to use this information, please note that you are solely responsible for verifying its accuracy at the time of use. Sources are included as comments in each cell, please check the data for yourself.

Friends, this is truly a labor of love, born out of my distress at the injustices that keep piling up. It’s my give-back. Share it, use it, and pass it along so it can help as many people as possible. Make it work for you, add it to your research, or modify the document in whatever way best supports your work.

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One Community Grant Consulting, LLC kindly requests written acknowledgment as the original author if this document is repurposed, adapted, or shared.

If you are looking for grant support, send me a message or schedule a time to chat.

The Art of Pithy Storytelling—Advice from Petey the Cat

Grant writing is about telling your stories effectively — showing the heart and impact of your work. And sometimes, you’ve got just a tiny bit of space to convey something deep and meaningful. Sometimes it’s just a 100 words. That’s when your writing needs to be pithy.

Do you recognize this gem?

“Ya gotta avoid repetition… shun redundancy… eschew reiteration… resist recapitulation… And also stop telling the same joke over and over!”

Sound familiar? Then I’m guessing you have a 7–10-year-old in your life who’s obsessed with Dav Pilkey’s Dog Man series. This particular moment is from Lord of the Fleas.

Petey’s advice isn’t just funny. It’s actually really good guidance for writers. Whether you’re trying to land a joke, write a grant proposal, or craft a social media post, clarity and conciseness are your best friends.

Pithy Writing Takes Practice

Combining brevity with depth is a skill that takes time and practice. But since we’re talking about keeping things short and sharp, I’ll keep this list of tips brief too:

• Know your stuff. The more familiar you are with your subject, the easier it is to write clearly.

• Frame it fast. Sum up the issue in a few sentences, then dive right in.

• Don’t muzzle your first draft. Write long if you need to, then edit later.

• Cut the clutter. Ditch clichés and extra adjectives.

• Don’t overuse punctuation. It helps keep sentences crisp.

• Experiment with phrasing. Try a few different versions of tricky sentences.

• Stick with the active voice. It’s more direct and engaging.

• Swap in synonyms. It keeps your writing colorful.

And above all — avoid repetition, shun redundancy, eschew reiteration, resist recapitulation. 😄

It Matters in Grant Writing

Funders read a lot. The clearer and tighter your writing, the more likely they’ll truly hear your story. Pithy writing doesn’t necessarily mean cutting emotion — it means focusing on what matters most.

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P.S. Dav Pilkey might be all about goofy, gross-out humor, but there’s a lot of heart there along with the silliness. Petey and Li’l Petey’s conversations often sneak in reflections on pain, forgiveness, and love — remember, even the lightest stories can hold deep truths.

Your Turn

What strategies or tricks help you write sharper, pithier prose — whether in grants, emails, or everyday writing? I’d love to hear what works for you.

Voting-Style Grant Competitions Are Unfair By Design

A metal slide bolt fastened across the seam of two dark wooden door panel (Image Credits: Unsplash Images, Zoshua Colah

I ran into a spot of trouble with a grant competition some years ago. It took me a few more years to realize the justice issues in the broken system that I was participating in. 

Here’s what happened:

My non-profit client wanted to participate in a corporation sponsored grant contest offering grants of $25,000 to fund “neighborhood need projects.”

The application process looked easy enough:

·  It had four short narrative questions asking about community needs, and how we’d use the grant to meet unmet needs.

·   Applicants could include up to three pictures

·   The first 2,000 submissions would be accepted.

·   200 finalists would be chosen

·    A public vote would decide which 40 community causes would win $25,000 each

We decided to go for it;

 So while the application was straightforward, it still required time and effort to:

·    Strategize how we could use $25k to maximum benefit for a group of young people

·   Create a budget based on actual costs

·   For the communications team to look through the photo archive and pull together pictures to fit our pitch

·  To draft a tightly worded response that fit within the very limited character count

·  For the ED’s edits and feedback

Together, we easily spent 10+ hours of our time on a ‘simple’ application

  Here’s where I made my mistake.

The competition officially opened its portal at 1pm. Now, the grant guidelines had said “spots fill up fast” and “Be quick! We are only accepting 2,000 submissions!” That should have been enough of a red flag.

I had figured, I’d get it done on the first day the portal opened—just to be on the safe side.

My plan was to finish up another writing project that afternoon, and then incorporate the edits from the nonprofit ED before submitting.

At 5pm, I logged into the portal, ready to upload my narrative and pictures.  

“We are no longer accepting submissions.” The portal was closed.

We had not missed a deadline—there was none. But 2,000 others had just beaten us to the entrance, and we were locked out.

One of the worst feelings as a grant writer is to feel you have failed your client. There was nothing to do but accept responsibility—and then move forward.

Reflecting on this experience, I know I could have done better. I could have been poised and ready to go at 1pm. 

Still, this competition held by a large corporation with vast resources was no merit-based competition at all. It was a popularity contest where winning relied on how good your marketing was and how many supporters you can mobilize to vote for you.

Despite good intentions, this kind of ‘competition’ is inherently flawed; the structure of the competition is set up so that the majority of applicants will inevitably fail. It is also biased against smaller nonprofits with limited resources.

Consider:

·         2000+ applicants -> pre-determined that only 40 will be selected

·         No public review or scoring criteria -> a lack of transparency about finalist participant selection

·         More robust marketing and mobilization systems + larger supporter base to ‘vote’-> more likely to win.

 Philanthropy is riddled with structural inequity, and this is prime example of how funders, unwittingly (giving them the benefit of the doubt here) perpetuate bias, limit access, and frankly waste a whole lot of nonprofit staff time.

How many small non-profits are devoting 10+ hours only to find the gates and gatekeepers shut the door before they even get there?

Nonprofits, I encourage you not to participate in funding processes that perpetuate unfair and unjust practices. Don't be complicit. Know your worth, and persist in building partnerships with funders who show respect through their processes and practices.