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Nonprofit Radio for May 26, 2017: Your Grants Team, In & Out

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Diane Leonard: Your Grants Team, In & Out

Diane Leonard returns to share her wisdom on your internal and external grants teams. Who needs to be part of your inside processes and who manages your outside relationships with your funders? Diane is president of DH Leonard Consulting.

 

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be thrown into proto porphyria if you brought to light the idea that you missed today’s, show your grants team in and out. Diane leonard returns to share her wisdom on your internal and external grants teams who needs to be part of your inside processes and who manages your outside relationships with your funders. Diane is president of d h leonard consulting on tony’s steak, too. Charity registration we’re sponsored by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers we b e spelling dot com what a pleasure to welcome diane leonard in the studio, this time not calling from upstate new york, she is gp c grant professional certified, and she has been a grant professional for over a decade and the president and owner of d h leonard consulting and grantwriting services, she has secured over thirty four million dollars in competitive funds for clients from all three levels of government. And private foundations. She’s, the co host of grant chat, a weekly twitter chat for grant professionals she’s at diane h leonard. And the company is at d h leonard consulting. Dot com. Welcome to the studio this time. Diane. Yeah. Thank you so much. Great to have you glad to be here now. Grantspace schnoll certified. Did the the accrediting association take my advice and change that to certify grantcraft sessional since the last time you were on, you know, i talked with the board, but we haven’t addressed that that specific matter yet. So still gpc grant professional sort of for the time being. But it’s, just the time being we’ll you know, tio r b i brought out the light. Okay, it may be on the right. It may be coming, possibly on the agenda. All right, i just sort of five grand profession. Ok, but your grandpa deshele certified for now, so we’re sort of extending our conversation from, like, the last minute of last time you were on or so way just got into your teams and we were talking about the internal team. But what? We just barely scratched it. So let’s start with your internal grants team? Why is this not just the the, uh, responsibility or might say burden, but we’re on the upbeat side, we’ll say, why is this not just the responsability of the the grant writer? Whether he or she is employee or consultant, isn’t it? Isn’t it just there? That’s what you got this person for, right? So you’re right that the grant writer, the grant professional, they are there to write grants so it sounds like it could be a solo sort of activity. But the reality is you can’t write well and competitively without information from your grantee. Mme. So whether or not you call it a grant team that’s up to you, we don’t care folks ever self identify as a member of a granting right, but finance needs to give information and vice presidents of programmes have to provide the logic models or the details, the design of what you’re going to write for. So if the grant writer was really, quote unquote, just writing the grant, would that really be what the organization wants to implement? What’s going to be in line with their strategic plan, right? We’d be writing in a silo. Okay, now. Yeah, clearly. So we’re getting information. By the way. Ricky, i see you have your d h leonard consulting shirt on. Of course, when you go home without it, which is not just like a land’s end, you know, straight button down. It’s got it’s. A blast really got it’s got ruffled down down the front. Very nice. We’re going were very fashionable. Is going to picture on facebook? Wait the mic flag out on everything. So but not just your average, you know, land’s end corporate shirt. Not anymore. By any means. Well, thank you. Very nice. Your daughter rebecca’s here, rebecca, you like this shirt? You have? You have one of these? Is that you? Have it? She doesn’t have one. You don’t have a dish that while they have special running shirts that on the back say right, period. Sleep, period. Run, period. Okay, we got those for the whole team, so ok, we’ve got a diversity of apparel. All right, so this is you putting land’s end to shame. Very good. Much, much nicer than than your average. Okay. All right, so, yeah, clearly. So we got to get information from other people. All right, so you don’t care if we call him the grants team or not, but but, you know, how do we, uh, how do we get their buy into this to the larger process? I mean, i saw the cfo gives you some numbers, you know? Is that all you really want? I mean, don’t you want we want a little more? Yeah, real engagement. So how do we start to get there by into this process that they don’t feel is their responsibility right now? Well and sometimes it’s, not that they don’t feel it’s their responsibility, it’s that perhaps based on how things have been done before, it hasn’t dawned on them that they could have a better process, a better success rate if there was a more thoughtful, proactive collaboration within the organization. So when we go into an organization and we ask the question, do you have a grant teen? According to our grasp tool, it is less than half in fact it’s closer to about thirty five percent say yes, what’s a grasp tool. So i’ve jargon jail sorry you’re right. Totally grasp tool. What is this? Grasp tool is a proprietary tool that my team and i developed that measures grantwriting nous so there’s twenty great readiness elements and one of them is about your grant team. I can not about what it’s called, but do you have that group? Okay, so based on the data assessment, esso and that’s helped us to understand that said so it’s about thirty five percent have a grant team. That means they’re so sixty five percent. No, right? So when you walk into a new organization and you talk about this idea of a grand team, sometimes the grant professional looks that you don’t kind of holds their heads like they shake their head? Nope, just me write other times the organization is ready for because they’re all non-profits air fighting for dollars, right? There’s a really good thoughts, so they’re trying to figure out how how they can increase their grantspace king success just even a little bit right? A few extra success percentage points or an extra forty fifty one hundred won one million dollars, whatever they’re trying to increase the revenue. So the idea that by taking their resource is they already have the people rearranging them a little bit differently to share for grant process so that it has a better return on investment, usually by some pretty good traction quickly. Ah, but the question is always well, what do we have, like a lot of meetings? What is it? Does it go on the organ chart? What does that mean for me? Right? And so what we look at as a grant team structurally, we recommend that it would be a group that annually plans the calendar agrees on what our priorities are for funding. Who are our funders. We’d return to that’s big picture, so once a year, you’re doing that together. The grant teens then looked different for each application, sometimes depending on the size of an organization. So that’s, where we can really start to improve the process, reduce the stress and increase the likelihood for the funding for the yes. All right, i like the idea of getting some early successes, like, maybe there’s, some low hanging fruit that the team can rally around a success on early success of and from from i guess i should say from yeah, the award letters went to start a grant team idea that first award letter solidifies the process for sure, long term, yes, every reason to think. All right, all right, let’s, go for a break, and diane and i are going to continue talking about your grants team in and out. Stay with us. You’re tuned to non-profit radio. Tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy. Fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder, am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals, the better way. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Diane. When i introduced you, i i used the bio that was back from last time. You were on in in january and said you had raised thirty four million dollars among lots of organization. Is that still an accurate number? Got any higher than that now? Since we last spoke, it is close to thirty six million. Six gets getting close, but it was never that fluctuates all the time. Million dollars difference. Alright, well, it always fluctuates up. I mean, you never having grantspace clawed back or no, no, you’re way kruckel excellent. There. So bios added eight. Thirty six, nine dollars. All right. And also you mentioned your team and your team goes in now the only team member i know you have his rebecca who’s here. Rebecca’s. How old? Rebecca’s? Eleven. Eleven eyes. Rebecca party your team or the whole families apart of the team for me. Okay. Last shirt. Every everybody wears this. Sure. Everybody gives me coffee. You’re ten number. You’re giving out shirts on the corner. Your team, your team member. Okay, now you have grants other grand professionals. We do. Have other grantcraft specials and and use your your provide. It was a group. No grass grasp, not growth. That’s a scratch. Okay, group. Okay, um it could be grantmaker be gropes if you get a no in coming close to you know what groups lose. Stick with craps. You could you it’s actually an acronym. So krauz looks great, it’s. Good, but let’s like see gp gp. Alright, i will take it under advisement. Tp gp is my recommendation. Okay, um, all right now you say fund-raising not a solo sport, basically. No. Yeah, not fund-raising not in grants, right? We cannot be silent, right? All right. Let’s, let’s talk about some other people who should be involved. We mentioned cfo. We might come back to him or her. Who else needs to be active? Actively helping this process. And they were going to get into how they’re actively helping. But yes. So so, depending on the size of the organization, often we will see the president or the ceo be a part of the annual the big picture granton process, right? Not individual applications, necessarily. But that big picture annual plan a plan which you and i talked. About last time, yeah, listeners could go back and could search tony martignetti dot com and your grants flan or diane leonard, you’ll see the all the times that she’s been on. Well, this’s second, eso you only looking for one other, but, yes, we talked about the grants plan, right? Last time you were on. All right, so the ceo certainly could be involved, right? Absolutely. And so having, though, whether it’s, a vice president of programs or other program leadership that are focused on the actual implementation and service delivery, having them have a voice at the table be an active participant in that big grantee mme annually and on those individual applications that so a voice that carries a lot of weight in the grant team because they’re driving what the applications contain. Yeah, all right. Let’s, let’s, talk about the the talk about the program’s staff for the program that you’re attempting to get funding for correct people carrying out those programs. All right, so what are they bringing in that people who are not taking advantage of this are missing? Sure. So the program’s staff, sometimes they’ll be like, oh, i already have a logic. Model for that program and there that make grantwriting jump up and down for joy if you don’t have to write a logic model, right? Um, they might already have a great activity work plan for what? That looks like implementation wise over the next year or oh. Yep, absolutely. I know those collaborative partners. I can help you get the letters of support, and so they make the asked for the letter? Not necessarily you. They know their clients that they’re serving better than anyone so they can help decide. Okay, we’ve got a limited character count. What are the best demographic stats that we should talk about, or what are the barriers in that limited space? That cheese? We’ve got a long list of barriers out of the dozen. Here are the two that we really should talk about. They can help you narrow that down. So that then we is the grant writer. The grant professional can tell the story in a stronger way. Okay. You mentioned the logic model. Of course. We all know the logic model what’s a logic model. So ah, logic model is a well, i guess i shouldn’t use the word logic. Again is a thoughtful way that you can demonstrate visually your program designed so you start with your inputs from way clients flow through your program. Great. Yeah, i usually think about it, like a conveyor belt is the way that i described it. So you take your got three metaphors going dellaccio logical flow. We’ve got a conveyor belt. What else durney uses their shoot is their trash. You what else? All of those could sure alright, you sick with your comfort the conveyor belt. So because the what happens is that grantmaker zey have a wide variety of logic model forms that they use. So having a logic model in your head that only looks like one thing as a design is really tricky because you’ll united way. We’ll have a different one than a federal government agencies. So that’s why you need to have a general understanding of logic models and how you use them in program design. Right? So if you think about that conveyor belt idea, you take cubine puts your clients your staff. Your resource is set him on the conveyor belt and they has the conveyor belt starts. It moves through, i think. Of ah box, where all the magic happens, but they had very about moving the conveyor belt. Rebecca you’re following this is conveyor belt moving into a box doesn’t make sense for you, because if you could explain this to an eight year old and then i can get it, i can grasp all right, so so far so the conveyor belt and actually you’ve seen the movie like toy story or something. Where there’s all these flames shooting out of the box, but that’s where the activities air happening, the magic. So where you’re delivering counseling services or hiv prevention education or after school tutoring, right, whatever those services those activities are, and as the box of the inputs comes out, the end of the shiny box you can count on is coming on their belt conveyor belt. Most don’t mess up our metaphor. Alright, the conveyors coming out of the box. And you, khun now count how many people you served? How many after school sessions were held? Hominy caregiver education workshops whatever the case may be, but you can count them. You get your outputs and you can at that same time so well or my short. Term outcomes, right? And then a little bit further is the conveyor belt moves well or my intermediate outcomes. What were my long term outcomes at the very end of my conveyor belt? Maybe as far as i can see towards the horizon, right? Well, knowing all that detail is really tough for a grant professional to know about a program that they’re not implementing, right? So filling in i under you can understand the concept that detail that’s where those program staff members are critical. Okay, makes sense. Yes. There you go. You’re with me. Ok, thumbs up. Okay, i understand it. Yes. Now, um, what about the value of their value in? We’re digressing a little bit from the team concept, but but stories, i’m certainly program staff, the ones working with your clients, they’re going to have lots of stories, is they’re valuing in telling a story and individual persons story in a grant? Or is that really not such a good practice? It really depends on the specific type of application. And so part of deciding whether or not it’s important is looking at what the funders application looks like in their preferences, but the what? Is the level of detail. What is the emotion behind the story that a program staff member can share with you, it’s? Not just a one quick sentence. A little success story, but what can they really help build? So, in a federal application? Actually, there was just a great use of a story and that’s, not a place. You always see it. But we had a client that was able to articulate what it would be like for a rural, low income student that was entering middle school that had all these barriers to overcome and quickly in a paragraph walk you through what that student was experiencing. So you felt like this young girl or you felt like this young boy. And so as you got into the heavy meat of this application, your thoughts as the reviewer really grounded in what it was like, is that student right? So used carefully good, vivid storyteller. It can really draw that reviewer in as a grant writer is a great professional. What? I know enough of those details about what those clients are experiencing to tell that sort of story. It be tough. You would not know. Yeah. Okay. Um, now, i would think you mentioned federal grants. I would think that’s a pretty daunting looking package, does it? I mean, just the i don’t make you’ve done scores are hundreds of them, but i just think that it just looks imposing and threatening. Yeah, all of the federal grants federal grant application they are, but sometimes they’re short narratives. Other times, you know, like we’re working on now. One that’s, a thirty page single space that’s, some hefty writing. But, you know, with the right grantee mme it’s completely manageable, you don’t have to work crazy long hours. You don’t have to work all weekend. You don’t have to know out to your family for days, it’s some of those really big ones that don’t that are daunting to people as soon as they do it. The first time in the grant teamviewer sis their old way, they’re sold forever yeah, okay, i’m dying to get to the outside relationship with the funders, but we’re not there yet, so we gotta be going metoo stopping up on the inside because the whole relationship thing it’s excellent. We’re getting to it, we’re getting to it. Um all right, i guess that’s that’s pretty much exhaustion in the program. What the program people are bringing to you and the wisdom they have the on the ground boots on the ground experience that they’ve got that nobody else really has on. Certainly not the grand team or grant writer. Right. Okay, bring them in the europe program professionals. Um, who else? Cfo do we do we we, uh i asked you, who else? And then i tell you, yeah, that’s just the way the show goes and i run it. Cfo, do we beat that up? Is there enough that i mean numbers? What? But an application may ask for more than that if you’re what’s the state of your financial controls, right? And things like that? Well and so usually where cfo’s or the finance staff are involved, like, yeah, i fell out the budget or i review and i approve the budget. But when that happens, we find that if you’re not having conversations early on about how the budget numbers what’s the justification behind those, how does that relate to the design that we’re proposing? They end up being incongruent, we find inconsistencies then between what? The budget? Tells us a story on what the narrative tells us the story so there’s a little bit of ah, that you have to work together to really tell airtight story. So you’re consistent, and that s o there’s like chicken and egg conundrum in terms of the team and who goes first? Okay, once you have the input of both, who then whose responsibility is it, then? Teo, scrutinize this story and make sure that the numbers are in line with what the program people told us, right and that’s where the grand professional internal consistency okay to be like? Okay, all right, i hear which you’re saying this is what the staffing costs, but hold on, we’ve exceeded the allowable salary percentage of the total project budget by funder standards or, hey, it says that you can’t spend more than seven percent on evaluation, and your budget currently tells us eight point five. Well, eight point five percent of the total product budget is what it costs to do the designed evaluation. Okay, now we need to work together. Right? So those things come up and that’s where the grant professional starts to work on alignment between the two. Parties, the financial constraints and the program designed what is the best for the organization. Okay, cool. You give us a sense of how this team works together if we don’t call it a team. Um all right. Who else? Ah, who else needs to be involved if if we have them on our staff data evaluation? What? Anybody in interest? No one. That attention. Tio counting the client outputs, tracking success, tracking satisfaction. And that looks so different by title. An organization that it’s hard to say. You know, not everybody has a director of evaluation. Many, many don’t treyz but someone in the organization is responsible for those client databases for the education session. Workshop reviews rightto surveys somebody’s responsible. So who are they? Whoever they are, whatever title it is, they should be on the team because that data is critical for analyzing as you think about your next application. Did you think about your next application? Write what happened? What happened about this application we’re working on now for the applicator. If we have an application in front of us now, i want to be looking at well, what did you learn last time? What is? The data show so that our projected outputs are anticipated. Outcomes are in alignment with what we’ve been able to achieve before. Okay, so i need the staff person that was doing the data the last time the program ran, or for a similar pilot program, or whatever it is. We need them there with their data, knowledge, teau, help us run some numbers, is and figure it out together. What do we do for organizations that aren’t currently evaluating? Not measuring these important outcomes impact what do we do for them? So i usually will send them is their first bit of homework straight to the wk kellogg foundation. They’ve gotten evaluation handup book that’s on their website for free and it’s. Fabulous and it’s. A great way for groups to begin to think about what evaluation could look like for them. Okay. Do you ever refer a book now? That might be too daunting because we had a we had dr robert penn on he’s. Been on a few times, but the first time he was on and it was years ago. But he has an excellent book that people have quoted to me before. Called the non-profit outcomes toolbox. Yeah. That’s a good one. You know what? Yeah. Oh, you know. Okay, you just don’t assigned as homework to a client because they’ll say, what you giving me his two hundred fifty page book? I thought we were hiring you for the expertise. Why, yes. Feels good to be the book now. Yeah, but it’s got chapters on different methods of it’s a toolbox, different methodology for measuring impact and he’s. Very hey wants to call it. Impact, not outcomes. Some people aren’t too scrupulous about that. But anyway, measuring the good that you’re doing in your beneficiaries lives or whatever it is in the environmental, whatever. Because by chapter, a lot of different tools. Yeah. Okay. So you know that one? Yeah, s o the other thing we do is that depending on where they are, we have a lot of folks that we know that our great professionals and evaluators in their background and so will try to pair them with someone that could maybe walk them through some initial support or give them some ideas. Right? So that they can look at what’s happening. What could they do? What’s feasible for them? For evaluation? Alright, alright, but a good resource. Wk kellogg foundation. It’s a great one. Yep. If you search kellog foundation evaluation handbook it’s small it doesn’t feel daunting in that sense. Tto learn a little bit and think about logic models and what you could measure. Okay, now what do we do? Ah, it’s all that hypothetical. We’ve got a grant application in front of us that asks for measurements and we don’t have any. Should we not be doing this? Application we should really be asking ourselves, can we be competitive, right? We need to think we want the money, we need the money to do a good work, right? And so that measurement question if we don’t have a good answer, really that’s going to be a concern when they’re reviewing it when a grantmaker their board is reviewing it, you’re going to lose some significant either theoretical or real points. And so, as your stacking up against the other applications, it’ll be hard to get that yes, no, are there still applications out there where the the impact measurements are not asked for or there they’re not a priority? Maybe you can tell their apartment, i mean, is that is that still exist? Not all grantmaker sze will formally ask for it sometimes because they let you provide a letter of request of your own design. And so what happens is that if a group doesn’t have measurement is part of what they talk about all the time, it won’t naturally be what they think to put in their general letter, but for other groups that do think to talk about it, they’re going to stand out, right? So they’ll be more competitive in those general formats, but when you’re in all those online applications, the cyber grants, the found ints that grantmaker sze use most of those online zsystems you’re finding questions about measurement worded in a lot of different ways, but the vast majority have questions. Fountains. What is that found? Found in’t it’s on online grant application system like cyber grant. So it’s there’s a common core it’s, a common system that lots of funders use. They are? Yep. So there it’s. Not a specific common application. It’s a common online system. So the funder gets to customize their form using those companies. Oh, i see. All right, it’s. Just okay. Okay. Um all right, let’s. See, we got a couple more minutes before we go out for our midterm break, if you will. What? What are the professionals? We’d be bringing in that we haven’t talked about yet. So in some groups we see human resource is have a seat at the table for the grant team. You know what they contribute? Well, because like, fifteen years ago, they call personnel. Now it now all of a sudden they’re hr human resources. What? What? Is the personnel team the hr team bring so when you look at organizations that are heavily grant funded and they start to ask themselves, well, what percentage of staff are currently funded? Is anybody overfunded, right? Those conversations are riel. They happened when you’ve got organizations that are heavily grant funded and with designated grants. So, for example, we worked with an organization that had two wonderful adult day programs for those with dementia, great programs, and happened to be that the state that they were based in had a great amount of money for them, as did the county governments. And so they ran on different timelines and had to be very careful. Oh, and and by the way, there was black grandfather thing too. So they had all these sources that had to list excruciating detail about which staff for what percentage of fto eat keeping track of that. And what was happening with payroll in hr was an important part of the planning process. So it’s not always that they have to be at the table, but first, some programs for some organizations, you’d be sunk without him. Anybody else you want to bring in? Well, let’s see, we’ve done evaluation, we’ve done cfo, we’ve done program leadership data it and tech khun b a great need to know who to call, right? Because when you’re doing a big grant, you’re like, okay, we’re going out for the computer lab. I shouldn’t be the one out on google looking for computers to figure out what works because it might not get the network. So you’ve gotta have some of those players that you get to call the call the bat if there’s a technology component to your grant, right, it might not be the main purpose of it, but if there’s the technology funding needed, what are we going toe? How are we going, phil? So you fill our need? Yeah, we’ve got sort of like a designated hitter list, right? When the application calls for it, we’ve gotta have folks that know that they’re going to be on deck to help us. Not all the time in the grand team, occasionally, based on the application, okay, let’s not go too far with sportscenter. That was that when you just mentioned on deck that’s basketball, right? If you’re on deck, you’re coming in next, based at the buzzer softball, that’s a baseball right let’s not go to any further with no more sports metaphors on non-profit radio. All right, so where we at? Alright, hang loose while i do a little business, please, and then diane and i are coming back and we’re going to talk about the external team who is managing. I should say the team that manages that those external relationships with funders and your community so that is coming up first. Pursuant the archive of their webinar how to win at data driven fund-raising fund-raising fund-raising data driven fund-raising is up. It answers questions like what should we measure? That sounds from there. I think we’re having this little chat. And how do we make our dated? Actionable. You know, if data is a conundrum for you, as in the hypothetical little diane and i were just talking about or you just want to be savvy or about you like you may be. You feel you have too much data. What do you do with it? Well, how do you shift it out? That’s what this webinar is designed to help you with will help you with get control over your metrics. It again is called howto win at data driven fund-raising it’s at pursuing dot com you click resource is then webinars. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for millennial fund-raising this is a fun night out of spelling bee live music, standup comedy, dancing and making money for your organization. I need to raise more money. This could be the way you want to engage millennials in your good work. This could be the way. Check out the video at we be e spelling dot com now for tony’s take two. Cue the wagging finger have you got your charity registration? Have you got that off your to do list yet? In other words, are you properly registered in each state where you solicit donations, including grants? I can help you. Charity registration it’s part of my practice. I’ve mentioned it before that’s. Why his fingers wagging. I can get this done for you. Check the video at tony martignetti dot com. And that is tony. Take two and i am with diane lettered and she is with me and her daughter. Rebecca is here also. Diane leonard gpc. The company is d h leonard consulting at d h landed consulting. Dot com and you’ll find diane on twitter at diane h leonard and i’m very glad again that she’s in the studio thanks for coming down where your upstate new york i forget where the rochester area no far, far, far upstate, eight thousand island or you’re all the way up your republic by the canadian border you you’re on a body of water too aren’t you would write on the st lawrence river lorts river that’s okay, alright knew it wasn’t on the great lakes. Okay, ron, we’re part of the great lakes system right at the end of lake ontario. Okay. And what is the town that you’re coming from? Clayton clayton, new york? Yes. How cold is it up in clinton now on ly a few degrees colder now. Oh, yeah, right. Because, well, we’re actually doing this in late april, and the temperature dropped, like fifty degrees or something. Doing yeah. Yeah, but the snow’s all melted. Okay, a lot this year. A fair amount of all right. Um, all right. We’re making the transition now we’re going to managing our relationships externally. Let’s start with the funders. But we also want talk about the community. Um, you have ah, you have a whole story about talking somebody recently, who’s who’s very dismayed about getting calls two days before deadlines. It’s true. So in my background, i have it was a grantmaker so i have my own set of skepticism about how people treat grantmaker xero programs program officer, right? It was it was a program officer for a statewide foundation, but it’s been a long time now and so but that background is part of why i was get on the relationship soap box, and i was sitting with the assistant director for the northern new york community foundation, and he and i were talking cause actually he’s writing a guest blogged for us for our firm, and so we were talking about it and said, it just it baffles me goes, i just was getting it yet another call we’ve got a deadline coming up on friday is the conversations having this like, and so they’re calling me, like, two, three days before, okay, so what do i want to put in an application? Well, okay, so luckily had a few minutes to talk, but what sort of application and conversation we’re going to? Have in two days, right? And he said, so there’s just non-profits are out there doing good work, and their website encourages conversation, right car does. What does it say? Call us. It says, please contact us and it’s got their phone number and it’s got their emails. I mean, it’s got to contact us for a minute, i think teo so they’re very open. They don’t demanded they don’t make it a requirement. We know some thunders. Do they say you must call us before so it’s an open invitation and yet still and maybe it’s because they’re caught up because they’re doing really important, truly important things in the community, right? All these groups are resources are limited and so it’s like oops, that deadline’s coming up. I should call them. And so he and i were talking about it again. And just what do you do? How much do you say? Do you make it mandatory? But his point was that it when you make that call last minute and he’s got a quote on the block post actually, about how you feel like an a t m is a grantmaker it feels very transactional like, okay. I need some funds ready versus having it be a true relationship, a partnership in making grants to create impact in the community. And so what we were talking about was the value of what he’s calling the next level gratitude so there’s like the quick phone call before to talk, but then once you get the grant or even if you didn’t, but you’re still trying to maintain a relationship to apply again later, where and how can you have contact that’s appropriate for that specific funder to keep the dialogue going? So, yeah, super excited that max was willing to write the post for us, but it’s not an uncommon story. We hear it from other funders when the program officer we all used to talk about that over lunch when we’d get together, right? Funders talk part of your grantspace lan include contact with the funders that are in your plan. What, i don’t know, two months in advance or how much, but but should that be part of, you know, make initial contact with this funder that we’re going to be approaching in two to three months? Absolutely so when we talk about that when we go back to that grants plan in the grants calendar. Usually when folks have a grantspace alan durney calendar that’s a little upstate. You upstate, you know durney from upstate. I’m from buffalo originally, anyway, so, yeah, i can’t help it. Okay, you don’t have to. I’ll just call you out. Okay? Thank you. So the i can now conscious of self conscious. Okay, so that thing that device that you use clique has basil data dahna be outlook based. Yeah, nothing has deadlines on it is what folks will normally have. Right? Right. Ok, maybe some reports for those current funders. Hey, what about putting relationships on the counter? Right? It’s a critical piece. Now, this we’ve gotta, like, have a huge ass trick. I’m making one in the air. All right? Not all grantmaker is allow communication pre award. They have no capacity or no preference for it. Okay, so we’ve open that up and we have to address the elephant in the room. Not all grantmaker sze will talk to you because they don’t have enough time or they have too many proposals and too many contacts that even with a dozen staff right, they couldn’t handle it so all right, we agree on that, right? Okay, but you know, you’re gonna know because you’re researching this funder because you wouldn’t have put them in your plan if you didn’t know anything about them. Wayward certainly wouldn’t do that approach. The gates foundation? Yeah, great. All right, so we’re going to know we’re going, we’re going to know. So we’ve learned through our research whether or not we can even talk to them. If we’ve done that, like in the example of the community foundation, i would have seen the clues. The writing’s on the wall. Hey, you’ve got staff names. I’ve got phone numbers, we got e mails, they’re offering to talk. I should talk, right? I should put it out there and like you said, gosh, two months before a deadline. That’s fantastic, even a month, two days before that’s, right? Not a good idea, because now you’re also tipping your hat to the thunder that you just started thinking about it. It didn’t. That was not a good thing. I presume they wouldn’t take anonymous call. I’m calling from an organization, but i don’t really say which you know, but this is what we do they probably wouldn’t care for the call like that. Exactly. All right, all right. So you’re going? Yeah, you’re typically exactly you’re revealing that you’re not organized and you’re thinking about this two business days in advance, right? All right. That’s bad. All right, who? Wei don’t have a grantspace sessional let’s, say small and midsize non-profits may not have a grand professional on staff who initiates this call, and we don’t have the benefit of d h leonard consulting helping us who’s through initiates the contact. Yeah, so the answer is that it depends right? It’s sort of a strength spaced decision who likes talking to donors who lights talking to major donors at special events, look around your organization and say, gosh, our executive director loves to talk to people about the programs and okay, so maybe that’s your answer could be that you’ve got a major gifts officer, so you don’t have a grand professional, but you’ve got a major that’s a great person to make that outreach might be that as you look around and you start to think about who’s, connect to who sort of the six degrees of kevin bacon idea, right? You’re like, oh, actually, wait it’s the program’s staff that sits on a collaborative group with the grantmaker they already know someone, they can be the point of contact, right? Backed up with talking points by the development staff by the grantmaker but so it doesn’t have to be one answer. Now the fallback can always be a development director or a grant writer if you have one on staff, sure, now i will say i have another ass trick making another footnote, yeah, go with the footnotes. This one has to be well has to be a dagger, because otherwise the footnotes would be the same. You can’t have two footnotes with asterisk that’s thiss one’s a dagger mary-jo okay, if you have an external grantcraft sessional or an external fundraiser working with you, it is my strong recommendation. They should not be the one reaching out on your behalf to build a relationship, because we can’t answer all the questions right grantmaker zeal have questions if you’re really having a good dialogue grantmaker will ask a question because you’re engaged in a dialogue, right? We’re not just talking at them or vice versa, and when that happens and the well intentioned external fundraiser or grant professional who’s like i will have to talk to my client get back to you now. I say that as an example because when i was a program officer, that happened more than once. That doesn’t bode well for the organization either, right? So, yes, you’ve got this great resource, but you need to be able to answer my questions like pick up the phone now, we gotta book a second call right now, but the questions all right? What? What if there’s reluctance? Because the the ceo or development director i love talking individuals, but now i’m talking to institution, they’re going to ask me questions i can’t answer about about accounting, and they’re going, they’re going toe. What do you have to get over that kind of nervousness about talking to the institution, the person, the person who loves talking to the person or the individual or the couple? Yeah, so we end up coaching a lot of folks that are they’re a little altum it about making that call because you’re right? It does feel different and that there’s a little bit of a power differential that doesn’t always exist with individual donors and the reality is it’s actually my colleague heather storm bug of just right solutions. You’d love her. You should have her on the show. Okay, okay. Making a plug, she’s great. But she’s got a line that is, people grant to people, not proposals xero and so the grantmaker tze and that’s what? The story is about it’s about grantmaker so grantmaker zoo are run by people and its people making the decisions right? So, yes, it seems like it’s all this big institution. But remember that it’s people trying to do good work, they have a mission aligned with yours, right? They want the same general thing thatyou d’oh. So to try and strip away some of that stress of oh, this big structures are reluctant. Okay, on dh parallel with that. Our corollary? What? I don’t visit a corollary algorithm it’s a serum i don’t know is that we do want to have a relationship with these funders like they’re people. I mean, because they are staffed by people. So i mean, this is the whole purpose of having on next team to manage that external relationship. You don’t you don’t just call ah, an individual donor on december twenty ninth because they haven’t made their end of your gift yet. You know you’re in touch throughout the year cultivating, right? So don’t do that to the institutions the institutional funders carry on a relationship because they are staffed by people, right? Yeah, you don’t want to just send in the obligatory grant report on time for the deadline. Okay, hold on. I want to put it again. Another application. Okay, i’m going to buy fifteen thousand. Right? Vicious cycle there’s. So much to do in between that we build it and what’s wrong with picking up the phone and talking to the thunder and saying, you know, we had a i mean, just like sharing anecdotes with a great week this week or, you know, this month this month we were disappointed, but here’s, what we’re doing to turn it around i mean, can you have conversations like that with with an institutional funder? You can. So it depends again on preference and capacity. So is you get to know the fun durney like, okay, they have staff. Oh, they like to talk. Oh, they only like email, right as you learn there. Preferences we worked with a small funder in central new york, not a lot of staff capacity loved promoting grantee work and success on social media, not what you’d expect, but it’s fantastic, right? So as you learn those preferences, you can think about how you’re going to share updates during the year, okay? The media team just did a great job. They’ve got a facebook post, we’re going to share that and tagged the thunder, so now they know what’s happening or i’m going to write a hand written note, right? The art of hand written notes go a long way with grantmaker just doesn’t do with individuals means it’s an individual’s going to open that envelope and read it it’s going to make their day right? I got to hand written notes from different folks that attended sessions recently that i hadn’t met. I instagrammed each of them the day they came in because i was so excited right now because you’re like as a funder who something different, then what i normally get and they’re treating me like a person. Yes, even though i’m representing an institution, i’m still a person. I’m the advocate for this organization when they submit their next application to our board. Right? Is that how it is now? Program officer works and he should get something that looks promising. They bring it to the board of the foundation. Or maybe they’re bringing up the chain. But eventually it gets to the decision makers. But the point is, the programme officer is the advocate for your application. So why not have them on your side? Exactly? It’s, exactly at in the process, you’ve gotta look at it, even in government work. While they might not be able to. Not the peer review were there, not the scoring source can have great relationships with government staff that will help your process. They’re still your advocate, but still are. And they can help you navigate the process and be stronger overall. All right, all right. I wish i i feel like the relationship building part of ah, grants is duitz egregiously overlooked mean, badly overlooked. No, i’d go with egregiously. Yes, not even just badly. Yeah. All right, all right. We gotta go out for a last break. Diane. Of course going to stay with us. And they’re never going to move from from the funder. To the community, let’s. See what you see, what that relationship is about. Hang in there. Like what you’re hearing a non-profit radio tony’s got more on youtube, you’ll find clips from stand up comedy tv spots and exclusive interviews catch guests like seth gordon, craig newmark, the founder of craigslist marquis of eco enterprises, charles best from donors choose dot org’s aria finger do something that worked and they only levine from new york universities heimans center on philanthropy, tony tweets to he finds the best content from the most knowledgeable, interesting people in and around non-profits to share on his stream. If you have valuable info, he wants to re tweet you during the show. You can join the conversation on twitter using hashtag non-profit radio twitter is an easy way to reach tony he’s at tony martignetti narasimhan t i g e n e t t i remember there’s a g before the end he hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a short monthly show devoted to getting over your fund-raising hartals just like non-profit radio, toni talks to leading thinkers, experts and cool people with great ideas. As one fan said, tony picks their brains and i don’t have to leave my office fund-raising fundamentals was recently dubbed the most helpful non-profit podcast you have ever heard, you can also join the conversation on facebook, where you can ask questions before or after the show. The guests are there, too. Get insider show alerts by email, tony tells you who’s on each week and always includes link so that you can contact guess directly. To sign up, visit the facebook page for tony martignetti dot com. Lively conversation talk. Trans sounded right, that’s two tony martignetti non-profit radio and i am his knees. Carmela and i am his nephew, gino. Carmela and gino, now now thirteen and eleven. I think we record that last year. So their twelve and twelve and ten, uh, love that. Okay, the well, the point is, someone’s gotta manage the relationship with our funders, right? Someone’s got to get to know their preferences. They prefer social or email or phone or everybody loves the handwritten note. We agree on that, but somebody’s gotta manage this relationship right? And so someone has to be the central. You need to have one person that’s managing the relationship, but usually where the great writer, the professional right shit somebody’s going to make sure that they know what’s happening with all of them that everyone’s aware of who’s talking to who, when and where and what are you trying to accomplish? So that in case somebody’s out of a special event or at a conference that everybody’s prepared what conversations are in play? Okay? And how about in the community? You you what you want, you want communications to be good in our community, to sure and so there’s a few different ways that plays out because you don’t know in your community who knows whom? Especially in a lot of small towns, right? Everybody’s connected so that casing clayton it is there having not grown up in a small town, i’ve learned quickly incestuous. Well, i wouldn’t know. I wouldn’t have but just know it’s really it’s everybody’s looking like oh it’s. Only two degrees of connection to anywhere you want to go in northern new york is your local paper have ah, section like talks about diane’s aunt is visiting from the big city rochester and she brought along with her two kittens and you have that in your in your paper are thousand islands on which is truly just st lawrence river paper. Instead, it has a section where if you take your paper to wherever you go, when you take a picture, you get your picture in the paper so there’s pictures as you can, and we’re going over got to bring my copy to new york city. You can’t in-kind burghdoff xero of non-profit radio total are all right, but it’s not quite as closest know your aunt is visiting for the week. Not quite like that, but the point is that you just never know how close the connection could be. You’re talking. To someone in a collaborative meeting, and all of a sudden you realize that it’s, somebody who sits on the board for is on a review panel somewhere, right? You just never know where that connection’s going to play out to a grantmaker and i got news for you that’s the case in new york city to treyz things air compartmentalized so you might be part of a grants panel or or organization devoted to social services. Okay, so now we’re getting pretty narrow, ok? There are a lot of social service agencies in new york city, but maybe somebody in from one of your funders is part of it, and you don’t know it because you don’t know the bio of everybody there, you know? So that does not only the case in small and mid sized towns, new york city can be very compartmentalized. Um all right, so we want to be talking up are funded programs in these forums? Is at the point well, we want to be naturally looking for collaborations naturally looking for spot where we conduce do-it-yourself cause when you think about how the community khun play out in your grants, trat, egy and why you want to have a team that’s thinking about it and then maybe kind of reporting back to the group? It could be that we’re thinking about okay letters of support, foran application or letters of commitment, right support. We’ve got our cheerleading letters, all right? Our senators and our dignitaries funders are like, god, okay, that’s, great that’s, nice, but what they really like are those letters of commitment, the organizations that are partnering together, and they’re like, okay, this is my role, this letter says, i’m going to do x y and z, right? So having the relation in ships in place with those agencies that you would ask for a letter of commitment from those relationships aren’t usually held by the great writer. It goes back to our grant team internally, we’re talking about our program staff again, or our executive director whatever, um so it’s, a really important way that we engage community everything about community as clients who are we serving? Having testimonial letters is either required or appropriate for some grant applications. Well, again, it’s not going to the grand professional that’s usually making that ask it’s going to be the staff member. That the client trusts say, hey, are you willing to write a short paragraph for us about your experience, you know, and these letters of support and certainly the letters of commitment are not going to be coming two business days before you’re your application deadline, they take time? Yeah, way have to be developing these relationships right in advance and asking those that we have relationships with foreign advance. So you’re not running around the city you’re driving all over the county trying to collect letters no good. Plus, you got a writing dead line two and you got a midnight submission deadline and it’s a big disaster. All right, all right. Um, so does that belong on our grantspace lan mean, the attendance at these community affairs? Well, if we think about what’s on the kind of what we go back to our conversation earlier a few months ago, about with the grants plan, i don’t know it always put community interaction onto the plan, but having the team recognize what their role is, their role is applicants application specific for sure, but the things that they do in between applications, having them understand that when they’re out in the community, they’re having these interactions. Those are things that come back, that they might not know exactly which application is going to be relevant to. But they should be stockpiling that information, thinking about the relationships they hold thinking about what advisory groups they sit on or hey, you know what? Actually, this organization we partner with a lot. I think they were talking about this federal grant too cash. I should talk to them before we consider applying. What if we did something collaborative instead of both trying to apply for the same thing, right? That knowledge will naturally bubble to the surface in your internal grant’s team. If they know how and what they should be watching for externally with community we have just like a minute and a half or so before we got to wrap up. How do we how would i know this time flies right now? How do we find the right places to be going in our community? Just like in a minute? Yeah, i would say look at where you are naturally don’t force it. Look it where? There’s collaborative sze. Where there’s? A social service agency gatherings or environmental? Group regional conferences or work groups? Look at what you’re naturally doing and that’s where you need to be. How can you then use those existing relationships for the betterment of your work and there’s? Everything we just talked about, you write all that collaboration. All right, diane, hte leonard with the h for my maiden name, which is corey. Corey. Okay. Diane it’s. Leonard hori is not part of ah, her earl it’s d h leonard consulting dot com and she’s at diane h leonard always got that year was keeping her maiden name present, though, but abbreviated well, and also there’s a there’s, an impressionist painter. Diane leonard. So when you think about ceo and how you identify, i see. Okay, thank you very much for coming, diane. And thanks for being in the studio record. Thank you. Thanks for being here. You probably thought that i forgot live lister loving podcast pleasantries, inflate affections. Oh, you are. You are badly mistaken. The live listener love goes out. There were a couple of weeks, several weeks pre recorded here, but the live love goes out to you, the live listeners and our podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand of you listening on platforms like itunes and stitcher and pod bay and player and deutsche dot d or whatever pod bay dot d or something pleasantries to our podcast audience and the affiliate affections to our am and fm listeners throughout the country listening on those devices those old am and fm radios with the bet with some of you still have the those rotary tuners. I love those. Go away! Down the end there is your station. Thank you for being with us. Affections to our affiliate listeners what’s up for next week. I don’t know, but it will be a good one and it will not be about fermentation. I let you down that time. If you missed any part of today’s show, i’d be seat. 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When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you gotta make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones me dar is the founder of idealised took two or three years for foundation staff sort of dane toe add an email. Address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s, why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno, two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. 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Nonprofit Radio for January 13, 2017: Digital Inclusion Furthers Impact & Your Annual Grants Plan

Big Nonprofit Ideas for the Other 95%

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Kami Griffiths, Karen Lincoln, & Alicia Orozco: Digital Inclusion Furthers Impact

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More people than you’d expect don’t have home access to the internet. This has implications for those you want to help. Our panelists from the 2016 Nonprofit Technology Conference have each made digital inclusion a priority, and they share their wisdom. Kami Griffiths leads the Community Technology Network; Karen Lincoln is from The Stride Center; and Alicia Orozco is with the Chicana Latina Foundation.

 


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: Your Annual Grants Plan

We start with the basics, then move into goals and metrics. Finally, colleague engagement, so you’re not alone making your plan and executing. Diane Leonard is president and owner of DH Leonard Consulting.

 

 


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Hello and welcome to tony martignetti non-profit radio big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. I’m your aptly named host. Oh, i’m glad you’re with me. I’d be forced to endure amblyopia if i saw that you missed today’s show digital inclusion furthers impact more people than you’d expect don’t have home access to the internet. This has implications for the people you are trying to help. Our panelists from the twenty sixteen non-profit technology conference have each made digital inclusion a priority, and they share their wisdom. Kemi griffiths leads the community technology network karen lincoln is from the stride center, and alicia orosco is with the chicana latina foundation and your annual grants plan. We start with the basics, then move into goals and metrics. Finally, colleague engagement. So you’re not alone making your plan and executing it. Diane leonard is president and owner of d h leonard consulting attorneys take two, mohr ntcdinosaur goes responsive by pursuant full service fund-raising data driven and technology enabled, you’ll raise more money pursuant dot com and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers. We b e spelling dot com here is our panel on digital inclusion welcome. To tony martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntc non-profit technology conference in san jose, california, at the convention center, i guess now are camby, griffiths, karen lincoln and alicia roscoe. Cam e is executive director of community technology network she’s seated next to me. Hoexter haris carry in lincoln director of business and operations, the stride center and alicia orosco is manager of administration special projects at the chicano latina foundation. Ladies welcome. Thank thank you. Thank you. You have a very provocative, interesting topic digital inclusion to further your impact. I’m going to start in the middle there. Karen turns out that everybody in the country does not have access to the internet at home. I’m shocked to learn actually you’re not alone in being shocked. A lot of people are very surprised by that. Somewhere in the neighborhood of twenty five percent of americans do not have access to high speed internet in their home, and a huge percentage of them don’t even have digital literacy skills twenty to twenty five percent throughout the country. Yes, does that include? Does that include in urban areas? Or is it mostly suburban sametz rule? No urban it’s both definitely. Is checking your nodding vory right here in silicon valley? Yes, right here and in san francisco it is incredible. Do we know what the percentages here? Just in the local area or i don’t have that number, but we know that there is an inclusion issue here and it’s broken down by income, age and education level. So in san francisco, they did a report recently, and it showed fifteen percent didn’t have access and that’s in san francisco where you think everybody’s connected all the time, but there’s pockets of poverty, there’s people who don’t have homes and where did they access the internet? So a lot of people are going to libraries and other places to get online. So san francisco’s, lucky in california in general, is ahead of the curve compared to the rest of the country. But there’s still a divide even though some people think that everyone’s go to cell phone, so we’re all connected. But that’s, not the case what we all hear about libraries as the alternative? Are there other alternate besides libraries? What are they? Anybody? So? Community centers, recreation center, senior centers, other non-profits that provides services sometimes also offer access to computers, but you don’t always get training at those places. So that’s, what a lot of our organizations are focused on is the training. Yeah, okay, so not only the access, but also literacy. Yes, setting for this machine, but i don’t know how to use it. Yeah, it’s not doing me much good physically. Okay? And children are failing in high in schools because they don’t have connection at home and they are in schools where they’re five to six students per computer at their school. Eso it’s really they’re they’re incredible, they’re doing homework, they’re doing essays on their phones, their parents, phones and i take my hat off to them because they haven’t given up. But that’s not right. Also having access to things like libraries and community centre of senators doesn’t serve everybody because if you are home mound are don’t have access to a vehicle are living in a neighborhood was not try safe to go out at night. You don’t have the ability to use those other surgery, even maybe cost travel it, zach public transportation. It’s not free. You know, some people may be a burden just to get to the alternative and we have met families who packed their kids who have homework with the computer. They haven’t go park in the library parking lot to get the wifi and the kids, they’re doing their homework because if they go inside, they get timed out within an hour. Most of the computer’s already occupied parking in the library parking lot for wifi access. Yes, this is happening right here in san will say yes, and if you don’t have a car, you’re outside on a bench or they call him the leaners there, leaning against the wall using the internet from in the building? No, yeah, yeah. All right, that should be enough motivation. All right, so now the issue is that we are in our organization’s trying to help these people. We’re trying to reach them. You know, i hear it ntcdinosaur talking about so much about multi-channel engagement, but if two people can’t access the channels and don’t have to use the channels again, we’re not reaching them. Andi, we’re we’re trying to provide services a lot of times to this population. How do we write this is talking about how our organizations supposed to duitz hair themselves. To reach these people, all right, let’s, start close this time. Cam e how do we start even assess what the problem is, omar, our constituency is that where we started? It’s a good place to start and not everybody does that they jump right in and they’ll have a bank of computers there are they literally let their clients use their own computers, which isn’t necessarily the best idea caused after, oh, yeah, and or you’re helping them apply for jobs? They’re sitting next to you and you’re applying for the job on their behalf because you just want to help them apply. But what i would encourage folks to do is to partner with agencies who are already doing computer literacy or adult literacy or some way don’t take it on yourself to train your constituencies or help them connect to the internet, but know who the partners in your community are and work with them tio get them the training that they need. So we want people to be able to apply for jobs on their own, ideally in their homes, privacy, some degree of privacy, exactly, and taking their time cause a job application isn’t something. You should send six out in an hour. It should take an hour just to find one application that you want to fill out and then several hours to do research and fill out the application, you know appropriately and it’s it’s a time intensive thing and at the library is alicia said you’ll time out after an hour, and so libraries aren’t always the solution for job seekers. So for non-profit, who has stumped by this issue of their clients not being online, we’ll go to where the training happens partner. But if you have a needs assessment that you’re deploying into great digital literacy or digital inclusion into that survey, see you have some data to prove to the foundations that this is a need that you should give us funding for. So we can help these people get online at home, that they can provide access to their children to do homework so they could do job search liking, connect with family using skype research information, entertain themselves, whatever it is, the internet is this amazing revolution, and they should be able to join in. Karen, what are some of the things we should be asking if we’re doing a survey the way kapin suggesting to determine if we have a problem among our constituency. For one thing, you need to be careful about if asking if they have access to the internet or if they have internet access because a lot of talk about that’s duvette right? Yes, i do. I’m gonna buy community foundation, which is a two and a half hour ride, and it cost me six dollars to get there and years to come back, and i get timed out after an hour. Are you using your phone and your phone isn’t really where you’re gonna build skills that are transferrable, et cetera in the morning, you all three of you a very good teacher because i feel like i’m mastering sort you’re tuned to non-profit radio tony martignetti also hosts a podcast for the chronicle of philanthropy fund-raising fundamentals is a quick ten minute burst of fund-raising insights published once a month. Tony’s guests are expert in crowdfunding, mobile giving event fund-raising direct mail and donor cultivation. Really, all the fund-raising issues that make you wonder am i doing this right? Is there a better way there is? Find the fund-raising fundamentals. Archive it. Tony martignetti dot com that’s marketmesuite n e t t i remember there’s, a g before the end, thousands of listeners have subscribed on itunes. You can also learn maura, the chronicle website, philanthropy dot com fund-raising fundamentals the better way. Dahna duitz what should we be asking in a in a survey tool. So i would ask things like, do you have access at home? What do you want to use the internet for? Is it because you have a sense of isolation and you want to connect with your family? Are you looking for a job? Are you trying, teo? Better understand your health. I would get a better understanding of what skills they bring to the table. They may say they know how to use their computer. But does that just mean that they know how to look up? Something on an internet page are? Do they know how to create a word document? There’s? You really need to dig into what skills they bring to the table with access they have today and what their goals are with that usage. Okay, elisa, you’re doing a lot of nodding. Absolutely. So are you connected at home? Do you have equipment? You have actual computer. Is it working yet? We find that a lot of them are. You know, door stops like you said, karen, but but someone might answer that question. Yes, yes, we have one. But it’s worthless. Exactly. So on and then you know, your questions are very important. How would you benefit from having a working computer and knowing how to use it at home? And, you know, i i ask everyone who’s listening to us to start listening everywhere you go, if we go to a hospital, if you see your doctor, if you go to unemployment anywhere that you go it’s school, everything is oh, you can get it online. Cam. He was at the tax place you can download of the forms online. Um, so a lot of people don’t have that ability. Well, but but if you can’t here’s the altum won’t know the idea that the thing we want people to know is that the world has gone there, but not everyone has access to the world. This is a social justice issue. Are we leaving a percentage of human beings out of the twenty first century and it’s not because they don’t want to? We live at least here in this area where we are one of the most expensive areas in this country. People have two and three jobs just to pay rent, several families living together um so when you tell them that they’re going to have to pay forty nine, fifty dollars a month for their internet and then buy a computer. Well, say so are our listeners are oppcoll in non-profits themselves it’s form so they know size non-profit so well, they may not, but, you know, we’re raising consciousness. But now we want to approach. The problem is, how do you ten thousand plus listeners approach to approach your constituents who don’t have access? I mean, how can you help them geever gain access? Or how can you deliver your own services knowing that we have this enormous void? That twenty to twenty five percent of population was much bigger? Go on. Okay, let’s, continue. Karen, you want to you want to pick up with where do we take this next? Now we’ve done some assessment work. We know what our constituents are lacking. How can we help? So it would say there’s primarily to things that we can do in both alicia and can we spoke about this earlier today, one has become familiar with the organizations in your area that are teaching digital literacy. Non-profit work is very self referential. Nobody could do everything. Become familiar with what services are available in your area for your constituents and additionally, get the word out there. It’s so so unknown how big of a gap is being created, our population and how many people are being disenfranchised. And the only way that change happens is through awareness. So we all need to start talking about it also fight now, if you have a refurbished or in your community, for instance, we did that a lot in our project. So because they usually make computers available at no cost or very low cost, and then they offer support for those computers wave they do break down, so refurbishing companies are important, and they’re springing up all over so low cost internet is other there’s. A lot of companies coming out low cost internet options. So internet essentials from comcast is one that’s been out for about four, five years, and now they have a pilot for seniors. That’s ten dollars a month and it comes with one hundred fifty dollars voucher for a computer. So comcast has something low caused it. And t there’s mobile beaconfire ogle citizen so know what the low cost options are in? Your community that people can apply for, you know, advocate to your city government or your region to get low cost of free accessed in low income areas. So google fiber is doing some really interesting things connecting low income housing to free too free internet and so getting the low cost or free option of both the internet and the connectivity is very important, but not everyone knows how relevant it is to them. So having the training is absolutely essential tell them understand why it’s relevant and then how to use it safely because the safety part, especially for older adults, there’s a huge amount of fraud and older adult community, and they’re getting scammed out a lot of money. So if we can make sure that people, once they’re getting trained online, they’re learning how to do it safely. Okay, karen e i will just mention that there’s also a lot of lobbying that has bean done with the p u c with our legislature in sacramento. Yes, because there are merger’s happening and the comcast offer of nine ninety nine. There was because they were so kind and wanted to help people. In fact, they were forced by the government and then they sat on it and did nothing. The california emerging technology fund had money to give dahna in-kind grants to all of us to get the word out and that’s how it began by us getting involved in telling people if you have a child in school receiving lunch, you know, free or reduce you qualify for this. Well, i invite you all to look up california emerging technology fund because they are very involved in lobbying and trying to get access to california. Their goal is eighty percent. By next year, twenty, seventy percent california’s connected access in home? Yes. What would we search if we’re not in california? I don’t know anybody else, but i just got this major breeze. Yeah, yeah. Shivering on anybody wondering why the air just got turned up. Eighty percent don’t bilich they’re just got turned up to percent if we’re outside california. What we be googling what terms should be searching to find the equivalent to what elisa is talking about in our in our home state. So there’s a national digital inclusion alliance and i think the earl is digital inclusion latto orders something nd eyes yeah, and there’s a list serv and there’s a lot of us on and there’s lots of conversation. So if you were to join that and say, hey what’s happening in salt lake city national digital inclusion alliance and there’s a conference coming up in a kansas city in may for folks who are interested in this world of digital inclusion and any other resource is weaken, we can shut out at this point nationwide, i think just put in digital inclusion in your google search, you know, and and i and some of these organizations, you know, ah, city c e t s california virgin technology fund might be able to help you to say okay, because they are involved, actually national ing to a certain degree, they latto washington got india, you can’t just give up, and i’m happy to point people to other resource is i’m wanting to build my own network of who’s doing what in sharing resource is and that’s the only way i think i can get better at doing this work and to help us build a movement where were training the trainer because that’s what si tiene dozes trains trainers to teach free computer classes and works one on one with individuals and and i really think that’s one of the only ways to meet the need is to meet people where they’re at in the language that is it that they speak using the device that they use and to show them the things that they need to know how to do. And so if we can replicate that in a large way across the country and eventually the world that’s a way to address the people we should reach you if they would like to participate taken email me at cam e am i at seti en bay area dot or ge? And we’ve got resource is on our website and there’s, another conference for people in this space called shelby schools health library, broadband coalition that’s a yearly conference that happens in d c i’ll be going to that speaking. Shelby shelby is schools, health library, broadband coalition, it’s a mouthful. But there’s really great folks that go there too. And it’s all about getting people access to the internet. And why do they need to use it in the skills to use it? Okay. All right, there’s. More. We have more time together, so way, haven’t beat this topic up yet. Let’s, take a look. I’ll give you a couple of seconds to think about, and we’ll take a commercial break because i have to highlight and ten swag item we have from upleaf. Coloring, coloring and are outstanding. Piela hannah has taken some liberties with the owl. I already started to color this in, but this is from upleaf and of course, they don’t give you the cold sheets, but coloring pencils as well. And karen, i need your help. You have this to the intend to my intense swag pile? Yes. Sheet and the pencils. You got a pencil? It is a color color. That’s okay, one fell sixty. Okay. Thank you. Arika god. All right, so what more do we have to cover on this very important topic? Let’s? See what e-giving who’s with me? I would like killing program delivering. We haven’t talked about program delivery. I just want encourage everybody to think about volunteering in their community to help make a difference in this area. If you know how to send an email and you’re a good communicator, somebody in the community could benefit from you helping them learn how to use the computer. So if you have two hours to give once a week, you could really change somebody’s life by helping them use their new smartphone that they got from their adult child or used their laptop. To apply for a job or improve their resume. There’s so many ways that we take it, we take for granted what we know on this could potentially be a volunteer opportunity for some of our organizations who listen, i guess they could create something around digital little received within their community way have, for instance, you cannot latina foundation supports latina women to go to school hyre education by wei have a programme for them. One of our alumni apply for a grant, and she got ten thousand dollars so that she could teach classes and have computer for people in santa cruz. So there’s really a lot of ways that you can figure out how to help your community. She has now taught ah hundred people how to use a computer. And it was a four week course in the old computers based on this grant, as she got on her own initiative work going to school and having a job. And then she recruited students from santa cruz, u c santa cruz to join her and teach. So it was a beautiful, beautiful project brought in students. College students obviously exaggerate and connected. Let’s, uh, i’d like to move to programme deliver how do we start to break this down if we know that there are people were trying to help who aren’t connected at home? Where do we start with this problem? I think some of the things you have to consider is not on ly what the community is, what they’re trying to do because the things you’re going to teach a group of seniors is very different than a group of job seekers, for example, but if you’re talking to people who are like food and secure or don’t have the money, you really have to find a way to integrate technology into their life so they can start to see the value of it. And i think a good way to do that is tio not on ly find out what matters to them to find some way to subsidize the program for the first six to twelve months, so it does become a part of their daily practice because if you’ve never had in your home, you don’t know what value it is, and you don’t understand why an investment of ten to forty dollars, is worth your time. The other thing? Is that for instance, if you are working with families who have children in school, we found that there are a lot of school laizans who are actually volunteers. Who are you doing this? They’re training parents on the internet. Well, not only internet how to use a computer so there is depending on who your clientele or the community you are serving is look around because i bet that there are these other organizations that are doing the work or groups that are doing this work, the school’s air, very interested in getting the parents on the internet and on their school loop or there’s different names for it. But they would love to let their computer labs to be used. We did that in santa cruz. We did there in selena’s. We did that in santa rosa. It was the school so open there, their computer labs to be used by the community school hours exactly the things we’re sitting follow-up exactly. Yeah. So okay, kayman anything you can about the program which focus on definitely part brings people. Yeah, partnering with other agencies and not taking it on yourself would be the first. I think you do. Look out into your general vicinity, and if you’re in a small town there’s no one else, you know it. Good. Take the next step, teo, learn more about other cities. They’re doing it, learn from people like us, but don’t try and do-it-yourself it it’s really difficult work, and it gets harder if you’re talking about older adults and cognitive disabilities or, um, multiple language is being spoken in any one area and that’s the kind of stuff that we’re dealing with and, you know, we don’t have computers of our only partner with senior center, so we don’t have to maintain the computers. We don’t have to run the non-profit that’s housing the computers, we don’t have to provide the meals that are drawing the seniors in there in the first place to then go to the computer center. So find an adult ed or a library or school or somebody that has perhaps something that you can you can glom onto, or you can work together. And if that doesn’t exist and then really try and build a network of people who want to help out and so good place to go would be if there’s a school or a university where you can elicit the support of a service learning program, we’re partnering with usf to do that and it’s a really great resource for us and, you know, utilizing volunteers is an amazing way to address the need, but they need to be trained and they need to be supported, and the volunteers like to get to know each other, so having a real robust volunteer program is is essential and continually helping them help their learners. So there’s going to be questions about iphones? We’ll have an iphone train there’s gonna be questions about this new website they’ve never heard of. So have that kind of training for the trainers, so they can be really good at communicating this technology to the to the learners. So it’s it’s, really? And then one thing that we’re doing is a monthly networking event we call bragan borrow so people come together just to talk and brag about the cool stuff that they’re doing related to technology, access and training, and then the borrow pieces saying, well, i’m having this challenge. Can you help me with that? So that’s the one thing i’ve been doing monthly for? About a year and a half, that’s resulted, and some partnerships and me learning a lot about the different communities are last. Braggin bar was at a veterans serving agency that had some computers, and so he had about eight veterans organizations. I’d never met any of these people before, and now we’re having conversations about technology, training and access for veterans, so that was pretty special co-branding borrow? Yeah, they were all taking ideas from others. Course or not or no, nothing want to formalize it looks let’s get together every thirty days, days or something. The one thing i want to add, if we have time is talking about evaluation and reporting on your impact is the hardest part of all of this. That, at least for us, is how do we show the impact beyond the number of people who attended a computer class or the number of hours of training that were provided? We just have a couple minutes left way get to some ideas of how to do it. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So i would say for us, it’s, knowing what the goal is of the individual for or the group and we’re not. Doing it as well as i’d like to because we don’t even have ah data collection platform, we’re working on sales force right now, so we’re hoping by the summer will have that well built out. But what is the goal of the learner? And how do we show that they have reached that goal? If if it’s ending isolation so what are the things you need to do? Technology wise, teo health and get connected? They’re not feeling isolated or for jobseeker’s that’s a little bit more clear cut? Did they get a job? Or do they feel like they’re getting more hits on their resume? So it’s really figure out what? What are you hoping to accomplish? And then how do you build in the metrics to track that goal and it’s for small non-profits it’s really difficult to do that? Well, because you just don’t have the staff tio ask the right questions, collect the data in the right way to then be ableto run reports at the end of show that there was impact there. So what what’s the small organization to do? How can they? They just get as close as they can to reporting impact? Well, you just start talking about it first and, you know, don’t beat yourself up if you can’t do it, but at least try and find out from the individual learners. Are you mark comfortable now? Whatever the goal of it. So if they want to get on social media, did they get, you know, after six months today, were they able teo do facebook because to do facebook you need an email and then did he e mail you need to know howto open up a browser so there’s all these things that you need to layer on top so that would be one thing is like, did you are you doing this now? Whereas before you couldn’t, you could say, percentage wise that’s an easy one to say like fifty percent of our learners air now able to do this thing or one hundred percent, so that would be an easy thing, but you do have to track it regularly and have it in a database, so i would say, don’t overwhelm yourself with things to collect just keep it simple and start small i do think it’s important also in addition to saying if they know how often they’re doing it i mean, i know how to do it, how often they’re doing it because if you’re really integrating that technology, it’s not just the knowledge it’s, if you’re actually using it in a consistent manner, i absolutely agree. All right, ladies, we’re gonna leave it there. Thank you. Thank you. Pleasure. Thank you. Thank you again. Candy griffiths, executive director of si tiene community technology network. Karen lincoln, director of business and operations at the stride center, and alicia orosco, manager of administration and special projects for the chicano latina foundation. Durney martignetti non-profit radio coverage of sixteen ntcdinosaur non-profit technology conference thank you for being with us. Your annual grants plan is coming up first. Pursuant they have mohr free research for you. Overcoming the major donor dilemma is the most recent. This paper will help you with the identification, engagement and cultivation of new major donors overcoming the major donor dilemma, you’ll find it at pursuing dot com, click on resource is and then content papers check that out. We’ll be spelling spelling bees for fund-raising they’ve got a new video up it’s from a night that raised money for hfc, which has helped for children. The organisation needed help for its programs, and it turned to wi be spelling. They raised one hundred ten thousand dollars that night. You see it all in the video at we b e spelling dot com now tony steak too. I’ve got no videos from last year’s non-profit technology conference. I’m capturing these under the rubric virtual organizations and volunteers viv of love, one on i’ve won on how to manage remote employees. Another is managing remote volunteers where to find volunteers, and the fourth one is leveraging your expert or tech volunteers. My video that introduces these four with the links you’ll find it, you know, where do i need to say it? Do i need to say it? Tony martignetti dot com and by the way, are you going to this year’s ntc? You’ll find info at in ten dot org’s you know it’s, an excellent conference, the non-profit technology conference that is tony’s take to my pleasure to welcome diane leonard. She has been a grant professional for over a decade and is president and owner of d h leonard consulting and grantwriting services, she has secured over thirty four million dollars in competitive grants for clients from all three levels of government and private foundations. She’s, the co host of hashtag grant chat, a weekly twitter chat for grant professionals she’s at diane h leonard and there’s an e at the end of diane on only one end make that very clear. And her company is that d h leonard consulting dot com diane leonard, welcome to the show. Thanks so much. My pleasure. You have the credentials gpc after your name. What is that? Yes. So that stands for grand professional certified that’s, the grand professional certification institute, a sister organization to the grand professionals association. Very proud to have been in the field long enough to be able to grant professionals. Well, they just make it certified grantcraft sessional c g p it could be that too. You know what? Happy to have the initials into people that feel that way you might look into that just switch just kapin called c gp certifies otherwise have grant professional certified sound like just have a comma after professional like rifle comma and seventeen o or something like that. Or i don’t know, i would look into that, see if they’d switch. It around, you know what? If i grant professional? I mean, it doesn’t that doesn’t. That doesn’t roll off a little easier. No. Well, like i said, i’m just happy to be able to be a part of the community and having thought, ok, you don’t want to speak out against your professional suspicion because cause trouble i i’m not. I will never have the gpc. I’d be a gpu. I got grand professional, uncertified, but i’m not even grandpre fresh inal, so i’d be just a u uncertified. Just have the letter. You don’t martignetti you uncertified. Okay, let’s, get into our grant plan for ah for the year. Um, sorry. I like to start with some basics we should have. Ah, calendar. Right. Looking forward for the year. Yeah, absolutely. Should have a grand calendar that lets you is the person writing france in the rest of your team. Know what is coming? We have for deadlines. Where do we need to plan to be? Ableto be a part of the grand process. It’s a stress level down. Okay. And we’re going to talk about other people who are part of this. That may not typically be thought. Of but we’re tryingto break down these misconceptions about who’s, part of the grand steam it’s more than the grant writers were going to get to that. Ok, i also noticed you say that you would like to say grant professional, but i usually see grants professional. Is there, uh, is there a split in the in the profession among whether your singular rip plural? Oh, i think more than anything, there’s a distinction for some folks will call themselves a grant writer versus a grant professional that’s usually the question we get versus a grant writer grantspace writer or a grant professional grant professional? Yeah, i’m asking the pool of single plural singular question. Yeah, i’m usually way use singular. Yeah, yeah. Ok. On the personal preference there, i think okay, the the industry has not standardize itself. There’s some room for standardization still in the industry. Well, singular versus plural. And i think these things are important. Scrutinized these things? Um, like c b g o r g p. Okay, um and so what should be a part of our grant calendar? What belongs in there? There’s. A fair amount that belongs in there. So upcoming deadlines for existing funders that an organization already has relationships with those take priority. So what will be the deadline’s related to their report to their relationship maintenance with those existing funders and then renewal applications? Also on, there should be any known deadlines for potential new funders corporate foundation of family foundation, as well as the outreach that you might make to those foundations before you choose to apply. So whether you’re goingto a funder, former participating in a webinar technical assistance session, though, should be on there too, and then, if you’re looking at government funding, we’re usually forecasting we’re not exactly sure when things will be out, so those guesses of forecasts for when you expect to see opportunities amount through the different either federal or state systems should be on the calendar as well as a trigger point, so that you’re watching those opportunities open and reminding yourself to pre plan for them the the the the outreach part of of ah being a grant professional, correct me if i’m wrong in this, in the statement, please, and i really do mean challenge me if i’m wrong that the relationship part of grantspace nw ship or grant grant? Writing is underappreciated often it is, and it’s actually one of my dear friends and colleagues, heather starbuck of just right solutions, loves to say that people give to people right and that’s not usually debated in the fund-raising community or non-profit but the reality is this is where heather takes it. A step further is that people the foundations are granting two people at the non-profit so it really it does might not feel the same as a major donor interaction or an individual donor, but ultimately, people are making those decisions. And so there is that opportunity for some dialogue dafs questions toe have some interaction, not with all grantmaker but it really it’s an important factor that a lot of folks do skip over under the stress of a deadline, and ultimately, in the long run, they probably hurting their success ratio is a result. Is it worth talking to the the grantmaker while you’re in process, you’re preparing your application one hundred percent, so i started as a grantmaker and while talking to a programme officer isn’t ever a guarantee of anything when you find a grantmaker that has the preference and the capacity we should. Maybe say the other order capacity and preference for some pre award communications it’s going to help you is the applicant to write a more competitive proposal or potentially to realize actually, maybe we’re not a good fit, so save yourself the time and it does. It helps the thunder is well in the long run again if they have the capacity and the preference for that communication because they’ll ultimately they’re receiving stronger awards as a result of that dialogue. Now, how do we assess whether they have capacity and preference? Can we just call and say i don’t have any specific question about the application? I mean, like, i understand it completely, but what do you say? How do you open that conversation if you don’t have specific questions about the process? Right? So the way that we handle and recommend that our clients do that outreach is through their research when they’re looking at an opportunity, but they’re looking at the website and they’re seeing what is the thunder actually say? Community foundation for southeast michigan says right on there, please, paul, before you apply crystal clear in their materials, they want to talk to you others. Will say, please email us or please call the program officer, please call the program director. Please email. On the flip side, there will be those that in their materials will say no increase accepted, so a lot of them were being pretty clear if they have a printed website or if they have it and you will report, they’re putting out information to try and make it easier for focused, understand what it is that they want or could allow to happen for station. But i think really what’s important that you consistently developed talking points. If you find a thunder that you’re going to have the opportunity to email with or call, maybe even meet in person and the way that we develop the talking points, they worked just as well in person as they do on the phone, or they turn into a great female. So the first thing is to do a quick introduction. Who are you and who are you? Not the whole history of the organization, which is quick, okay? Calling because based on my research about your foundations, you’re granting organizations, i think that our organization is a really strong potential grant funding partner with you because give him a thirty second elevator speech. Why do you think that your work is well aligned with theirs? Why should they want to talk to you? Okay, elevator speech or you’re at a cocktail party without a quick thirty seconds with somebody before they run away. So you’re establishing upfront that you’ve done research and you’ve thought you’ve thought this through. Okay, okay, uh, here’s, why we’re a match? What it what else? And then the last part is that you’re gonna ask, may i ask you? I’ve got a few questions that will help me understand if we’re gonna be competitive in your process and make our application the best possible for you that’s the phone call going, they’re likely going to say yes or in person they’re going to say yes and email you just dive into it, you’re going to ask him to two three thoughtful questions, thoughtful questions are things that are not in a funders frequently asked question documents, they’re not things that are clearly outlined. On their web site, a thoughtful question is if you read all their materials and you haven’t you do you have a question? Do you prefer to do a matching grant versus a one year straight project france here? Are you willing to fund salaries? Is that an eligible expense? Those are legitimate, thoughtful question could be that the way that they’ve described how they support education, you’re wondering if indeed they’ll actually support after school activities vs heimans on ly in school tutoring programs or whatever the case might be something a little more programmatic and you might say, well, they’re materials are really clear, i don’t know, i’m not sure i have a thoughtful just like anything else with people, people love to talk about themselves, so a thoughtful question to a funder all that you might want to ask you, would you tell me about a recent france that did a great job of sharing their outcomes with you? Or they did a great job of publicizing the funded work? Get them to talk about something that they funded that went well, because that’s going to give you a good example? Something to think about for what? They like, help the work that you do. How could you talk about it to them in a similar way in the application? I love it. I love it now, if you do this, if you open the door this way and have this this delightful conversation what percentile of grant applicants would you say you’re putting yourself in? You’re putting yourself in the top tier for sure? Yeah, it’s just not that it just doesn’t happen. People don’t think of the relationship part of of grant work. All right, all right. That was an excellent thank you for that digression. I took us there, but that’s not our plan. But we call it the three r’s. So the research then you do relationship and lastly, you get to be your third are of writing. Of course doesn’t start with an r but we capitalize. Alright that’s, everybody but it’s a quick thing. People skip the second r that’s what we failed to do research they do writing everything in between. Ok, we know that you know how to spell the word writing so i declare we’re going for the alliteration i underst which i love very much appreciate so it’s fine. We will know you, khun spell. All right, all right. That’s cool. I like that. Uh, yeah. Okay, so ah, and putting our backdrop calendar. We’re putting this counter together, there’s, considerable time. We have to spend looking into all these things about deadlines and africa. Not all applications, but renewal, etcetera, mean there’s a lot of time up front goes into this. It is, but it really. It ends up saving you significant time in the long run and it’s usually well paired that you’re working on your grant calendar creations. While you’re working with your peers, your colleagues in your leadership for what is that grant revenue line item look like in the operating budget for the year ahead. At the same time that your organization is pausing to budgeting work, you should be creating your grant calendar so that they’re in synergy. Yes, and not only amount, but timing, too, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Okay, it’s. Excellent. Nastya. I’ve had guests on talking about this hyre generally, but never heard that you have to align the revenue with with the budget. Otherwise, everybody’s gonna be disappointed if the grand budget revenue line item is off right. You is the person who was doing the right thing, and those that are in leadership responsible for that budget. Yeah, could be worse than your disappointment. Okay, let’s, take our first break. When we come back. Diane and i will continue talking about your your annual calendar, and we’ll get a little more in depth. A little more advanced. Stay with us. 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Lively conversation, tap trends, sound advice, that’s, tony martignetti non-profit radio. I’m melanie schnoll begun managing director morgan stanley philantech management. Welcome back to big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent i gotta send the live love that’s, etcetera, etcetera, it’s gotta go out were pre recorded, so i can’t name you by city and state. But if you are among our live listeners today, the love goes out to you. Thanks so much for being with us. Not only love, but thanks gratitude and love podcast pleasantries over twelve thousand i’m brown prepared to say it now, you know it’s happened so often that it’s over twelve thousand that’s all there is to it. It’s over twelve thousand podcast listeners it’s just that simple we’re beyond that ten thousand mark ten thousand threshold so pleasantries to the vast majority of our audience, the podcast listeners, whatever device, whatever time, whatever you squeeze us into your busy hectic schedule pleasantries to you our podcast listeners, thanks so much for being with us and the affiliate affections to our am and fm stations throughout the country. Affections to you. I’m glad that you’re listening. Let your station know that you do listen so they get some feedback. That’s always valuable affections to our am and fm affiliate listeners. Okay, diane. Leonard. Um, this this process necessarily involves gold setting. Let’s. Talk, let’s. Talk about that. Sure, having goals is really important for yourself, and so that the organization is in well alignment with grant seeking strategy and really articulating and achieving your strategic plans. Okay, so well, so what are some of the some of the goals you have? You have lots of good metrics here. I love all of these metrics that you list, um, like award percentage and percentage funded versus asked, we’re setting goals for for all these things, ideally, yes, what we find is that some organizations our only using one or two metrics to measure their grant seeking success. What’s really, there is a pretty long list of different metrics that can be used and if you together actually present you with a fuller picture of the success and where you’re seeing growth or potentially room for improvement in your grantmaking so that you can try and sharpen your skills, have better success percentages overall have a stronger return on investment on each koreans that you write as we’re setting our goals. What do we benchmark against? Is that to be organizations like us eyes that number even? Or those numbers even available to what degree does the previous year factory or the previous three years? Great questions? People tend to be pretty tight about sharing they’re different personal metrics, and so it really is about looking at your organization’s ask track record looking at one, two and sometimes three years back to see what those different their success presented percent of funders that are renewing percent of each year to see what dollar amount or what a number of total grantspace unders versus previously existing relationship. If you look at those numbers that you’ve got a longer terms history, it can show you sometimes there’s some blips, things that happened because of government funding, in or out that are beyond your control. That would impact your metrics. That’s what you want to look at more than just the past year hyre establish a benchmark where were you? And set some goals from realistic goals for yourself? For how could you improve your work? And hopefully your grant revenue is forward so it would be off color of me to ask you what you’re percentage of awards is that? Is that an inappropriate question? Not at all, totally appropriate, especially if you’re talking to a grand consultant were usually pretty public, so my success percentages stayed over sixty five percent for my eleven years in business. Okay, is that how does that rank? I don’t know two thirds proud. Of that, though, i will say that with pride. All right, so two thirds of the application that you submit over the past eleven years have been awarded. Is that right? Did i state that? Right. Okay. All right. Two thirds. All right. Excellent. Um, all right. So let’s, talk through some of these, um, percentage funded versus asked, like it’s that’s pretty straightforward. Um, again, you know, it’s it’s, i think the toughest part of this is figuring out where you fit in. Like, what? Which leaves should we be looking for ninety percent funded versus asked? Or is is fifty percent good? It’s tough it’s, very tough, and especially depending on what type of work you’re doing and what type of grantmaker you’re applying to what would be a good standard will be different. So, for example, and i ate when they publish their funded percentages mean there, so incredibly evidence all grantmaker czar, but at an age to think the last published that i saw was that thirteen percent of submitted proposals funded thirteen percent. But that’s all the work you’re doing, you’re probably gonna be happy with a different numbers than if you are solely working. With family foundations for britain families. Percent of funding renewed and increased. Can you say some something about that? Sure. So if you look back at the last year and you see which funders you received funding from, you’d be looking then to say, well, how many of those? Well, i’ve retained what percentage will i receive another grant from in this upcoming year? And ideally, what percentage could i increase in award from? So instead of getting another seventy five thousand dollars france, i should be great if i could increase and get an eighty thousand dollar grant eighty that’s modest, i was thinking from seventy five to one hundred it was eyes like crazy. I mean, you’re the pro eyes is that is that unreasonable to go expect somebody of thunder to go from seventy five to one hundred it’s so situational for something having the increase of a few thousand is a big deal for others, you’re right, you could make a much bigger jump depending on what you’re proposing mean, if you did a great job last year or over the past two years with them, um, and and you have a way of expanding the program, wouldn’t that be a credible? Argument for giving ah, what would my case would be? A thirty percent increase? It certainly could be, and i think you know, this actually goes back to that relationship point if you’ve done more than just implementer project, but rather you thought about how you can enhance your relationship with your grantmaker in addition to doing what you said you would when you said you would, how you said you wouldn’t your applications, i think you stand a much better chance of increasing your award in the future year. Yes, well, one of your metric is grant compliance. How do we measure that when you look at the different brands that are being implemented for some, if you’re talking government grant has got very strict standards from the ownby office federally, but we’re looking at grant appliance. You could measure yourself on percent of report turned in on time or early percent of grant bill turned in on time or early, even simple metrics like that go a long way, because as soon as you turn a report in late, you hurt your truck and your relationship with the grantmaker. Yes, very much. And and your credibility is diminished. Yeah. Um, labbate diane, we may have to have you back is we only have, like, two minutes left, but i i want to get to the use of your colleagues and expanding the definition of who belongs on the grant team. Please talk about that. Sure. So when we say grand team folks will say, i’m a grand team of one and what we really mean, when when i talk about grant team when those that i worked with when we talk about granting what we mean, are those organizations that play a key role in e-giving you helping you give it, tio put together competitive applications so it’s leadership for saying yes, good ideas in alignment with our plans, somebody from finance helping giving you the budget numbers it’s a vice president of programs or a program director that telling you here’s what goes in that logic model form here’s what goes in your work plan for they are they might not call themselves formally ever a grand team, but they are your pre awards frantic. Then you have a post award rant. Eam might be slightly different players. That are helping to make sure grant rented the way that it was proposed. That thunder information is being shared back by a report, if there’s a need for financial building or you do a revision to a budget there helping and working with you or your grandmamma jer, if your organization has one, they’re working together for that. So again, i might not ever call themselves a grand team formally. You might not ever see it on the organ chart. They exist. Not truly a solo role to be in grant. We have to leave it there. I hope you’ll come back again because there’s a lot more to discuss and some of these topics, and we gotta leave it there. Thank you so much. You’ll find diane’s company at d h leonard consulting dot com and she is at diane h leonard again. Diane, thanks so much. Thank you so much, tony. My pleasure. Next week, very special show atlas of giving. Ceo rob mitchell announces the fund-raising results of twenty sixteen and the forecast for twenty seventeen with us will be paul schervish, america’s professor at boston college, and professor doug white from columbia, commenting on the review and the forecast. If you missed any part of today’s show, i beseech you, find it on tony martignetti dot com, responsive by pursuant online tools for small and midsize non-profits data driven and technology enabled, and by we be spelling supercool spelling bee fundraisers, we b e spelling dot com. Our creative producer is claire meyerhoff. Sam lewis is the line producer. Gavin doll is our am and fm outreach director. Shows social media is by susan chavez, and this music is by scott stein. Be with me next week for non-profit radio. Big non-profit ideas for the other ninety five percent. Go out and be great. What’s not to love about non-profit radio tony gets the best guests check this out from seth godin this’s the first revolution since tv nineteen fifty and henry ford nineteen twenty it’s the revolution of our lifetime here’s a smart, simple idea from craigslist founder craig newmark yeah insights, orn presentation or anything? People don’t really need the fancy stuff they need something which is simple and fast. When’s the best time to post on facebook facebook’s andrew noise nose at traffic is at an all time hyre on nine a m or eight pm so that’s when you should be posting your most meaningful post here’s aria finger ceo of do something dot or ge young people are not going to be involved in social change if it’s boring and they don’t see the impact of what they’re doing so you got to make it fun and applicable to these young people look so otherwise a fifteen and sixteen year old they have better things to dio they have xbox, they have tv, they have their cell phones. Me dar is the founder of idealist took two or three years for foundation staff, sort of dane toe add an email address card. It was like it was phone. This email thing is right and that’s why should i give it away? Charles best founded donors choose dot or ge. Somehow they’ve gotten in touch kind of off line as it were on dno. Two exchanges of brownies and visits and physical gift. Mark echo is the founder and ceo of eco enterprises. You may be wearing his hoodies and shirts. Tony, talk to him. Yeah, you know, i just i’m a big believer that’s not what you make in life. It sze, you know, tell you make people feel this is public radio host majora carter. Innovation is in the power of understanding that you don’t just do it. You put money on a situation expected to hell. You put money in a situation and invested and expect it to grow and savvy advice for success from eric sacristan. 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