Are Your Grants Working?

What’s your strategy?
Effective grant applications are not about you. They are engineered to address the needs and values of the funding source.

Are you prone to asking instead of selling?
There is a tendency for non-profits to emphasize their needs and accomplishments instead of building a response that strikes the right nerve in the funding source.

Are you focused on the grantor?
It’s not about the goals of your non-profit. It’s about your goals aligning with and reflecting the funding source and their vision, their values, their needs.

Need help?
We can help you formulate a grant strategy, target your message, and deliver an application that makes impact.

Provide a response template.
Rather than list instructions for applicants to follow, give them a pre-built template to respond with (preferably a Word document rather than a cumbersome online form). Structure the template to address your criteria. Include tables for data and spreadsheets for financial information—both formatted to your specifications and easily convertible to PDFs for emailing.

Make your job easier.
When you build a response template for applicants to use, you make information requirements and evaluation criteria crystal clear. You also make applications easier to fill out and easier to evaluate. 

Create a win-win.
A pre-built template levels the playing field for applicants, it allows you to compare apples-to-apples when scoring responses, and it contributes to a more professional exchange between grantor and grantees. 

Need help?
We can help you organize your requirements and evaluation criteria in a template that is easy to use and score.