If you followed the steps in part one to identify a grant that’s a good fit for your organisation, both in eligibility criteria and ethos, you’re ready to start writing. Right?
Not quite. Let’s just look briefly at why grants exist.
Grant makers are nice people, but that’s not why they offer funding
Unlike a loan, a grant is money given to your organisation. You will probably need to report back to the funder about what you’ve achieved, but the funding is yours to use. If you’ve used it for the purposes you’ve outlined in your application (and why wouldn’t you?) it doesn’t need to be paid back.
So why is this money on offer? Grant makers offer funding because they want that money to achieve some good in the world. And they need charities and not-for-profit organisations to help them do this.
To stand a good chance of obtaining / winning funds, you must clearly show how you can help the funder meet their goal. In your initial research you’ll hopefully have found a funder with a similar goal to you. For example:
- Raising standards of literacy
- Improving the experience of cancer patients
- Or something else entirely…
Understanding this is key to creating a compelling application. Note that I didn’t say successful: there are no guarantees and it’s important to manage your expectations.
Evidence is also a great way to make an application compelling
I realise this is easier said than done, and few smaller organisations will be fortunate enough to have a member of staff dedicated to this. But there are a few different ways to show results, depending on the nature of the organisation, and you may have some information already:
- Survey data: it’s easy and free to start creating simple forms, tailored to your audience, in something like SurveyMonkey or Typeform.
- Percentage improvements, for example in something like test scores if your aim relates to education.
- Quotes and testimonials: great for qualitative evidence of the difference your service has made to beneficiaries. Be careful with client confidentiality, but you could perhaps use just first names or initials. Even just a few well chosen words can help, and if the word count is tight, this might be all you can fit in.
- References: think about asking a representative from a partner organisation for their thoughts on the value your organisation brings.
- Keep an open mind about what might work for your organisation.
Start a master list of standard questions
If you plan to apply for more than one grant (an approach I strongly encourage), it’s worth creating a master list of standard questions that you’ll see again and again. While organisation name should be obvious, it’s worth agreeing and recording how you can legitimately shorten the name while still making it clear which organisation you’re talking about it. Can you use an acronym, for example, or leave out some words? Other useful things to include are the date the organisation started, the number of staff (full and part time, if any) and volunteers, and social media handles. You can then review and update these as needed.
Thanks for reading. In part three, I’ll look at timescales, and the different ways to submit an application.
No time or in-house resources to apply for grants? I find suitable funds and create compelling applications for organisations. If you’d like to discuss how I can help you, let’s arrange a no-obligation chat.
Recent Comments