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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

The Best (Free) Places to Search for Grant Funding

Knowing where to look for new grant opportunities is of central importance if your organization depends on grant money to survive. Fortunately, there are many free resources you can use to find open opportunities, some of which will even send you alerts.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Writing and Managing Grant Proposals Using Evernote

If you’ve worked on a grant proposal, you know there are a lot of moving parts. For example, you need to collect information, manage tasks, and collaborate with others. In this post, we’ll present ideas of how to use Evernote for grant writing and proposal management. At the end of the post, you’ll find resources for learning more about Evernote's features.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Identifying the Right Grant Opportunities

How do you know which grants your organization should apply for? To use your limited resources effectively, it's important to pursue only those opportunities that fit your organizational and programmatic capabilities. Pursuing grants your organization is unlikely to win doesn't make sense. On the flip side, some grant opportunities aren't worth applying to--regardless of the odds of winning an award--because of the high cost of project implementation.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Creating a Grant Strategy for 2018

Creating a grant strategy involves identifying the funders you want to pursue, and, to the degree possible, specific opportunities of interest from each funding source. Developing a grant strategy also requires insight into your organization. You need to know your organization's long- and short-term goals, its capabilities and resources, and its tolerance for risk. To create a realistic strategy, you also need to be familiar with the general funding environment.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Best Practices for Writing an Executive Summary

The executive summary is a concise overview of the proposal that should touch on all of the key themes of greatest interest to the funder.  In some cases, the executive summary may be the only section of the proposal some evaluators will read. Some of the choices you'll need to consider around the crafting of an executive summary include when to write it, what content to include, and how to work within page limits for maximum impact. 

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Affordable Tools Every Grant Writer Should Have

To assemble a grant proposal, even if your organization is small and most grant applications you submit are short, you'll still need some tools to organize the process, communicate with colleagues, and package and submit the proposal. The tools below are ones you should consider adding to your toolkit.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Track the Latest News Related to Nonprofits & Grant Writing without Cluttering Your Inbox

There is abundant information online about every conceivable topic, grant writing and philanthropy included.  One way to stay abreast of nonprofit-related news without overwhelming your inbox is to use a content aggregator that collects relevant articles and blog posts from around the Web. Some of the services will email you a consolidated list of relevant articles weekly, or sometimes daily, while others provide tailored content through an account you setup on their website.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

How to Use Trello for Grant Research & Writing

If you're serious about finding grant funding, you'll need a system to track which funders you've researched.  Without a method to track the funding resources you've evaluated, you may miss out on funding opportunities. You may also find yourself researching the same funder multiple times because you've forgotten the details of your initial review. One tool that offers the flexibility to manage all parts of the funding process is Trello.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Focus on Partnerships to Increase Funding Options

If your organization is based in a developing country, you may not be able to secure funding directly from some foreign donors. While providing funding for projects in developing countries, many donors will only fund projects led by nonprofits headquartered in the same country where the donor itself is located. Instead of receiving funds directly from the donor,  local partners--the organizations located in the country where the project will take place--join the project as subcontractors (or "subs") to a lead organization based in the donor's country.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Tips for Finding Foundation Grants to Support Research

Researchers depend on grants to fund their work. The largest funders of research are government agencies. Private and corporate foundations also fund research. Although grants awarded by foundations are usually smaller than those awarded by government agencies, foundation grants are almost always easier to apply to, leading to lower opportunity costs.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Don't Discount the Smaller Foundations

When it works out, having a grant from a large donor can be a great boon for the organization. Having a single grant of $100K can be easier to manage than four $25K grants. That said, the large-donor strategy has some pitfalls and is not always the best route.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Preparing for a Government Funding Opportunity

Foundation grants often have known release dates and established program areas, which mean there are few surprises: You can find out when the foundation accepts proposals, and you can usually read up on the program areas and past grantees on the foundation's website. You may even be able to access the grant application well in advance of the time applications are due if the foundation uses a standard application format.

Government grant opportunities are different. For many government funding opportunities, the agency that will release the funding announcement doesn't have direct control over all the variables including how much money a grant will award and even when the opportunity announcement will be published.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Four Strategies for Managing Multiple Writers

Even for a "simple" proposal, there will be multiple people contributing to the different pieces, with some working on the budget, others writing the more technical pieces, and still others wrangling together the supporting materials. If you are lucky, you'll also have an editor on your team who can copyedit the proposal at the final stage. Below are four things you can do to make the proposal process easier when there are several writers involved:

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Tips for Creating an Organizational Chart for a Grant Proposal

An organizational chart can show two things. First, it can be an easy, visual way of showing reporting lines, or who is reporting to whom. Second, organizational charts can show communication lines, or who is communicating with whom, including who will be communicating to the donor. Although frequently included as part of a proposal's annex, organizational charts can also be included in the body of the grant proposal as part of the management section. Organizational charts can range from basic to elaborate depending on the needs of the proposal and the limits on your budget. Below are a three options for creating organizational charts.

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