And welcome to Tony Martignetti Nonprofit Radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95%. I’m your aptly named host and the pod father of your favorite abdominal podcast. Oh, I’m glad you’re with us. I’d bear the pain of gingival hyperplasia if I had to chew on the idea that you missed this week’s show. Here’s our associate producer, Kate with what’s on the menu? Hey, Tony, we’re serving grant’s Readiness and success. Dear, Rhonda Harrison helps you get ready to accept grants and shares strategies for successful grants, research, writing and outcomes. Also how to win grants quickly. It shouldn’t take years how to turn a one time grant into multiyear funding and her recommendations for grant research platforms. Deanda is the president of June 1st firm on Tony. Seek to a special listener of the week were sponsored by donor box, outdated donation forms, blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor box.org here is grant’s Readiness and Success. It’s a pleasure to welcome De Rhonda Harrison to nonprofit radio for her first appearance. She is the founder and president of June 1st firm, a grant writing firm specializing in funding for housing, health care and workforce education. She’s responsible for awards totaling more than $45 million a member of the Grant Professionals Association. She served as Georgia chapter president for two years. Our company is at June first.com and you’ll find Deronda on linkedin Deronda. Welcome to nonprofit radio. Hi, welcome. Thank you, Tony for having me. It’s a pleasure. Glad you’re with us to talk about grants, the some basics of grants, some uh pro tips on grants. Talk about just uh why is, why is June 1st firm? Uh What uh I’m sure June 1st is a deadline type. Is that why June 1st? Is that why I pick the name? Yeah, I picked the name is actually my birthday. My birthday is on June 1st. Um and grants are driven by deadline. So that is actually a good, a good guess. But yeah, I just use my, my birthday as a business name and stuck with it for, for all these years. I love it. That’s very, it’s very personal, unique, excellent um uh listeners. I want to explain that uh associate producer, Kate and I had to record together uh before I learned the proper pronunciation of de Rhoda’s name. So you’ll hear Kate uh saying dear Rhoda. Uh That’s because nonprofit radio has a lackluster host, Miss guessed on how to pronounce uh Du Rhonda’s name. So that’s the explanation for that. You can blame it on me as much as I like to blame the associate producer. This one is not on her. This one is my own doing. Uh So Deronda, let’s, let’s just start, you have a grant ready checklist that I’d like to start our conversation with. What do, what do uh small and mid size nonprofits need to have in place to be uh grant ready? Yeah. So, um it’s actually on my website and I’m happy to send it and share it with you to share with listeners. But a lot of times people are ready to dive into grants. They’ll say I have my 501 C three. They got it yesterday and they’re ready to apply for grants. And I’m like, well, there’s a little few more steps that you need to take. So I have what I call a grant ready checks, checklist. A lot of other grant writers have them too just to give people a full overview of what a lot of proposals are asking for. Like, do you need to have a board list? You need to have like bios of your senior staff and a list of um a lot of your critical, you know, um financials and items and things like that. So we put together a list over the years and just what I’ve seen, especially doing a lot of federal grants, what’s required. So you can kinda have an idea of what, what you need to have in front of you to be ready to? Ok, so le let, let’s go into more detail. Besides your, you need to have your 501 C three, you need to have your board list. Uh What, what before we tick off more items? What about financials? What, what do you need uh assets and liabilities or a budget or what, what do you need? Yes, definitely an organizational budget. So what is the revenue that’s coming for your organization? Line items for each and what are your expenses? Of course, line items for each. So your organizational budget that total, that’s pretty much acts in probably 90% of grants. They’ll act specifically for your org budget. Um As your organization grows your financial audit. So um having a third party conduct an audit of your organization that’s done every year. Again, majority of your foundations and corporate grants are asking for financial audits. Um If you don’t have an audit, sometimes you can replace that with just your 990 year tax form. Um I’ve been seeing more now like the demographics, not just the board list like, but the demographics of your board like, what is that? Is that makeup of their ethnicity? Gender? Um Cause I wanna see that your board is a reflection of like the clients that you serve. So I’m seeing like more of those type of things, but I, you know, financials as stated, I’m looking at the list because I always don’t think of anything else you can cheat. That’s right. I don’t want you to back on the what? Oh, a list of funding sources. Like they’ll typically ask that a lot of banks wanna know that because they like to see who, what, like a lot of, you know, banks are competitive so they want to see who else is funding your organization. So a list of your other funding sources, that’s something that sometimes will come up. I tell people just go ahead start putting those things together. Um De I statements. Does your organization have ad E I statement? I mean, it’s just not, you know, on your website. That’s ok, but just sharing that as well. Um Strategic plan annual reports. So all those type of things that your organization needs to kind of have together if you work with a number of organizations where you do partnerships, very close partner partnerships, mo US or memorandum of, of understanding. Um Those are really big for a lot of federal grants. You need to have some mo US in place. So you can um submit those with your application. Interesting that they’re asking about the demographics of board members. I see that a lot with bank applications um like your wells and your Bank of America’s. Uh well, who else have I applied to? Like some of your banks that have the foundation arm, they d they, you know, for the most part, ask a lot about demographics. Oh, is it not so common with the private foundations. Not so much. Um, but more of your corporate corporate organizations. Ok. All right. That’s interesting. I would, I, I would have hoped that private foundations would be interested in diversity on the board also. They’re getting there but it’s more, much more prevalent with, like, your corporations. Ok. Anything else to be grants ready? Yeah. What else is on my list? Those are like the big ones. Um, oh, your organizational chart, like how people reporting to, of course, executive director being the head. Well, technically the board is in charge but your organizational staff and structure not just list all we have 30 staff members, but what is the, the set up the chart for that? How, who reports to whom and things like that? Um If you have multiple locations, a list of all of your sites and locations and their addresses and where they’re located. Um I’ve seen that providing a list of your physical locations. If you’re like a housing provider, you have multiple housing sites just having all that in one place. Where is everything located? So it’s interesting, you know, you had given the hypothetical like, you know, we got our 501 C three approval yesterday. All right. But you know, you don’t have a year of financials even to be, to be audited yet or you don’t even have any, any basis to have filed a 990 yet. So you, you’ve got to have been a nonprofit for, uh, I guess at least a year or a couple of a couple, 12 years where you’re gonna be eligible, uh, you meet the, meet the basic criteria it sounds like. And what I’m finding is a lot of people are, have been doing the work for some years or months or whatever that looks like. And then they, you know, get their paperwork where they’re officially a 501 C three. So they may have proof of concept if you will program information. Um but just having uh the financials is very critical. A lot of people use fiscal sponsors or something that people may not be aware of. But you can definitely have another agency apply for a grant on behalf of your nonprofit. And they are like the represent the representative of your organization. And you can, um there are some organizations that’s their business model. They operate like fiscal sponsors for other nonprofits and of course, the setup and all the different things are different, but that’s an option as well. And a lot of community foundations will do that. Yes, they act as fiscal sponsors to support your smaller nonprofits, smaller and younger. Ok, good point. Thank you. Um What, so we cover and we exhausted the, the grants ready checklist. I think. So. Overview. But yeah, definitely happy to share with anyone that wants to. Well, you just gave us the substance of it and it’s also at your site, June 1st fm.com. Uh, what if we, uh, well, let you know what, let’s start with the, the research because it’s important that you not be just throwing grants into the wind and without regard to what the, the foundation’s funding priorities are. So, let’s start with research. How important that is. Yes, it’s very, a lot of people will hire grant writer to conduct research just to find some organizations that they can apply to some foundations. Some corporations, maybe even some state funding opportunities, but they’ll just go and just do a general. These are all the opportunities that are out there where your research would be much more targeted specifically if you’re smaller nonprofit, mid-sized, um or younger nonprofit, there are funders who have a history of giving to like your size nonprofits. So your research should entail that it needs to include funders who have a history of giving to organizations with your same makeup, not just the program and services that you provide, but your same size. And um that’s so critical. And I feel like a lot of, a lot of times people miss that say, well, the big food bank is funded by this organization, but they typically do not fund smaller nonprofits. These certain, there are certain foundations and corporations that fund smaller nonprofits like community foundations. Some of your smaller local foundations may um fund smaller nonprofits, there’s even some bigger nonprofits or even being more intentional with having programs to fund um some of your uh emerging nonprofits. So that’s why I say your research needs to be very tailored and targeted. And um it shouldn’t be a list of hundreds of people that give, it should just be a very targeted list. I always say about 20 or 30 but it’s a very strong list where you should yield a good return on your investment and time. Yeah. Yeah. All your, all your resources you’re putting into this because it is time consuming as, as we’ll get into. Um, you make a very good point about uh not just researching programmatic funding priorities but type size, size of nonprofit or a number of years. You know, if you’re brand new and they’re only funding, you’re looking at a potential prospect that’s only funding established, like you said, established Food Bank, you know, you’re brand new. That, that sounds like a misalignment. So um ok. Um And what are some of the research sites that you use that you recommend? Yeah, I use research. People always ask, are there free ones out there? There are? But you have to kind of like piecemeal things together. Um But the ones that are paid that have everything in one place or like your candid or used to be foundation directory, I use that. I’ve been using it for many years. I’m just the most comfortable with it and it’s very robust and it brings everything up together. Um What you’re looking for, you can s um segment out your search. I really like it and then instrumental is a really good one as well. Um You can even uh segment out your search with instrumental to see like who has a history of giving to new funders. I mean, new organizations. So they’ll show like a percentage of the organizations that are renewing with them and the percentage that are brand new. I think that’s a very critical, you know, thing if it’s like less than 10 or even like 1% of brand new organizations that they fund, you know, it just may not be worth your time and energy. So, yeah, so I think that’s Curto. So those are some of my favorite. I really like instrumental and I like um Candid. Candid. OK. Uh What are some of the free ones that, you know, if we’re just dipping our toe in? You know, you, I know you said they’re not as good because you have to piece things together. But can you explain, share one or two of those and that is what is it? Explain what it is? You got to piece together? Yeah. So like, I mean, you can do, I’m signing for list serves a lot of people do that. Um So like your philanthropy news digest, um it’s free. You can just get, you can uh put in your program like if you wanna search education, they’ll send you all the upcoming education opportunities but it’s across the entire nation. Um, and then you could just see what’s upcoming, um, in K 12 education. Um, all the different segments. Uh, so many days you can break them down housing, um, environmental things like that. So, that’s a good one. you’ll get those email letters that will come directly to you and you can just check out and see what’s out there. Um, there are some more, that one was philanthropy News Digest. Yes. Yeah. PND. Yeah, we call it PND. And then um some other like maybe other free resources is looking for list service in your community, like with your state, if you’re, I’m in the state of Georgia. So signing up for opportunities that come through grant funding programs through your state, most states is your state.gov and seeing what grant opportunities are out there. So it’s a lot more um piece milling that you’ll have to do. But there are some like lower costs research tools like grant station um that you can check out as well. A lot of times when you’re part of like a membership organization, I know uh grant professionals um association or GPA if you’re a member of their um of that organization, grant station comes with the membership. Um I think Maryland nonprofits, I believe they have a free um the one of the benefit for being a member is like access to one of their research tools. So a lot of times people are already a part of these organizations and they’re just not taking advantage of those free free tools. What’s Grant Station about? What can you get there? Same thing. Um You can find locate funders that give to your programs and services. Like, like PND, you have to, you have to do more of the station is a real research tool. It’s not one that you necessarily have to piece meal. I just find that, um, Candid and like instrument are a little bit more robust than Grant Station. Um And neither Candid nor instrumental has a free version. They’re very expensive. Yeah. Ok. That’s what I’m trying to drill down. All right. Is Grant Station, is Grant Station less expensive than it is. It is. I don’t know off the top of my head, but it’s not as expensive as those other two. Yeah. Ok. All right. So just give, give them folks options. I understand. The premier is Candid and Instrumental. I remember when Candid was the foundation directory when it was, when it was the foundation center before it merged with Guidestar Found Center and Guidestar merged to form Candid. And pardon me, go ahead. Sorry. No, I was just saying that just happened a few years ago. Um Now when I was a foundation director, I remember you used to be able to go to um the affiliate libraries throughout the country and you could use the foundation directory for free, you know, in person you had to go to the, but they had a, they had, I think a couple of 100 affiliate libraries around the country and there was somebody who at that library was trained in foundation directory. So they would actually help you get started, help you with some, some of your early searches. Uh, but I don’t know that anymore. Yeah. And I’ve heard people say that it’s still the case. Honestly. I have not done that since prior to COVID. So I think that’s still an option. Um And because if you’re, especially if you’re in the metro area, definitely check out your local library. Get to your, to Tony’s point is you can definitely go to the library and pull up your research and take it back with you. Um And there’s typically like you said, someone trained there to assist you as well. Cool. All right. So maybe they’re still doing that. So, yeah, see if, see if you have, you can get free candid access uh in a local library because there, there used to be hundreds of them throughout the country. It wasn’t just like in, you know, 10 or 15. So. All right. All right, China give people uh resources. It’s time for a break. Imagine a fundraising partner that not only helps you raise more money but also supports you in retaining your donors, a partner that helps you raise funds both online and on location. So you can grow your impact faster that’s donor box, a comprehensive suite of tools, services and resources that gives fundraisers just like you a custom solution to tackle your unique challenges, helping you achieve the growth and sustainability, your organization needs, helping you help others visit donor box.org to learn more now, back to grants readiness and success. All right. So we now we have our list of you said like 20 or 30 or so. What if some of them say we don’t accept unsolicited proposals, you know, proposal by invitation only, something like that. You have a, you have a strategy for uh maybe getting around that or getting ahead of that. Yeah. Um What happens is a lot of times people like hone in on those for some reason for some odd reason when there are so many other organizations that don’t say that, especially when you’re just getting started. Don’t spend your time, energy and effort on those when they’re not, when they, you know, explicitly state that there are so many other opportunities that are out there and that are available. But of course, if those come up and you’re just like we’re a perfect fit. I always tell people to reach out to them. Of course, people will tell you, see if you have a contact, see if a board member knows someone, if someone can make an introduction for you. And yes to all of that, but I’m OK with sending out outreach on them during my research. I looked to see who the trustees are, who’s on their board of directors list and see where they work. And I find an email and I just introduce them to the organization. I help the nonprofits write up a what I call a email of impact to show them like the impact that they’re making in the organization and in their region, in the community that the funder is interested in and just see if we can have like a conversation. But um always see, of course, spend most of your time on the organizations that don’t have those limitations. And um but if you want to definitely reach out to those that state that I just say, send, send them a request, do you sometimes see that you, you get, you get some traction and you know that even though their policy is no unsolicited proposals, they’ll, they’ll still end up opening a conversation with you. Yeah, sometimes. Yes, sometimes. No. Um So I always tell people just let them tell you no, but give it a try. Um It seems to work pretty often. I it’s a certain things that you need to put in your email is not give us money or how can we get money from you? Of course, you want to really highlight your work, how it directly ties into what their interest is at the organization with the funder. So if you wanna write a, a message of impact an email that short and sweet people aren’t gonna read pages and pages of an email. So I always say like a three or four sentence email, highlight your impact needs to come. I always say, I believe it needs to come from the executive director to show them, you know that you have done your research and that you are interested in really having a conversation with them. And I really hope organizations draft that. Ok? And you probably also want to acknowledge, you know, I understand your policy is no unsolicited proposals just to show that you, you’ve done the basic research, you know, their policy. But, you know, uh I, I thought I would reach out nonetheless because I think, you know, we’re doing, you know, very impactful work in the community. We would like to, yeah, we would like to know how we could partner with you. I would love to learn more. Just we, we would even like to have a conversation to determine if it’s a good fit. If it’s not. That’s OK. So, yeah. OK. All right. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn’t. But OK. All right. So the place you want to spend most of your time is not on those uh the unfriendly ones or I’m calling unfriendly ones, the unwelcoming ones, but all the others. Um Let’s talk about the importance of when you just at the outset, you know, following deadlines, following directions, page length, font size, sometimes emp emphasize all the, all that please. Yeah. And even going back to the point of the email, not really asking questions or addressing things or even if you get a phone call, not restating things that are already on their website asking, you know, thoughtful questions showing that you’ve done your research. Um And if there is something on their website that you’ve seen or you have questions about or you see what that type of programs and stuff that they serve, you may wanna just drill down or get more um, information about that. That’s ok. But definitely following directions. That’s very critical to being a grant writer, being a grant professional. If they ask for 10 pages, don’t send them 12. If they ask for a certain font, stick to the font that they’re requesting um even page, not just page limit but margins. What should be your spacing and things like that? A lot of times people miss a lot of those things, but I always say you look over it, have somebody else read the RFP to see what is required. So you can make sure that you meet all their requirements. Because if you don’t meet these basic requirements, they could just bounce you without even reading your thoughtful application, right? You gave 12 pages and the limit was 10, right? Isn’t, isn’t that a very good chance that they’re just not even going to read it and you wasted all your time and you didn’t even get a read. Yeah. And I’ve seen even some foundations say send us this only don’t send us anything extra. Like some people are like, well, let’s, let’s send them our annual report. You know, they didn’t ask for your annual report because again, they’re getting so, so much information and so much material, they’re not trying to be mean, they just want what they need to make a decision and of course, if they need any additional information, they’ll definitely follow up. But some people are so proud of their annual report and they wanna just blast it out to everybody. Um Even when they apply for grants, but if they didn’t ask for it, don’t send it. All right. So, and thank you, let’s, let’s drill down a little deeper, you know, and strategies for successful grant writing because now we’ve got our list and we know what all the requirements are for each of the individual applications and the timing, right? You got, of course, you got to meet the deadlines. Uh What are, what are some like pro tips for for you? You’re never gonna guarantee success. But, but giving you the best shot. Yeah, I always say answering the question, like sometimes people see the question and they put something in there that they feel they should share. But specifically, when their grant is asking you, how do you implement your project or program, how are you sustaining your work at your organization? Really answering the question Um I see, I’ve not only written grants but a reviewer seeing that people spend a lot of time energy and effort on other things that weren’t asked. So um you’ll hear a lot of people like, well, we only have so many words or so many characters to answer the question. Um How do we do that? And I always say because they want you to answer the question. So that’s always been my pro tip with um grant writing is making sure that you answer the question and the tip to that is whatever the question is, restate that in your application and start your application, start your answer with that, that that question and answer the question. Even a lot of the questions will have three or four questions really in one question. And one of my tricks is I take each question, I put it in my answer and I make sure I address it. And then of course, you know, I can delete the question out later but really making sure that you answer what’s being requested from you. OK. How about another one? Um Some of the pro tips I would say, of course, we talked about following directions, we talked about answering um the questions and a lot of times sometimes as grant writer, we kind of feel forced sometimes to make our program fit. So they’re saying they’re funding capacity building or, or they may be funding, funding other like items, but yours isn’t what you’re requesting. It truly isn’t a good fit and you kinda know that don’t try to force it. So we don’t wanna force a square peg into a round hole. We wanna make sure that it’s a good alignment, make sure that it’s a good fit. Um, if they state they don’t fund arts program or recreational, don’t try to make it fit. It was like, well, really, we do education when you always known and you’re known for art programming. So again, just making sure that it’s true alignment, unless the funder has told you differently, like we wanna fund your program, you can apply under this certain category. But if you haven’t given those, if you haven’t been given those instructions or directions, then don’t try to make it, make it work. You said you were a reviewer, what, what uh share that side of the, the this whole process because you know that that’s being on the reading side, the reviewing side, what’s, what, what’s that work? Like? What, what’s like, what’s going through your mind as you’re, as you’re reading an application? Yeah, being a reviewer. Um I did that earlier in my career, show me how some um grants or some organizations responded very well to applications. They wrote stellar proposals. It was easy to make a sale in the case of funds them. And then there was something they were really, really, really, really bad. So it really showed me like what is the ones that stood out to me? Why they stood out to me is because they got to the point when they um addressed the RFP that the organization showed that they were stable, it showed that they knew what they were talking about. It shows that they were um confident if you, if you will and the work that they were doing and the delivery, they showed outcomes and the impact that they were making. Those were the or the, the applications that stood out. So those are like things that kinda, I always keep in my head when, as I’m writing, but those that were not good, that were really bad. It just didn’t address anything that weren’t necessarily a good fit or they talked about their program in a way that it wasn’t understood like very um like if it was an art program, it was very, you could tell an artsy person wrote the grant to be no, no, no offense to my art people. But it was very, um it wasn’t just written in plain, plain language. And that’s another thing too. Sometimes we can use big words. But when we’re looking, you know, we’re all, you know, smart people. But when you’re looking at several applications and all these big words come at you and through an application, it kinda makes your eyes cross always um write what I like, how I would like to read. So it’s always very easy general language, I try to say like on 1/5 grade level, 3rd, 4th, 5th grade level, keeping it easy, simple to understand. Cause of re when you’re reviewing, you review multiple application and you want to help them get through it as quickly as possible. When you may keep the reviewer happy, they’ll score your application high and that increases your chances of getting the grant. So that taught me that on that side and I encourage any grant grant writer to be a reviewer. So you were a program officer. Uh It sounds like, well, I just like they have to have volunteers to like community foundation, these volunteers to review grant applications. So you can just volunteer, your department of Education needs uh reviewers to review applications. So you can just definitely volunteer. And then when a reviewer or, or even a program officer, I think in, in in private foundations likes likes a proposal thinks that it merits funding to walk us through the process because you, because I think your job as a grants writer, I don’t mean you, you know all of us as grants writer, our job is to help the the reader or the program officer to like our application and then be an advocate for it. So talk about, talk about that process on the on the funding side. How that, how, how, how, what, what the next step is for that reader or that program officer when they like something. Yeah. When they like something, um, to my point earlier, they are like, they understand your programming. If they get done reading your, even if it’s just like a short lo I three or four pages or two pages and they’re still think the information was there. But it may have been like a lot of questions that came up. Like, how is that? L O I now, I have to stop. I just want to say loi I don’t want you to be in drug in jail. Oh, sorry, explain, explain uh uh explain what everybody knows what lo I is. Yeah, lo I is typically before you actually submit a full grant application, some funders ask for an LO I or a letter of intent or a letter of interest and it’s a shorter grant application which is about 23 pages, maybe four and it’s literally like a letter, you know, you have your introduction page or a cover page and then you go into your um summing up your programming services. So um that’s typically an introduction. I always say it’s like an introduction to your program before you get in that invitation to apply, which we were talking about earlier. OK. Thank you. You’re out of Jargon jail. So that I know that’s what I just want listeners to get it all. So. Alright, so I interrupted you with the Jargon Jail, but you were talking about what, what, what that read or program officer is going to do if they like an application or an lo I, yeah. And, uh, for the most part I haven’t been an official program officer but just like, speaking from my reviewer, like, you know, you know, how they work and honestly, yeah, with foundational corporations it’s typically like a relationship. They need to, you know, at least have heard of your organization. Um, they’re not gonna tell you that but that’s the truth. Um And of course your um application needs to be um uh a good, a good application it addresses, I mean, I’ve seen some very well written applications, they didn’t get funded and then some that were not because they had a relationship that were funded. So more on your corporate and foundation is more about relationship. Government is addressing all the elements within the application within the RFP. So government is, you know how you’re gonna be scored, they show you how, what, how many, um how many points each section is, is going to receive. Um And I really like that cause I go into the proposal knowing what we want to highlight and make sure they score really well and they tell you exactly what that is. So you always say you wanna get in the mind of the reviewer and look at the, how they’re evaluating that application. And then in the case of a program officer in a, in a foundation, they’re going on to be an advocate for your for your proposal, right? To the, to their, their, uh, their supervisor or maybe the board depending on the size, right? So, you’re, you’re trying to help them be an advocate for you? Yes, that’s correct. So, um, a lot of times they’ll say this application was so, you know, clear, it was easy to understand you address all the bullet points. So it was easy. I’ve heard them say it was easy for me to advocate for your organization because you all did such a great job in your application and the great job means you address the thing that they asked you for. And it was easy to understand. And sometimes we think what we’re saying is clear and easy to understand and we know our program. So I that’s why I always encourage people have another set of eyes, someone that’s outside of your organization, someone that’s not close to read it. Cause a lot of times you think what you’re saying makes sense, but it may not just to a general audience. So I always, I highly encourage people to have someone else read over their programming services or get a quality um writer or grant writer to put you together some boilerplate language, what you can use in a lot of your, you know, applications moving forward if you um don’t have the capacity or the funds to bring on someone on a like monthly basis, look into bringing on like a potential like putting together boilerplate language for your organization, something that you can just copy and paste over. You may have to tweak it a little bit, of course, from application to application. But bringing in like those outside set of eyes and a professional to write your programming and services because you have assumptions about the work that you do, you do it day in and day out and you understand it uh intimately and you’re written proposal may have gaps that are based on something you understand and everybody who works for you understands. But that’s to your point, you know, get somebody from outside the organization, make sure your application makes sense. Tells a story. OK? What if you have something that’s hard to measure the impact of like maybe it is an arts program or even even, you know, some, some grassroots service, you know that you’re providing, whether it’s domestic violence or housing, you know, the, the outcomes can be hard to track the impact. Well, there’s outcomes and impact the impact on people’s lives can be hard to track. You might lose track of them after they, after they are no longer receiving your service. How do you answer those impact questions that are inevitably going to be on an application? Yeah, that’s a, a very popular question. I always tell people it’s not hard to track any impact. Anything. You have observations, you have anecdotal um observations. You can definitely address that and you’re not tracking people, once they’re gone, you’re tracking them while they’re in your program. So, if your program is a year, what ha what is, um taking place after three months, what’s taking place after six months? So you’re collecting all this information on a consistent basis. And that’s where a lot of nonprofits struggle with. They’re just doing the work and not evaluating the programming, getting feedback. The feedback is critical surveys for participants. Um Of course, they can be anonymous and getting their feedback on how this program is making a difference. And of course, you have those specific questions and I’m not an evaluator. I can’t give you questions off the top of my head. But there are um your uh evaluator or strategist that will help you come up with questions to put on your surveys to help you get that information because you need to be collecting this while people are in your program. And of course, once they leave, if you can um get collect information to see what the impact like a year later, um you can just say so many people that out of 30 people that we serve, about half of them responded and they self reported these items. This is what the impact that they they’re showing. Of course, that’s all you can, you know, collect once they’re no longer in your program or things like that. But there’s always something that you can highlight. There’s always impact that you can make even with, you know, art programming, you can tie that a lot of times, especially if you’re working with students to education, with adults, how that is improving their confidence. They’re even going into job interviews. Um Being a part of this program has increased their um their self-confidence and their self worth. So you can definitely collect impact information. A lot of it may be a bit subjective, but even if it is, that’s still, that’s still data. OK. Valuable. It’s time for Tony’s take two. Thank you, Kate. A very special Tony’s take two. This week we have a listener of the week who have, I never had a live listener of the week. I’ve always just announced who they are. But this listener of the week is with me, we inspired her to start her own podcast, not a nonprofit podcast, of course, because if it was a nonprofit podcast, we wouldn’t even be talking about this. And it’s someone who is a dear friend. I have known her since 1984 when I was in the air force with her husband. Her name is Martha Shoals. Please welcome. Here’s Martha Scholls our listener of the week. Welcome, Martha. Thank you, Tony. Here. I am the other 2%. 30 percent. No, no, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re a frequent listener of the show and you told me that listening to nonprofit radio through all these years, um, inspired you to start your own podcast. So tell tell us about your, your practice and your podcast. Well, I am a life coach and, um, I li have listened to you for years and it’s like talking to a, to a friend. It’s like you’re right there. But the information that nonprofit radio gives out goes beyond nonprofit and it really, uh, I have having my own business and that this podcast that you are the pod father of reaches a lot of people. And so it is a platform that I felt ready to, to tackle. So you have inspired and trained. Well. Congratulations. So your, your podcast is the connected heart and you have a co-host, I do and you have four episodes so far, right? And all right, you’re the target of 10. All right. That’s I got carried away. Now. Don’t get, don’t get overly ambitious. Ok. No, you’ll get, you know, soon enough, you’ll have 50 then 100 you’ll see, you’ll see it comes together. So, uh I wanted you to be the listener of the week because first of all, I’m a guest in your home. So, if I didn’t make you listener of the week, I might have, might have had to get a hotel in San Antonio where I would have made you pay well, I would have got a hotel before I paid you. Uh I’d rather be at a Marriott than, than paying you. So, uh yeah. So you, you shared with me on this visit that, uh, nonprofit radio inspired you to the Connected Heart Podcast. And, uh, I shared some advice with you and, uh, I wish you and the Connected Heart Podcast. Lots of luck in your, in your life coaching practice. And, uh, and in the podcast. Thank you, friend. All right. Thank you, friend. Thank you. Thank you for letting me stay. It’s a pleasure to see you after several, many years, we’ve been, we chat a lot, but I haven’t actually seen you for like eight or 10 years to Martha Scholls our listener of the week. That is Tony’s take two. Ok. Well, it’s nice that and thank you for giving my uncle a place to stay. I’m sure he’s difficult, you know. All right. Let’s not a lot of people getting carried away now. Difficult. I think I’m an ideal guest. You’d be, you’d be amazed what a good guest. I am low. I call myself the low impact guest. I would say high maintenance, but that’s just me knowing you all my life. All right. You don’t. All right. And, uh, Ted and Martha, Ted is Martha’s husband. Uh, both say want you to say hello to, uh, to your dad. I, I will, I will. Ok. Well, we’ve got buu but loads more time. Here’s the rest of grant’s readiness and success with dear Rhonda Harrison. Do you have some advice on, uh, on winning grants quickly? You know, you say it shouldn’t take years. What what, what’s in, what’s in there? Yeah, I’ve even heard grant writers, like, I’ve been writing for this organization as a volunteer for over a year and I haven’t won that many grants and I was like, well, that’s probably the reason why, um, you’re volunteering your own. That’s the wrong question. Yeah. So, um, but yeah, it shouldn’t take, I would say it shouldn’t take a year, especially if you’re submitting grants on a ground. Of course, you just submit two grants in one year. Ok. Yeah, but if you’re submitting grants on a consistent basis and then a consistent basis is like two or three grants per month, I, I think that’s a lot. Um There’s some like a larger organizations that are doing five plus grants that’s like uh actual application and report some months just depending on deadlines, sometimes how they fall. I worked in an organization one time we had eight actual projects in one month, one month, it was 10. I mean, that’s a lot that’s excessive. Some months, the deadlines just fall like that. And then some months you may only have about two or three. But I say you’re submitting about two or three grand applications over a year. You should have won something like I would say at least about 30%. So you wanna make sure that it just shows that you’re not positioning the organization in the limelight or you’re not applying to or to funders that have a history of giving to nonprofits of your um nonprofits like yours or you may not be doing any cultivation. I don’t encourage any of my clients when they work with me. We don’t submit code applications. We always try to do what I call a warm up, which is back to those warm up emails. We cultivate the client to cultivate the funder um try to introduce them to our organization. So when we submit a grant, that’s not the first time that they hear about us. So it shouldn’t take you that long. That just means you’re missing critical components when applying for grants. And a lot of times it’s cultivation, say more about that cultivation. It sounds like you’re trying to, you’re, you’re building relationships before you’re submitting an application. So you’ve identified that you’re 20 or 30 but you’re not, you’re not going right to OK. What’s their, what’s their deadline? Talk about the cultivation relationship building part. Yeah, you definitely want to reach out to a lot of the foundations, especially if you have like I use what I say, candy list all the trustees. That’s why I love candy so much. It list the trustees. It list the board and I am with all the tools and resources we have on the internet. Now, you can find where they are and if they don’t have their contact information on there, find out where they work and reach out to them to um introduce them to your organization, invite them to have a conversation with your executive director. If they’re local meet for um have a meeting, meeting in person, invite them to your nonprofit. If it’s like a programmatic, you’re serving students. A lot of times, some people’s work, a lot of the times people’s work speaks for itself, getting people out there to see what you’re doing and the impact that you’re making, um it can speak for itself. So just asking people to come out invitations, inviting them to events that you’re having, where you’re showcasing the talent or showcasing the students showcasing the work that they’re doing. Um I always encourage people just to act, I mean, they say no, they, that’s ok but just ask, ask the question. So just like how you will cultivate, meeting a new person, making a new friend. It’s just as those same general practices, there’s nothing really different about it because it’s a for a grant. I love the idea of inviting somebody, board members or, or officers, whatever program folks to come and see the work being done. You know, if it, if it, if you’re all local and same city, you know, come, come see, you know, we’ve got, we’ve got an Adoption Day, maybe it’s a Pet Humane Society. We’ve got Adoption Day coming up, come see the excitement, you know, the kids getting their, getting their kittens and the animals going to good homes and how we screen for that and the care that we give the animal before the family leaves with them, you know, to see that, you know, I think we might take our work for granted because we’re just so accustomed to it. Like I was saying, day after day, but to an outsider it can be enormously, you know, moving. Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of nonprofits put on events, like three or four events a year. Like, that’s the thing you should be inviting your, um, constituents to. I know a lot of time we invite the people that we always invite, but also invite others as well. That may have never even heard about your organization. This is all to get the funder familiar with, at least your name, even if they never come to, they never come to any event. No, the, the, they, like you said, name recognition, they, they’ve heard of you before, the application. Exactly. They’ve heard of your organization before you submit that grant application. Ok. And you see this making a difference. It does, it makes a difference. Um, and it could just be nurturing over a year or two. You know, it may not just happen immediately but it’s um, part of all the nurturing, building relationships and building a rapport with finders. Yeah. Ok. Yeah. It, I think as you were suggesting it’s very similar to individual fundraising, right? Your first meeting, you don’t ask for a gift, you’re cultivating the person to and then developing a strategy and reaching the solicitation stage. But that’s, that’s not step one. Absolutely. Ok. That’s interesting. I’m not sure a lot of folks think about that relationship building or at least trying, at least trying with funders with institutional funders. Awesome. Awesome. Yeah. Um You uh you also have advice on turning a one year gift into multiyear funding. What’s your thinking there? Yeah, some, if you’ve been funded by an organization multiple years, instead of having to come back every single year to submit an application to benefit, not only the nonprofit, but the funder um ask them about a multiyear. So they give you 30,000 every year, 25,000 every year. Can you um ask the question, say, can we um consider a 50,000 multiyear Twoyear grant award? And we’re happy to report on that at the end of each year, every year similar to how we’ve done before, but to eliminate the administration task on, on your end, I know you all are, you know, small staff, a lot of your foundations are um we would like to see if we can enter into a multiyear a gift or a multiyear opportunity. A lot of funders have moved away from it because they, you know, they’re very uh the budgets are uncertain from year to year. But I always say, ask the question that could be something that they’re open to entering into. I’m just going back to building relationships, asking people to come out, um asking people to um, meet you, even if it’s just a virtual meet up, asking them for a multiyear um gift. It’s, these are for funders you’ve already have like that relationship with and they have a history of funding your nonprofit. Um, especially year after year. Ask them about a multiyear two year. Even if you’re bold enough, ask for a three year, they give you 30,000 every year, ask for 90,003 year gift. And that was, that’s, those are huge. We love multiyear funding. It saves a lot of time. You can do planning. Of course. Now you can do a two or three year plan around that funding program. Not just year to year. All right. So that’s good. Thats the question. Ask the question. II, I have no problem. I, you can, uh, there’s a coach. She says you need 100 nos in a year. She, she, she encourages her students to get to 100 nos and the gift in that or the beauty in that they never get to 100 nos. I actually get a more yeses because they ask the question. So I just tell people to do the same thing. Just ask. I always say with individual fundraising six nos. And you’re halfway to a Yes. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I like the 100. You get to 100 because you’ll get a lot more yeses before you get to the 100 nos. Yeah. And it’s not, they’re not rejecting, you don’t take it personal. I know what a lot of people do they like. Oh, no, they told me. No, it’s not. You. That’s just they have limited funding. Just like the nonprofits do. They only have so much money in their bucket that they can give out. It’s not that they think your program or you are terrible. It’s just, they can only do what they can with what they have. How about, uh grants.gov? You have a lot of experience there and I think it can be daunting to folks if they’re looking at their first uh federal grant. What, what, what advice do you have when you like, open the page and you’re overwhelmed. Yeah, a lot of people come to me for federal grants and they were just like, I’m not about to spend any time trying to find an opportunity. So they’ll reach out to me to do the grant research just for federal grant opportunities. Of course, everything is um in one place on grants.gov, but a lot of your states have public funding opportunities. So, um, they’re also enlisted me to locate and find state funding opportunities, um because they’ll say, well, we heard about this thing out there, this bipartisan bill that’s funding our program and services that we know that other organizations are being reimbursed for training young adults in these certain types of program. But we’re not taking advantage of that. And we know that’s a state funded opportunity. So we wanna know like what to do, how to be a part of that? Do we qualify? Do we fit? So um we could definitely um take advantage and see what opportunities are out there. But just with a quick search on grans.gov, I always tell people to go on grans.gov, create an account and put in the um search category, your area of interest. So if it’s environmental mentoring, you can be very specific as mentoring. Um try not to be so general education is so broad, but just be specific within education. If you have like a, you know, like I said, a mentoring program, um if you do things with like youth and um young adults or you serve adults that have intellectual developmental disabilities, listing those type of disabilities, whether that’s autism and things like that. So just type in autism and see what types of programs come up in grants.gov that are being funded. So be, you know, very specific. It’s, it’s possible if you just wanna start out entering one word, so you don’t feel too overwhelmed, start there and seeing what’s what’s available. And then in the federal grants process, is there advice that’s specific to that, that, that we didn’t talk about in the, in the overall grants process? Yeah, it’s very similar. Just making sure that your grant rating a lot of it for federal grants is another level of grant readiness. Like you you definitely will need to have an audit, not just a 990. Um And you wanna typically, you wanna already have um a history of winning grants, private grants. So like if you’re already bringing in, I don’t know, 255 $100,000 in your private grant funding, you wanna leverage that for your um federal grant opportunities, you typically, we may already have a grant writer on staff, but they just don’t have the capacity energy time or effort or know how to pursue federal grants. So those are just like I always say, like my checklist, quick checklist for those of organizations, like, are we ready for federal grants? So you wanna already be bringing in grants um, typically have some type of fundraiser at your organization, whether that’s a director of development or a grant person to manage the grants and you, um you definitely wanna have an audit in place. Can’t the reporting for federal grants sometimes be burdensome? Yes. And that’s a part of my, like once um organizations do work with me, that’s a part of our review process. We found this grant opportunity is a good fit. We wanna pursue it. Part of that review is the reporting and the compliance. Is it worth the time energy effort if this grant is just say 100,000, over two years, which is $200,000? Is that sounds like a lot of money? But is it gonna are we gonna spend more time and staff time doing the reporting on this grant than it would be the effort to actually apply for it. So that’s a part of that review process as well. Some, some, um, um, grants, you only have to report once a year. Some of them they want monthly reports. Court. I’ve seen them all across the board. Um, I’ve seen monthly, which is a lot. So again that those are just things to take into consideration when applying. So, yeah, that’s a great question. Sometimes they’re so burdensome that it’s not worth applying, it’s not worth it. And that’s something that organizations make the, make the determination, we determine that, um, or we’ve, we’ve gotten funding from them in the past, I’ve seen that happen. We’ve gotten funding from this organization in the past. It wasn’t worth it and we’re not going after it again. But you alluded to earlier. I wanna pull on a little bit more the, if you have difficult, uh, programs to, to fund, you know, uh, is there specific advice? I mean, beyond doing careful research? So you’re not, like you said, you’re not expanding an arts program into education when it’s really, it’s really an arts program. But if you have a difficult to, to fund program, what is there specific advice you have around that? Yeah, a lot of times people try to make grants, their thing when, um, you should be as a grant, professional like this is how I get paid. But nonprofits, every nonprofit shouldn’t be pursuing grants. The number one source of income or revenue should be individual donations. Um So you should be promoting your services in that manner and tracking your ideal, you know, funders. I know a lot of nonprofits are state or county funding. That’s where you get a lot of their money. But if you’re generally just trying to raise money for your organization, you should definitely um be pursuing individual donations, your major giver, your major, um you know, major gifts and things like that. Um And then building off of that, if you say your program is difficult, difficult to fund or difficult to explain or, or maybe is difficult to get funding from grants and grants may just may just not not be your thing and that’s ok, you definitely wanna pursue funding in other areas. And you also mentioned uh affording a grant writer or you know, what if I mean, obviously there are consultants like you who can, who can do this. Uh You also mentioned the idea of having someone write language that you can use and tailor, you know, throughout your grant writing. And then, you know, maybe every year or two, you, you just update that, that, that sounds like very good advice. You could hire somebody to just do like a discreet project for you to uh what else? How else can you leverage uh what the, the expertise that’s out there. If you can’t afford a, you know, if you can afford one, like a grant writer on a consistent basis, like every single month paying them, I say, um, you can bring them on board for uh, a smaller project. They’re gonna do the, say the next three or four grants for us and we’ll take those grants and take them moving forward. You can just hire them for a project, um hire them to develop some bowler plate language for you. Um hire them to work closely with your organization to train staff to uh pursue federal grants or, you know, just be to, to pursue grants period. So the training is an option or you can just bringing them on for like project support. I always tell um organizations to consider a training program, not just sign up for a grant training program, like a webinar uh self or like on demand, but like actually bringing someone on for a short period of time to work with you to train up your organization. They’re not gonna be doing the grants for you, but they’ll be guiding you and that helps with um keeping the cost down because the grant writer isn’t doing the those grants for your organization on behalf of your organization because of course, that, that, that costs more. Are you seeing more funders now paying for some of the overhead that goes along with the project or program that they’re funding like technology, uh, you know, maybe salary or partial salary. Are you, are you seeing a move in that direction? Like over the past five years, even just recently? I actually am. I’m seeing organizations understand it. Take staff to do this work so they understand they’re like, wow, like novel idea. But yeah, they’re funding, um, your overhead and I’m just seeing like general operating, general operating funds so you can use those funds as needed. Um, I just talked to someone who’s inquiring about services. She was like, we’re looking for more general rating that she’s like there’s more project, um, funding than there is general operating. I said actually it’s not, it’s, it’s, it’s a lot of general operating grants out there. So, um, if you’re not seeing them again, that’s because you may just not be, you’re just not because it’s not what you do and not your expertise, you may not know where to go, but there are a lot of general operating funding opportunities available. Ok. That’s very good to know. Um, and then just, you know, to sort of wrap up, what do you see as the future? What do you, where do you think, uh, grants, the institutional funding is, is headed? What do you think changes we’re gonna see? What do you expect? Yeah, a lot of trends that I’m seeing now, one of the big trends I’m seeing now is organizations funding groups or coalition. So, um I’m a nonprofit A I do this work and our clients also need this other service. It’s not what we do, but we partner very closely with nonprofit B to deliver that service to our clients. So in order for our clients to get the holistic experience and um making sure they don’t get gaps in services like they have housing, but our clients aren’t able to keep their housing because they have health check challenges. We partner with a healthcare organization, healthcare agency that specializes in serving vulne vulnerable populations, vulnerable people to get them the resources and health care services, health and wellness that they need. So, funders are funding groups or coalitions. When you go in as a group, um in a grant application, they really like that, they see their dollars being, you know, spread out more effectively, they’re seeing a greater impact. So I encourage um nonprofits to consider going into some of these grant applications instead of competing against each other. Going as you know, a group select a fiscal sponsor. I don’t know how you’re gonna do that, flip a coin, do whatever you need to do, it just increases your chances success. A lot of times people just go with whoever is the bigger organization who has the um the largest budget. But sometimes it could just be a capacity issue. If somebody has the capacity to manage the grant, I really encourage people to go into these grant applications, especially if it’s like a big multiyear funding going in as a coalition. So that’s a big one. OK. Anything else? Uh you see trend wise? Um I of course, a I is really big people taking advantage of that. Um There’s the concern of replacing grant writer. I don’t see that happening, but I can see like us being able to utilize it to enhance um the way we work. Um like leveraging A I, what that looks like. I don’t know what this is point is still kind of new we’re learning. But um that’s something definitely I can see taking advantage of learning how to utilize it ethically um to enhance the programs and services and our services that we deliver to our clients and even our nonprofits are utilizing it on their end as well. Thank you very much, De Rhonda Harrison. Thank you her firm uh that she’s founder and president is June 1st firm at June 1st firm.com. You’ll find Deronda whose name is not pronounced Deanda. That’s the, that was the Italian in me, Italian. You pronounce all the vowels. So I must be Deanda bad. Um Deronda de Rhonda Harrison. You’ll find her on linkedin. Thank you very much, Deronda. Thanks for sharing. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you, Tony. I enjoyed it. Pleasure. Next week. Your one page strategic plan with Veronica La Finna. You missed any part of this week’s show. I beseech you find it at Tony martignetti.com were sponsored by donor box. Outdated donation. Forms blocking your supporters, generosity, donor box, fast, flexible and friendly fundraising forms for your nonprofit donor. Box.org. Our creative producer is Claire Meyerhoff. I’m your associate producer, Kate Martinetti. The show social media is by Susan Chavez. Mark Silverman is our web guy and this music is by Scott Stein. Thank you for that affirmation. Scotty be with us next week for nonprofit radio. Big nonprofit ideas for the other 95% go out and be great. All right. Uh, I’d like you to record the, uh, rerecord, the, the second, uh, donor box block because you cut out a little bit. Some. Sometimes it’s fine on the recording, but since we’re not sure, just go ahead and do it again. Just, we’re sponsored by Donor Box.