We recommend using at least one grant database on a regular basis if you are serious about finding grant opportunities. The key issues are: What kind of information do you want your database to contain, and what can you afford?

Each month, we receive a significant number of emails with questions about how to get grant funding and where to look for funding, as well as more specific questions related to securing grants for particular types of projects. While there are always a few questions that require tailored answers, most of the questions we receive fall into a handful of categories.

To help you decide whether hiring a freelance proposal writer makes sense for your organization, we're going to look at three scenarios when hiring a grant writer makes sense. We'll also discuss the different types of proposal writers and tips for collaborating with a proposal writer to help the process go more smoothly.

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 we can't guarantee that your proposal will result in an award, we are confident that if you follow the process outlined below, your proposals will be submitted on time.

If your organization needs funding (and what organization doesn’t?), you have three primary options for raising funds: 1) you can solicit donations from individuals; 2) you can submit proposals to foundations and government agencies to receive grant funding; or 3) you can hold fundraising campaigns and community events to collect donations.

Developing a grant strategy involves identifying the funders and funding opportunities you intend to pursue over a certain period of time (usually a 12-month period, although it could be longer). Grant strategies should be updated at least annually. This is not only because the funding environment changes over time but also because an organization’s priorities, resources, and programmatic interests can change as well.

Our blog posts typically focus on grant strategies for nonprofit institutions. In this post, we’re going to focus on a different topic for a more targeted audience. The topic is research funding. The content is most relevant to US-based academics. However, many of the principles also apply to researchers based outside of the US as well as to nonprofits. 

After you finish writing your grant proposal, is there any way to know if it is any good?

We received this question recently, and we imagine others have wondered this as well.

While there’s no way you can determine with 100% certainty that your proposal will be funded, there are several things you can do to make sure your proposal complies with the solicitation guidelines and is as responsive as you can make it. No proposal is perfect. However, if you follow the five strategies outlined below, you should end up with a submission-worthy proposal.

After you submit your grant proposal, you may be tired of thinking about it and relieved the process is behind you. And while the process is mostly over, there are a few remaining things to be done between the time you submit the proposal and the time you hear back about its fate. Below are our suggestions for some post-submission activities to finish up the process.

We’ve begun to notice a pattern among foundations. Whether it’s a real trend or a pattern we observed because of the particular funders we’ve been researching recently, we’re not sure.The pattern is this: We’re noticing that foundations increasingly appear to be moving from an open process—where they solicit grant applications through a published funding opportunity announcement (FOA)—to a closed one, where the foundation screens organizations and then invites a select group to apply for funding.If your organization happens to be one of the invited grantees, this trend could be welcomed news because it means your application will face less competition and already has favored status. The invitation-only system does present challenges though, particularly for nonprofits that lack established relationships with the donor community.

Program officers at foundations can be a valuable resource for nonprofit organizations. Often a short phone conversation with a program officer can quickly resolve any questions you might have related to eligibility, project scope, funding priorities, and application guidelines.

As part of developing your funding strategy, you’re going to want to confirm that the funders you are interested in are reasonable prospects. This is where a funder landscape analysis enters the picture. A landscape analysis involves an in-depth review of a specific group or class of funders to identify funding trends and programmatic priorities.

What kinds of software solutions do nonprofits need? Pretty much everything for-profit businesses need, including tools for knowledge management.

This brings us to Slab (www.slab.com), which is the focus of this post. Slab is a browser-based knowledge management tool that companies (and nonprofits and educational institutions) can use to create, organize, store, and share information. You can read about several use cases for Slab on Slab’s website. However, since the use cases are oriented more toward companies, we thought it might be helpful to show how Slab could be used in three scenarios commonly encountered in a nonprofit context.

To prepare a competitive proposal, you need to look at your proposal from the perspective of the reviewers and the evaluation criteria they will be applying. What can you do to make it easier for the reviewers to give your proposal a high score? Applying the rules of good writing (writing clearly and concisely, no jargon) combined with complying with the proposal guidelines will help. Other things you can do include being realistic about what you can accomplish and giving reviewers enough detail so they can understand your proposal, regardless of their area or level of expertise.

If you’re new to grant writing or have not been consistently successful in securing grant funding, this post is for you. We’re covering three essential truths about grant funding to help you prepare a strong grant strategy.

Applying to foundations for funding can take time and effort, but it’s a relatively straightforward process, with lots of existing resources to help nonprofits identify funders and prepare applications. Corporate giving programs tend to get less attention, leading to confusion about how to approach companies for support or whether to approach them at all.

Just as you “dress for success” when you go for a job interview, your grant proposal should look pulled together and professional by the time you submit it. In this post, we review six formatting tips you can apply to make your next proposal look polished.

After you finish writing an important document like a grant application, it’s always a good idea to have it edited.

In this post, we'll start by looking at three options for copyediting assistance. After the overview, we’ll segue into a review of Editorr.com, an online service that connects editing jobs to real (human) editors. 

While all nonprofit organizations need to secure funding, there are key differences between small, struggling organizations and large, well-funded organizations other than the obvious difference in size. If your organization is struggling to find money, below are suggestions you can implement to up your grant game.