A Grant Writer's Post Christmas Euphoria

I had the most wonderful Christmas in years. My folks came down from Oregon and were so content to hang out and go to my local haunts for a couple of days. My son was with us for much of the time. We ate too much, and drank a little but just enough. We watched “The Grinch” (cartoon version of course) and “Scrooge” with Alastair Sim for my Mom, and a bunch of WWII historical documentaries that involved airplanes for my stepfather. I dodged watching a single episode of "House" or even one minute of Fox News (basic cable is a wonderful thing).

I tried out two new recipes on my guests and both turned out to be big hits. Chili ala Mark and Brian was tremendous and while I altered it a little bit, I mostly held true to the recipe and it was awesome chili. I also made potato pancakes for Christmas morning ala Good Housekeeping and these too turned out better than I could have hoped for when one considers my limited kitchen and culinary aptitude.

We compromised on our annual argument about opening gifts on Christmas Eve by allowing my son and stepfather to each open one gift while my mother and I held steadfast in the face of this flagrant challenge to tradition and we opted to open all of ours on Christmas morning.

Our family gathering held at my cousin’s place on Christmas day was equally wonderful with a huge ham dinner and a Rick’s Dessert Diner cake provided by my Mom to top it all off. We stood under the house eaves in the rain and smoked some cigars (recreational stupidity, not a habit), we drank some nice wine, and we played some Nintendo video Frisbee golf (badly) and enjoyed the company. We all decided not to exchange gifts and simply enjoy each others’ company.

I’d say that by comparison, this was one of the nicest Christmases I’ve had in my lifetime; I’d rank it in the top five. I still have to say that the best one ever was when I got my first bike at about age 7. It was a big red Sears cruiser with a headlight built into the frame. My red-headed girlfriend Rhonda would ride on the back until she caught her foot in the rear spokes putting an end to our on-bike romancing.

This morning I am back in the office working on various grant-related projects. It’s good to be here in the afterglow of such a wonderful time with family. I hope everyone had an equally terrific Christmas!

14 Tips to Stay Off the Naughty List

It might be a little late to think about this if you’ve already made it onto Santa’s Naughty List. If you’re in that unfortunate situation this year, you’ll need to pay attention to these tips for the coming grant year so you avoid another lump of coal next December 25.

In order to make Santa’s Nice List as a grant writer, here are some things to do in your grant work:

1. Always tell the truth in your narrative.

2. Always follow the RFP outline carefully.

3. Always proof and edit until your narrative is perfecto.

4. Always follow the formatting requirements.

5. Always charge an ethical fee.

6. Always complete all of your contract obligations.

7. Always help other grant writers out.

8. Always make your deadlines.

9. Always remember to thank your clients and keep them informed about new opportunities.

10. Always use the services of a good editor.

11. Always deliver an electronic copy of the narrative to your client.

12. Always keep careful grant submission evidence.

13. Always keep your electronic files organized.

14. Always leave milk and cookies for Santa.

Santa is probably putting the finishing touches on his Naughty List for this year so I’m not sure if you have time to make up for any lapses, but it’s never too late to get started! Giving your clients everything they deserve will definitely put you high on Santa’s Nice List. I hope Santa brings you exactly what you want for Christmas.

Grant Writing Training at Taco Bell?

Nobody takes their broken car to a used car salesman for repair. People don’t take their watch to Taco Bell for a new battery. We all look for people who have expertise, credentials, and a successful background to prove they can do the job. A spokes model may make a compelling pitch, but it is unlikely they've ever written a grant.
Our company, Creative Resources and Research, offers grant writing courses. We provide these courses in a seminar format on site and we develop curriculum, videos, and materials for a series of online courses.

We use our rich experience in grant writing to develop materials and training scripts; our training is not creative writing. If you purchase grant writing training from Creative Resources and Research, you can be assured that you are getting top quality information created by successful, practicing grant writers.

We have decades of combined experience as full time grant writing professionals. We also held jobs that required grant writing for many years before entering the field full time. We know grant writing backwards and forwards because we’ve written hundreds of successful proposals. Nearly all of the grants we’ve written have been for annual amounts of $100k or more, and some were for totals in the millions of dollars. We have secured nearly 160 million in grants for our clients since 2000.

We’ve written grants for local and state governments and even for the government of Puerto Rico. We’ve scored grants for State and Federal government agencies. We’ve written grants for non-profits and for-profits. We’ve written business plans in Southern California and business proposals in South Africa. We’ve written marketing copy, web copy, and we can even run the copy machine. We’ve done every part of the grant process many times over.

Our experience in grant writing is built on long hours of hard work and diligence. It is built on excellent mentoring. It is built on a network of professionals who give us feedback and share with us about the field. We are still learning, but we are accomplished grant writers. We are not pretenders. We are not beginners.

We respectfully suggest that buying grant writing training from a spokes model makes as much sense as having your watch repaired by Taco Bell. If you want to learn how to write excellent grant proposals, you’ll choose to learn grant writing from experts. At Creative Resources and Research we are grant writers first, teachers second, and spokes models last (or not at all depending on who you talk to).

Let's be Honest - You're a Lousy Writer

Ouch.  Was that really necessary?

Well, if you ever want to become a good writer, then yes, it was necessary.

Alright, I would never say it quite that way, but I have reviewed many grants and other writing samples, and it's the hardest thing to have to tell someone. If the basic writing is solid, it's easy to talk about structure, objectives, graphics, voice, flow, and responses to the scoring criteria. Having a discussion about poor basic writing skills, though, is very difficult.

I think it's hard for several reasons.  First, people take their writing very personally. Criticism about someone's writing feels a lot like criticism of them personally, even when it is not. Second, basic writing skills are the hardest to develop if a person doesn't already have them. It takes time, focus, effort, and patience. Someone who is a lousy writer can't just become a good writer overnight. Sure, it's possible to become a good writer, but not in a week or through a single revision cycle. Finally, anyone who comes to me with a writing sample usually assumes and thinks he is a good writer.  There's an identity and self-esteem issue in the mix. Getting through that without destroying the relationship and dashing a person's writing hopes and dreams is like navigating through a mine field in the middle of a dark night, while blindfolded, during a rainstorm.  Your chances of success are.....limited (See?  I'm not a complete pessimist.).

Still, knowing about any shortcomings in your basic writing skills is critical information if you're going to get any better. Writing is a craft that requires constant improvement. Everyone makes mistakes when they write. That's why we learn to proofread our own work and sometimes employ outside proofreaders, but that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about writing that is grammatically incorrect more than 20% of the time or that is riddled with punctuation errors. That kind of writing will not improve without a focused effort to learn what's wrong and to fix it.

Then, you have to practice writing.  Work through critiques and revisions, and practice some more.

At the same time, you need to read a lot so you can see examples of excellent writing of all kinds and allow the millions of structural variations to become part of your own language repertoire.

My suggestion is to find a friend or mentor who is already a good writer, and who will tell you the truth.  This is no small task (for the reasons I cited above), but it's essential if you want to become a good writer.

Anything worth doing requires effort.  Writing is no different. Get an honest assessment of your skill, and then don't pout.  Get busy making your writing better.

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The Accidental Grant Writer

I wasn't going to be a grant writer.  No, I was going to be an attorney.  That was definitely my plan as I was growing up.  It was still my plan in college.  That's what I thought the smart girls were supposed to do.

Then the twists and turns of life led me to the classroom at the age of 22 and I became a teacher.  I loved it.  It wasn't necessarily the kids I loved (but yes, I do love children), but it was that moment of epiphany when a child finally learned something new. I loved learning so much that it shouldn't have surprised me that I would enjoy helping others learn, too.

It was as a teacher that I wrote my first grant proposal. It was a $5,000 grant for some technology equipment.  Specifically, I wanted a videodisc player (remember those?) and a large screen TV (back before they were in anyone's home) to help my ELD students have more multimedia experiences (there were no computers in classrooms in those days - only small labs with Apple IIe machines) so they could understand the curriculum better. It required a 5-page narrative and it was very challenging for me, but I did it, and I was successful. The grant was awarded to my classroom!

Still, even though I had written a successful grant, I didn't think of myself as a grant writer.

After years as a teacher, I became a school administrator.  That's what I thought the smart girls were supposed to do. As a school administrator, I was responsible for overseeing several grants. It was interesting.  I enjoyed starting new programs from scratch, and it was in that capacity that a met a grant writer and program evaluator who became my mentor (Read about the Top 10 Lessons I Learned from my Grant Writing Mentor).

After several years, he asked me to do some grant writing for him on the side.  I discovered that I was pretty good at it, but I was still an educator who also did grant writing.  I still didn't think of myself as a grant writer.

A few years later, he asked me to leave public education and to come work for him as a full time grant writer and program evaluator. It was a big step for me, but he told me that's what the smart girls were supposed to do, so I did it.

A few years after that, I left his firm and started my own. By then, there was no question in my mind that I was a grant writer; however, there was no point in my life in which I said to myself, "I want to learn how to be a grant writer."  It just happened.  I stepped from opportunity to opportunity and learned what I could as I went along. There were no classes on grant writing offered in graduate school at that time. No one had even even mentioned it to me as a potential career path.

It was almost as if it happened by accident.  I was the accidental grant writer.

(Of course, I know there are really no accidents, but that's the subject of an entirely different post.)

Things are different today for folks who have some writing talent who want to make a difference in their corner of the world.  There are online courses in grant writing to teach you how to become an excellent grant writer, and there are even courses in how to become a freelance grant writer so you can learn the business side of the business. There are courses in colleges and universities, and even certification programs (although a certificate does not guarantee any success; the most successful grant writers I have ever known hold no special certificate). There are blogs, like this one, and websites to read to learn about the industry.

There is so much more support available now than when I started. Tapping into this support, well, that's just what the smart girls (and boys!) do.

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Related Posts:

Grant Writing: A Romantic Misconception

Think Positively and Make It Happen

So You Want to Become a Freelance Grant Writer: Are you Barking Mad?


Would you like the digital version of 101 Tips for Aspiring Grant Writers to download right now?  Download it now!

My Grant Writing Fantasy

My feet are firmly planted on the ground, and I am grateful for each and every one of my grant writing clients; however, I do have a bit of a fantasy life (shhhh...let's just keep that between you and me and the millions of folks on the internet, ok?).  This means, of course, that I have a grant writing fantasy, too. In the interest of full disclosure, I have decided to share it with you.

I get a phone call from a prospective client.  He sets up an appointment to come and see me about a new grant (instead of asking me to drive three hours each way to see him). I like him already.

When he arrives, he looks just like George Clooney (you don't have a problem with that, do you?  This is my fantasy, ya know...), and he has come prepared with a box of materials to share.  As we sit down to talk, the following things become clear:

1. He has already thoroughly read the RFP.
2. His organization has a well-developed vision and mission, and they have already been planning a new project that is a perfect match for this funding source.
3. He has already assembled a grant committee that has developed a detailed summary of what they want to do.
4. He has also already developed a draft budget.
5. His community partners are on board, and they have already written some draft letters of support for me to review.
6. The box he brought in with him also contains his organization's strategic plan (which has been updated within the last year), notes from grant planning meetings (along with sign-in sheets), recent outcome evaluation data documenting the effectiveness of his organization's services, and the results of a client and stakeholder survey he administered within the last month to gather information for this grant proposal.
7. He respects my opinion as an expert, which he demonstrates by asking insightful questions.
8. He has come fully prepared for the business side of the discussion. He has done his homework, so he knows our rates, and he has already acquired approval from his board to sign a contract - right now, today. In fact, he has a check in his pocket for the first payment.

Every now and then, he stops talking and just gazes at me with his gorgeous eyes (MY fantasy, remember?) and then he continues, staying on topic and respectful of my time.  He answers my questions about the project clearly and succinctly, and if he doesn't have the answer to one of my questions, he makes a note of it, and calls or emails me within a day with the answer.

As we start working together, he sends more helpful data and he is always available to take my calls when I need more information. 

He reviews drafts I send within 24 hours, and it is clear that he has reviewed them carefully because his comments are thoughtful, insightful, and useful. He trusts my writing process. 

As the deadline approaches, he remains calm and confident that we will get the job done well and on time. He doesn't start calling and emailing 20 times a day to ask the status of the project. He refrains from changing the project design after he has already reviewed the third and final draft of the narrative. He allows my staff the freedom to make minor budget changes, as necessary, to ensure that the narrative matches the budget (subject to his final approval, of course).

He reviews the final product carefully before submittal, fully understanding that he is responsible for the final product.

After the grant has been submitted, he makes his final payment in a timely manner - it actually arrives a day before it is due! He knows we won't have any news for several months, so he refrains from calling every week "just to see if we've heard anything yet." 

He does, however, call with new projects for us to work on together, all with the same planning, organization, and professionalism that he demonstrated on the previous project. Soon, he sets up another meeting to introduce me to a colleague from another organization who is also looking for a grant writer and has a specific grant project in mind.  He tells me that he taught his colleague everything he knows, so the process will progress pretty much as it did with his organization.

By the way, his colleague looks a lot like Brad Pitt.

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Download a free e-book:  Non-Profit Grant Writing.

Think Positively and Make It Happen

I’ve found that there are basically two kinds of people working in the world. There are those with the desire to make “it” happen, and those who enjoy the comfort and stability of the status quo. The “it” is what makes life interesting as a freelance grant writer. The whole risk-reward equation is invigorating, motivating, and adrenaline-inducing.

Whether I have worked inside an agency or outside of one, I’ve been the type of person who wants to make it happen. It didn’t matter if I was making it happen for other people, for the agency I worked for, or for myself, I enjoy the ongoing challenge of promoting a worthwhile person, idea, or project.

Grants offer me the chance to make a difference. I can help someone obtain funding they need to promote an idea, program, or project. That’s a pretty cool position to be in and it’s what I have always been best at doing. I’m good at getting people to the table and facilitating the discussion. I’m good at negotiating compromise and seeking ways around, over, and under barriers. I love it, probably in part because it’s all about using language effectively.

The grant writing process is the process of using both verbal and written language effectively to write successful proposals that promote change. When I held leadership positions, I used to say that change is so hard for people that you can’t change a light build without dissent. Grant projects are like that on a grander scale in which lots of light bulbs usually need to be changed. Grant projects can move big ideas forward but grants almost always mean change will happen. The work of that change often falls on staff outside of those employed by the grant.

Negotiating agreement with people impacted by a grant program is a big deal if the grant is going to be successfully implemented. I’ve seen many grants written through the years that did not involve meaningful input from the “stakeholders” (ugh, we need a new word for that, sounds like a waiter at Ruth’s Chris). These grants got bogged down from Day One as people woke up to the reality of all this new work! “Holy guacamole!” they’d say, “I never agreed to do that!?”

I observed helplessly as these grants failed to gain the momentum needed for change and failed to meet their objectives. Lots of money got spent, but resistance to change prevented anything meaningful from happening. More negotiation was needed before applications were made.

The results of a badly negotiated grant program are terrible. A few of the consequences I’ve seen are the loss of good staff; often these are the same people who brought the idea to the table in the first place. These highly motivated, creative and dedicated people who lose heart and move on to more adaptable environments. The staff hired to replace them are often less committed and more willing to “water-down” the activities and objectives to accommodate the level of resistance they meet.

Another terrible consequence is that the agency may be less willing to pursue future grant proposals or suggest real change. The burn of a grant gone wrong can hurt the agency for a long time so it’s important to negotiate well with everyone the changes impact. This does not mean that all objections must be overcome, that rarely happens. Sometimes a grudging acknowledgement is the best you’re going to get, just be prepared for a few mules.

In spite of that, lay it all on the table so people can’t say they didn’t know what was coming. There’s always going to be unintended consequences but good planning can minimize those. Plus, nobody will be able to honestly say that those consequences were concealed to push a grant agenda forward (some may still say it but you’ll have meeting minutes to prove it just ain’t so).

Making it happen is an exciting feature of grant work. But obtaining funding and successfully creating change are not the same things, the latter does not necessarily flow from the former. Grant writers who volunteer to become involved in the planning process can have a positive influence on outcomes. A grant writer who has been around a while can point out planning pitfalls, suggest program alternatives, and give a fresh perspective to difficult issues of implementation. I find that my many years of project implementation experience make me a valuable resource around the table when grant planning is taking place. Not only that, the information I collect by participating makes my narrative concrete so the time is well-spent.

People in the insurance industry who bring in clients are called “producers.” I’ve always liked that term and apply it to what I do in terms of working with clients. I like to make it happen and produce clients. I like to write grants that make it happen for others. Grant writing is rewarding work in many ways and it takes positive thinking to make “it” happen.

The 12 Days of Christmas (for Grant Writers)

On the first day of Christmas,
My client sent to me,
A hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,


On the second day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the third day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the fourth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the fifth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the sixth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the seventh day of Christmas my client sent to me,
A seven figure error,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the eighth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Eight readers reading,
A seven figure error,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the ninth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Nine new partners,
Eight readers reading,

A seven figure error,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the tenth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Ten phone call messages,
Nine new partners,
Eight readers reading,

A seven figure error,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the eleventh day of Christmas my client sent to me,
Eleven new objectives,
Ten phone call messages,
Nine new partners,
Eight readers reading,

A seven figure error,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee,




On the twelfth day of Christmas my client sent to me,
A Twelve page color graphic,
Eleven new objectives,
Ten phone call messages,
Nine new partners,
Eight readers reading,

A seven figure error,
Six project changes,
Five nervous Board members,
Four urgent emails,
Three grant amendments,
Two weak objectives,
And a hundred page RRR-F-Peeeeee.

Non-Profit Grant Writing eBook Published!

We just published our latest eBook and it's now available online!  We titled this one, "Non-Profit Grant Writing" and it's a collection of essays on the topic!  Like our five other eBooks, it's absolutely free to download so if you're interested just Click Here and you can complete the form and download it instantly!

Our five other eBooks may also be downloaded by clicking the links below.

"The 12 Secrets of Successful Grant Writers"
"Freelance Grant Writing"
"Using Social Media to Improve Your Business"
"Selecting an Evaluator"
"Cooking Up Winning Grants with the Grant Goddess"

The Fortunes of Grant Writing

There once was a grant writer with a big problem. No matter how much he wrote and wrote, none of his grants were getting funded. He was in despair and began to lose hope. In between grant applications, he began to submit employment applications for jobs in other fields.


One day, while delivering a resume for a job as a truck driver, the unhappy grant writer walked past a store with a sign in from on a pole that was leaning precariously as though it may fall over with the slightest breeze. The sign read, “Fortune Teller - Fortunes Told $5.”

He pulled his thin wallet from his pocket and opened it to find only four dollars inside. Thegrant writer sighed deeply and put his wallet away. He turned to walk away when the door of the shop opened and an ancient woman peered out at him and motioned at him to come in.

Quickly the grant writer looked behind him but seeing he was alone he knew she meant for him to come inside. He had second thoughts about the whole idea because he was broke and could ill-afford spending even four dollars on such a dubious adventure as having his fortune read.  The old woman again motioned for him to enter.

He was in desperate straits and willing to take any course to change his grant writing luck so he ambled up the walk and into the dim, cluttered shop where the old woman had positioned herself behind a small table draped with black cloth. In the center of the table was a large, shimmering crystal ball. The woman wore a black gown with a multi-colored sash around her shoulders. Her long, silky, white hair cascaded lightly about her shoulders. Her face was wrinkled and craggy, and her nose long and crooked.  She had an air of ancient mystery about her.

The old woman gazed intently at him, “Sit down,” she invited.  The grant writer meekly took the chair opposite her. “I knew you would come today,” she said in a low, even voice that had a metallic quality. “What is it you want to know?” she asked the grant writer. He was nervously peering into the crystal ball trying hard not to meet her glassy, black eyes. “I want to know if any of my grants will get funded,” he asked very seriously, “You see, I am a grant writer…” “I know what you do,” she interrupted.

“How do you know?,” he asked her. “I see all and I know all,” She told the grant writer. He merely gaped at her in wonder. “So...so, you can tell me if my grants will be funded or not?” “I can,” she asserted with confidence, “Sadly, none of your grants will be funded.”

The grant writer’s face fell and his eyes searched the crystal ball for answers. “Why, why won’t they get funded?” he pleaded with the old woman to tell him. “Because, you mislabeled the address on the envelopes and they’ve all been coming here to me,” she stated flatly as she plopped a stack of fat envelopes in front of the grant writer. “This is 501 Capitol Avenue and you should have written 501 Capital Avenue on these envelopes. The post office knows how to spell young man, if you’re going to be a successful grant writer, so must you,” advised the sage old woman.

So the grant writer took the old woman’s advice. He learned to use spell check, he read each narrative carefully, and he hired an hourly editor to review each grant. Soon, the grant writer was successful and nearly all of his grant applications were funded!

The moral to the story - The postman cannot read your mind.

Where to Market Grant Writing Services Online at Low Cost

I spoke to an artist over the weekend about how he markets his artwork online. He told me he recently closed down his web site because it was costing him too much money to make changes and updates.  He was completely dependent on his web designer to do all that for him.  I wasn't surprised to hear his complaints.  As the Internet becomes less dependent on designers, fewer people should have to pay a lot of money for a web presence.

There’s nothing wrong with web designers, I’ve known some good ones. But I’ve found that while web designers are very interested in the “design” part, many are not so "into" the boring maintenance part. Lack of responsiveness can be a real problem for the owner of the site. Keeping a web site fresh and up-to-date is important for search engine rankings. If you don’t work at it and keep it current, visitors don’t come back and search engines rank the site progressively lower and nobody will ever find your site.

Here are some ideas for people who want an online presence but do not want to pay for it. These options are offered free on large sites that get high rankings so some search engine favoritism is built in making it easier to find you.  These are a few options that I use so I will direct you to the pages I’ve created there so you can see some basic layouts and how the content is presented on them.


Squidoo – On Squidoo you create what they call a Lens. You may create many of them which are actually content pages about whatever you want to write about. Mine is about Grant Writing Tips. I have Squidoo connected to Posterous so everything I post there goes to Squidoo as well.

Tumblr – This is a web site set up to act as a web site/blog.  Here is the tumblr staff blog so you can see a pretty nice example of what you can create here.
Posterous – This is an online service where you can set up a blog like mine here. Posterous is also nicely organized so you can enable reposting to your other sites such as Squidoo and Tumblr. Perhaps the nicest feature of Posterous is that it allows you to post via email. All you do is send your post by email to your personal account and it not only posts it to your Posterous blog, Posterous also posts it to every service you have connected. It’s pretty slick and a fast way to get your information out there around the web with one click.

Twitter – Twitter is so talked about it probably doesn’t need to be described here. I advise using it for two reasons. First, we know at our company that putting out tweets on a daily basis has a huge impact on our website traffic. Second, search results in Google are increasingly from Twitter posts (tweets), this tells me that Google thinks Twitter traffic is important. You can connect your Posterous blog to Twitter so a tweet will be issued whenever you email a blog post via Posterous.  You can also create custom twitter backgrounds like Veronica's instead of using the stock ones that Twitter provides.
You may be reasonably asking why you would want to re-post the same content across several sites as I have advised here. The primary reason is that your audience is probably not all finding their information in the same place so you want to establish the broadest footprint on the web that you can in order not to miss anyone!

These are a few online marketing tools that can help you drive traffic back to your web site without spending a ton of money on design, Using these resources, you can build your own reputation as an expert and share information that is useful to improving the field of grant writing.  Free online services such as those above can help customers find you at a low cost.

Starting a Non Profit Takes Money

Almost every week, I speak with someone who has just started a new non-profit organization. Many of these fine, well-intentioned folks call me because they want to find grant money to help them get started. I am not surprised when some of their expectations are a little out of alignment with reality because anyone who would go to the trouble and expense of starting a non profit organization is a bit of a dreamer and idealist to begin with. Sometimes people dive in on faith without checking the depth of the water and that can be a painful mistake.

The trouble is starting a non profit organization is an expensive undertaking, and dreams don’t always align well with reality of implementation. The legal paperwork, the tax deposit, and the time and effort to start a non profit all add up to a sizable sum of money. Many of the people I speak to are already “tapped out” by the up front expenses of becoming a legal entity. They’ve got the status, but not have no money to do what they wanted to do, so they call me about seeking grants. But grant seeking costs money too if you want someone else to do it for you, it’s a lot of work with no guarantees.

I know from first-hand experience that it’s a lot easier to start a non profit than to raise the money to keep it going. I learned this through direct experience serving ten years as a founding board member for a national non profit, starting my own non profit organization (which failed to thrive), and serving on the start-up Board for another non profit that did thrive (due to good leadership).

Here are ten things my experience tells me you should consider before paying the up front legal expenses to start a non profit organization. Attending to these things may help you avoid finding yourself in a financial hole before you even get started. I advise you to delay filing the legal paperwork until:

1. you have recruited a large enough Board with sufficient connections and resources to provide a base of local funding and support for a basic level of services;

2. you have completed a thorough assessment of the need for the services you want to provide including competing agencies and services;

3. you have surveyed potential participants on their need for the services and their preferences in terms of service delivery;

4. you have identified a sustainable entry level of service delivery;

5. you have at least explored finding a suitable and available location and/or facility to house your services;

6. you have developed at least a rudimentary fund raising plan that includes multiple funding streams and an identifiable donor pool (a fund-raising plan that may include grants, but is not dependent on grants);

7. you have recruited a Board member who is a CPA, or you have enlisted the assistance of a CPA firm willing to donate or discount their accounting services;

8. you have, or you have Board members with, credentials, experience, and connections in the area of service you want to provide;

9. you and your Board have written a mission statement that is meaningful to the community you’ll be raising funds within;

10. you have listened - really listened - to the “devil’s advocates” who can give you an alternative perspective on what you want to do (might be your wife!).

You can’t be afraid of examining your mission through the lens of the devil’s advocate. You must be courageous enough to listen to alternative points of view as you plan your non profit. If you don’t, you’re going to miss something important and you may just spend a lot of money starting a non profit that has a noble cause and no money to support it.

Funding is the life-blood that your heart-based operation must function on. Not all good ideas are fundable. Few brand new non profits are fortunate enough to identify a deep enough pocket to establish themselves. You can’t count on securing a huge grant to kick off your non profit! (In fact, as a start-up, you can probably count on not securing a huge grant) It’s probably going to take the shallow pockets of lots of people who believe in your mission to fund your project.  Take the time to test the waters before you dive in!