Competing for Grant Money

What if your job was giving away money? Giving away money to address problems you consider important. Now that would be an awesome job. In reality, most charities in Canada need to secure money while less than 5% of the sector are grantmakers.
 
So if you need money to deliver programs and make an impact, why not approach those groups whose sole mandate is to give away money? But isn’t everyone approaching them? Isn’t the competition fierce?
 
Actually, on the contrary, the competition is not as fierce as youth think. Grantmakers tell us that many applications they receive are discarded as they fail to answer central questions or address priorities. Consequently, grantmakers choose from a small selection of well-planned and well-prepared applications.
 
​There are a number of reasons why grant seekers are failing to produce precise and polished funding proposals.

• Short turn around times: Grantmakers use to give at least eight weeks from the date of announcing a grant call, until the deadline date. Now it is not unusual to see a call with only three weeks to the due date.
• Team approach required: Applications often require the contributions of more than one staff of an organization, requiring staff to engage in several collaborative meetings on top of their regular deliverables.
• Expertise sits with a number of departments or positions: Sometimes the responsibility of drafting the proposal sits with program-delivery managers, sometimes fundraising staff and often the Executive Director or CEO. While the flexibility of the responsibility allows organizations to capitalize on individual strengths and talents, it also fails to focus and build the effort of grant seeking and writing.
• Overburdened and overworked staff: This is all too familiar. Who has the time to write proposals and reports on top of regular responsibilities?

While we can’t change what is beyond our control, we can change what is within it.  We can improve our organization’s capacity to seek and secure grant money. The first step is to think of grant seeking and grant writing as a strategic effort.
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