Secret Ingredients to Grant Success (Part 1): Awareness

I’ve been having interesting conversations with several nonprofit leaders through my 1:1 grant coaching sessions, and I’ve observed one common thread:

Everyone wants to know how to write that amazing grant that will convince funders to give.

Convince being the operative word. Write being the other.

It’s almost like there IS a magic formula for grant success.

So I invited each of these coaching clients to a role play, where they played the role of the funder; I asked each of my clients to tell me what would compel them to give:

“It would need to be someone with a good reputation, someone I had confidence in..”

“I would want to know if they can do the work they say they can do. Have they done it before? Do they have good systems?”

“I’m interested to know how their work is related to ours and why they are doing this work.”

Translation: They would fund based on

 (1) Credibility/Reputation

(2) Past Performance + Capacity

(3) Mission Fit/Alignment/Shared Values + Priorities

Not one person said “an amazing grant proposal.”

Every single one of these coaching clients were seasoned nonprofit leaders looking for grant support, because they felt their applications were missing something important.

They just needed a moment to step back and find some perspective—and see what they already knew.

Writing a solid grant application IS important to grant success. But getting to a ‘yes’ from a funder rarely takes place in a vacuum.  

There are fundamentals that need to be in place that inspire funder confidence; actions you can take and systems which need to be in place.

Translate these actions and systems into a clear, evidence-based narrative and realistic budget and you are now ahead of the pack.

I’ll be writing more about this over the next few weeks.

None of this is rocket science. All of it takes time, patience, and commitment to the long-game.