Shift Your Focus to Funders, Not Funding Opportunities
September 28, 2020
It's always a good idea to look weekly, if not daily, for funding opportunity announcements that might be a good fit for your organization. However, if you are not careful, you can end up putting too much emphasis on finding funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) over other grant-seeking activities. While FOAs are important, many (if not most) organizations would be better served by prioritizing in-depth research of specific funding sources—that is, the foundations, associations, and government agencies behind the opportunity postings—than focusing on FOAs.
In this post, we explore why researching funders can deliver a greater payoff than searching for FOAs.
THE PROBLEM WITH FOCUSING ON FUNDING OPPORTUNITY ANNOUNCEMENTS
Finding funding opportunities you can apply to is an essential part of the grant-seeking process, so what's the problem with focusing on FOAs?
The problem is this: If your main focus is on FOAs, you'll always be in a reactionary mode rather than in a proactive state. When you are in reactionary mode, it means that when you spot an FOA of potential interest, you usually have to decide ASAP whether to apply to the opportunity because the majority of FOAs are released a few weeks before the application deadline. Because of the time pressure, you won't have much time to evaluate the opportunity to determine how good a fit it is for your organization; determine if your organization would be a competitive applicant; or research the funder's programmatic priorities, history, or past grantees. If your grant funding approach is ad hoc and depends on finding FOAs to apply to each month, you need to be ready to spring into action at a moment's notice as opportunities come up. With each proposal, you'll have to hope that you have the resources on hand to produce a decent proposal that might have a chance at winning.
Does this dive-in approach sometimes work? Yes, sometimes it does, which is why people do it. However, even when this approach works and results in a grant award, it doesn't always lead to happy results. Over the years, we've noticed that when a grant is awarded in response to one of these reactionary-mode proposals, the subsequent project is often a disaster. These disasters occur because, in the rush to get the proposal written and submitted, the applicant organization lacks the time to research and design a realistic, feasible project, which leads to the organization being unable to deliver what was promised for the money received.
The only time we've seen reactionary proposals result in successful awards is when the team preparing the proposal has
experience working on grant proposals as well as experience working together (i.e., no unknown, external consultant grant writer is thrown into the mix);
some familiarity with the funder; and
access to relevant materials, such as recent proposals and boilerplate that can be quickly adapted for the purpose.
If you don't have an experienced team, lack familiarity with the funder, and will be creating the application largely from scratch, the odds are low that you'll be able to produce a winning grant proposal in response to an FOA you just spotted. Not impossible, but not very likely. The reason for this is that the vast majority of grant proposals, including those that are perfectly planned and executed, are not funded. A proposal prepared in response to a funding opportunity you know little about and have not anticipated will have an even lower chance of success.
Another issue with focusing on FOAs is that, unless it is a very simple application requiring few details, you won't know enough about the funder's interests, goals, and evaluation criteria to prepare a truly responsive and competitive proposal.
Lastly, if your funding strategy revolves around finding new calls for proposals, you may be tempted to go for opportunities that are not a great fit and may pull you away from your mission. If you don't have a 12-to-18-month plan that outlines the funders and funding opportunities you're going to pursue, you're going to feel pressure to apply to whatever comes along.
Researching funding opportunities is an important task, but that's all it is. It's a task, not a strategy. To create a funding strategy, you need to take a step back and look at the funders behind the opportunities.
Are You Overly Focused on Funding Opportunity Announcements? Here Are Some Signs:
You do not spend any time researching funders.
You do not have a shortlist of funders that you actively watch (subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website regularly, etc.) that you know offer grants in your programmatic area.
You do not have a grant strategy outlined that names the funders you want to pursue in the next 12–18 months.
THE IMPORTANCE OF SHIFTING YOUR FOCUS TO FUNDERS
If your focus is on FOAs, you will be in reactionary mode and may lack the time needed to prepare high quality, competitive proposals. If you focus on funders rather than FOAs, you're taking a different approach. By making it a regular habit to research funders and creating a shortlist of the funders you intend to apply to on an annual basis, you're positioning yourself to be a more competitive applicant. The more competitive you are, the more likely you are to win a grant.
Instead of hoping to find an FOA to apply to, be strategic and watch for FOAs released by funders you’ve already vetted and determined to be a good fit for your organization.
Why Funder Research Should Be Your Priority over Looking for FOAs
Even if you have developed an annual grant strategy that identifies specific funders and grant opportunities to apply to, there may be (and perhaps always will be) an FOA that pops up unexpectedly that is too good to pass up. If the FOA is a good fit for your organization, you understand what the funder wants, and you have the resources to apply, we would encourage you to do so. We are not saying to never respond to an FOA you did not anticipate, only that applying to an FOA you didn’t anticipate should be the exception, not the rule.
Understanding funders is key if you want to be a successful grant seeker. Here are a few of the reasons why researching funders in advance of responding to an FOA is important:
Funding Trends: Understanding funding trends takes time. Has the funder you are interested in funded organizations like yours recently? Has the funder ever funded projects like the one you want to propose? Are there other organizations out there already doing the work you want to do, in the place you want to do it, and achieving good results? If so, would any funder be interested in funding you to do this same work?
Funding Cycles: By and large, most funders release their funding opportunities on a predictable schedule or have established programs that release funding opportunities periodically (i.e., you might not know when an opportunity will come out, but you can find out what their programmatic interests are and track the program to look for clues for when an FOA will come out).
Funding Guidelines: Funders are not static entities. It's not unusual for funders to change their funding priorities, funding timelines, funding mechanisms, and application processes. If you have identified a funder of interest and have been following them, you'll know when they make changes to their application process, which will allow you to study the new application procedures in preparation for responding to an FOA. A change in application procedures may seem like a small thing. However, if the funder has moved from a simple process (applications submitted via email) to a more complicated one (applications submitted through a third-party online portal), you could lose valuable time trying to figure out how to apply.
Competitiveness: A fourth reason why understanding funders is important has to do with competitiveness. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are 1.5 million registered nonprofits just in the United States. All funders—from small family foundations to government agencies—are inundated with grant applications when they post an FOA. When you submit a grant application, unless it is a sole-source situation (i.e., only your organization has been invited to apply), you will face competition. To stand out from the pack and produce the most responsive proposal possible, you need to understand the funder, its mission, and the problem it's trying to solve. Funders use grants as a means of moving their mission forward. In most cases, foundations are not capable of implementing projects directly (the same is true of government funders), so they use grants to recruit others to do the work they believe needs to be done to achieve their goals (note, not yours). If you do not understand the problem a funder is trying to solve, why they want to solve this problem, or what they've already done in an attempt to solve the problem, you are going to be at a disadvantage when you prepare your grant proposal.
IMPLEMENTING A FUNDER-FOCUSED GRANT STRATEGY
So perhaps we've convinced you that you need to prioritize funders over FOAs. But what does this look like in practice? Here are our suggestions of what to do (and not do) to establish a funder-focused grant strategy:
SUMMARY
If you need grant money, finding funding opportunities to apply to is very much an essential part of the grant-seeking process. We’re not advocating that you stop looking for funding opportunities. In fact, just the opposite: We always advise organizations to submit proposals in response to funders’ open call for proposals (i.e., the funders are actively soliciting applications). What we’re suggesting is an adjustment to your grant-seeking activities, so you spend more time researching a targeted list of funders and less time scrolling through generic lists of funding opportunities hoping to find something to apply to.
Learning who funds organizations like yours and doing in-depth research on each of the funders you uncover—this should be your priority. Make it a goal to create a shortlist of funders that are a good match for your organization, identify the funders’ funding programs and cycles, and then do what you can to prepare for the proposal writing process while waiting for the funders to release FOAs.
The approach we’re advocating may not be as exciting as rushing to respond to an FOA you just spotted from a funder you’ve never heard of before, but if your goal is to win grants on a consistent basis, researching funders, tracking the ones that are the best fit, and monitoring them to anticipate when they will release FOAs will yield better long-term results.
