Empower Your Grant Writer To Be The Superhero Your Cause Deserves.

I remember the first grant application I ever wrote. I was 19 years old, starry-eyed, and just waiting for the right person or group to make all my dreams of making an impact come true.

My best friend and soon-to-be co-founder of the nonprofit I now lead, stayed up until 4 AM finishing the application, fueling our writing with late night coffee, and laughing at stupid jokes in our delirious tiredness. We admired our handy work when we were done. We didn’t know, yet, just how thoroughly our idealism-wrought, elaborate language-riddled application would be rejected.

This article was written by featured guest writer Amber M. Smith.

It didn’t matter that we were both pretty good writers. In other aspects of our lives, we could spin a compelling enough tale to inspire with the written word. But these were funders — they were inspired everyday by awesome people and organizations doing awesome things. They weren’t looking for fluff. They were looking for substance.

And our beautifully worded narrative meant nothing because our plan for action wasn’t clearly articulated. Funding us without clarity on our mission and plans would have been an understandably risky proposition.

We were disappointed in the moment, but the experience of rejection taught me valuable lessons. When I was 20, a nonprofit mentor took me under her wing and taught me the grant-writing basics. A few years later, using these basic concepts she’d taught me, I won our first grant for our new organization on the first attempt.

My mentor’s words of wisdom are grant-writing basics that most experienced grant pursuers know. Among them:

• Forgo the ten page story. Be succinct. Grant writers are busy people going through possibly hundreds of applications, all of them trying to share all they possibly can with a potential funder in limited space on the page.
• Never assume people understand your mission. With every grant (with very rare exceptions), pretend a funder has never heard of you. Explain your mission — and, critically — your vision of what the world looks like once you’ve accomplished said mission in clear language anyone could understand.
• Wise up on words the funder uses. If the funder talks about a social issue using particular words, echo those same words in your application, too (where appropriate and accurate, of course). It will emphasize your fit with the funder and demonstrate you are on the same page.
• Skip the flourish. Instead, go for clarity. The best grant writers can put together compelling paragraphs in as few words as possible without losing out on meaning.

Grantwriters will go to work for you, using these skills, and can be your champion — but only if you give them the tools they need to be victorious.

I’ve seen countless ads for grant writers. A major flaw underlying these requests is the assumption that a skilled grant writer is a silver bullet, a savior sent to save the day by winning thousands or millions of dollars in support.

Even the most skilled grant writer in all the land won’t be successful without the most vital element to any grant application: A demonstration of impacts.

It may seem obvious, but the most important thing you can do to inspire a funder is show results. Results aren’t something that appear magically on the page while a grant writer writes a grant, they are the outcomes your organization works for throughout the entire year.

So if your organization and cause are getting results, in theory, grantwriting should be easy.

Grantwriting is a lot like public speaking: It’s 90% preparation and a mere 10% style. For a writer to be an organization’s gladiator, they must be equipped. Before seeking your writer, compile their arsenal. It should consist of:

• A clearly articulated mission and vision statement, one so clear and concise a child could understand it.
• Your organization’s business and strategic plan. Bring the writer into the fold by inspiring them with your vision and plans for getting there. An inspired writer inspires others.
• Your fundraising plan. That is, how your cause will acquire support beyond the grant the writer is applying for. A fatal mistake an organization can make is assuming that a grant will solve all of their problems. But funders are business people, too; they want to see your cause has additional ways of sustaining its work beyond their infusion of cash. They don’t want to be relied upon for eternity to sustain your cause — they have other causes they’d like to support, too. Ironically, but understandably, you need to show your organization can make money in other ways before they will give you a shot.
• Your organization’s board-approved budget. How does your plan for revenue throughout the year mirror your organization’s plans to make an impact this year?
• Highlights of your most recent impacts, both quantifiable and qualitative. Share stories of people your cause has helped. Share metrics, too. Calculate your organization’s SROI (Social Return on Investment), which can make a powerful statement about the value of the results you can have when people invest in your cause.
• Finally, if possible, equip your grantwriter with examples of past grants your organization has written. At least one that succeeded, and one that failed. That failure can become its own weapon, showing the writer what mistakes to avoid in their own quest for your cause.

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