Professional Nonprofit Grant Writers: When should you hire one?

in past videos I've talked about various aspects of grant writing for nonprofits where to research grants basics of how to write grants but in this video I want to tackle a topic that a couple of you have asked about which is when should you consider hiring a professional grant writer versus diying your grants yourselves I've brought in some special friends to talk about this topic so I hope that this will be an interesting one for you don't forget to give the this video a like And subscribe to my channel for more content all about social impact nonprofits social entrepreneurship and [Music] more welcome or welcome back I'm Amber Melanie Smith as I mentioned before I tackle topics on YouTube like social entrepreneurship social impact nonprofits and more I myself am a nonprofit founder and social entrepreneur and social impact YouTuber obviously and so I am excited to continue the conversations that we've been having together um I have a website founder to full time.com if you are looking for more resources on how to start a nonprofit or developing a fundraising plan check those out there and of course my newsletter for change makers is linked below if you want to subscribe to that I send out funding opportunities other tips and resources and more okay let's meet our friends with right angle they are professional grant writers and have some great tips for us let's hear what they have to say hey folks as I said in my intro I'm super excited to bring some real professional expertise into the conversation today so let's just get to know um our guest today Scott tell us a little bit more about yourself and right angle yeah happy to do it thanks Amber for having me on your uh uh castday I've listened to it a bunch of times huge fan huge fan um so yeah yeah um we'll start with me I guess um I'm a lot older than right angles so a lot of my experience in decades past has been in the urban planning and Community planning field economics uh public engagement a ton of writing um so articulating complex Concepts to different lay audiences and all that's kind of been really nice as an adject to grant writing and I have uh for decades written grants and they're usually the great big gnarly terrible kind of federal grants with our I guess kind of especially of mind is benefit cost analyses and technical stuff that you have to translate to human speak and um that's good too for big government procurement stuff but um we are super excited to have right angle um starting up we approaching the onee old Mark and uh it is actually uh majority owned by Lori Klein who could not be with us today she wasn't feeling very well and uh decided to uh get more horizontal probably a good idea um these days if you wake up with feeling with flu symtom it's actually like the best option because if it's not blue it's the covid work so I think she just got Blu or cold stuff so she'll she'll be fine but uh she decid take the high road and let me handle this today we'll see how it goes um right angle is uh really three people all of us are Grant certified um we've written a number of of grants in a short period of time like I said I've been doing it for decade so it's not really new to me uh we each kind of bring unique things to the table uh Lori uh is a marketing professional so she's her experience is really growing and positioning organizations to achieve their Highest Potential so a lot of times we'll as an adject to our grant work we'll look at your LinkedIn page and websites and other things and give you some ideas of how to make those things even a little bit better so kind of a nice again adun skill to have it's great in grant writing to be able to use all these other talents um Raven Ural is the third person she is big on environmental animals of all kinds and uh she's also a gang Buster researcher so uh we're just um thrilled to be doing this and we are I have to say this where I forget hope I won't forget later too but we're just super inspired by especially the nonprofit sector others too the for-profit and government but the nonprofit people have really this experience has motivated me again after a long uh kind of hybernation period where I was just doing things professionally as best as I could and this is really for me at least has kind of changed my life a little bit so so excited to be talking about this with you today so that's me a little about Lori and Raven and a little bit about right angle see we're should mention this we're in Raleigh North Carolina so yeah it's great to have all these different you know you You' think like marketing and all that like how is it connected to grant writing but it's so helpful to have the diverse skill set on the team because looking at a grant from all these angles can really make it way more solid yeah that's the name right um yeah I mean I'm a originally a geography major of all things with an economics minor and just um took off from there and uh all the experiences I've had I try to bring all that to Bear every time I I write and I I love writing I've written a novel I've written tons of essays and stuff and I'm just I would write if no one paid me in fact no one really does pay me to write actually plus it is something like this so um but I just love that that piece of it again it's another great just motivational factor I didn't always have before yeah you've gotta love writing if you're gonna do grant writing I think so I think it helps all right Scott so um I alluded to this a little bit but obviously people assume that professional grant writers write grants but we know that there's a lot more that goes on behind the scenes to make a grant strong to make it um competitive share more a little bit about what professional grant writers do yeah so that is the main question right because you're actually um if you hire one of these professional rant writer people um you're you know that's St resources away from something else and so when we talk about professional grant writers a couple things come to mind and just to make sure you know you you get what you want out of it and um grant writers uh need to have some experience working at least you know in the general area of your nonprofit and your interest and uh doesn't have to be specific it hardly ever is but um someone you can trust to really ramp up very quickly in your organization is is super important um professional grant writers are are certified through one or more organizations ours was uh syal works and Learn grant writing um a colleague of mine and a former life started learnning grant writing and she's fantastic and I've learned a lot I didn't know I needed to learn by going through that program and we're all certified through that we're also members of of GPA the grant professional association so little you know tips there to look for your grant writer um uh you know uh another thing is when you think about what we do um the temptation of Consulting because I've been in Consulting for a really long time is that you know throw it out oh yeah we can do that well maybe maybe not but uh grant writers tend to have some focal areas that are important to understand um I said that earlier that I've done a lot of federal and government grant writing I still do that um I've also done in years past work for nonprofits and um of different sorts um but understand that you know different um people will focus on different kinds of Grants and different kinds of grantees in their work and right angle uh does all of the above one of the things that we bring to the table again as you're looking at credentials and things like that through grant writing assistance um we maintain um subscriptions to three different um search platforms so two big products in grant writing one is prospecting where you get a some kind of funding strategy back where you have a prioritized list of of goodies to look at and Foundations and other things to think about um as possibilities to to write grants too um and the other one is assistance writing the grant itself and all those things are are very useful and the kind of almost independent utility um so yeah that's kind of what we are and and what we do we've uh you know worked with and had clients everybody from you know Nationwide um trying to sell more beans to help fight climate change uh to International um Reef rebuilding refurbishment uh refreshment all over the world's oceans we talked to very low local people doing um running writing classes for lgbtq plus populations and uh it's just all over the map a little bit in terms of the the clients we've had each one are doing such great work um you know it it's it's just mind-boggling all the people doing wonderful things um and uh you know that's kind of what our exposure has been and we try to bring the best value you can one other quick note um I know people are listening how are concerned about the levels of grant funding out there being kind of leveled off or even declining um I don't do much with New Year's resolutions I think uh try to do Year's resolutions are are things that I really enjoy I know I can do like play with a dog more or drink better beer or something like that I know I can do uh but if we have one right angle this year it's understanding alternative sources of funding not just foundations and grants but looking at Donor advised funds and individual wealthy accounts and we're really just getting started exploring those channels both those things um are good things to know about probably worthy of another podcast at some point um and are rapidly increasing Donor advised funds increase by like 50% in 2022 so a lot of the money that was being channeled maybe for traditional grants is going to other platforms now other channels so make sure you know if that's of interest to you as a nonprofit um that whoever you're talking talking to has some experience and engagement with those those tools but can greatly expand you know the realm of possibility for getting some resource so yeah I wanna I love that and I want to highlight a couple things that I heard you say um you know something that I hear a lot from folks beginning in the nonprofit space especially in the fundraising space is there's this uh external perception that um oh we'll just get everything funded with grants uh you know they just there's just this idea that nonprofits grants are like the primary funding source out there and to your point you know you've got to diversify your funding base sometimes um grants can be a great source of Revenue especially if you can find the right fit for your cause um but you know you've got to look at those individual donors earned income models Etc so you have that stability when grants aren't meeting your needs and expectations so I just wanted to highlight that no it's a great point to make to everybody that's listening I mean corporate sponsors you know and and finding people that can get in front of you know can help you get in front of corporate sponsors you know things you don't think about with grant writing necessarily I I mean I believe that it should be as much as it can be a talented One-Stop shop and um finding different ways to you know what you are defining as success and that's that's what we try to do that's a constantly evolving growing process for us and another thing you said earlier was about finding the right fit the prospecting aspect of this and I think another perception that I've heard is uh grants are somewhat one siiz fits all and we know that that's not true you know you've got to find the right fit for your mission for your geography your the values that you share with the funer um so I know that that's a majorly important aspect of this whole thing oh absolutely I mean our initial take on prospecting or funding strategy is it might be a pretty long short list of 15 or 20 opportunities and then we you get it down to one or two or three four or five at that point we start calling people and um to ensure compliance to make sure that you know um this is a good fit and just talking to people that help work the foundation work with them directly can often lead you to an idea that oh this is actually a really good fit or let as good a fit as I thought when I saw it on paper um so those things are really important communication I mean he say for a lot of things communication is just hyper important and particularly in the beginning when we work with our clients we really try to figure out who they are what they want you know identify the Salient points so that we can bring that to the opportunity search when you know if we are chosen to do the grant writing itself we want to incorporate as much you know as we can into it and so communication is Big between us and the grante te but it's also should be big between us and the grant tour you know the foundation whatever it is that's providing you with a corporate sponsor whatever Channel you're looking at um you know all that stuff is super important and it's it's what makes the difference I mean we've all experiences applying the shotgun approach for jobs sending out a 100 resumés not hearing anything back and then so and so our buddy from you College whatever says oh our company has a new opening and you apply and magically you get it uh it's because you had somebody in your corner you know it's had somebody that has that connectivity and um that is all just a c communication yeah so helpful all right so we know every nonprofit is different and I just want to hear a little bit more from you about what are some situations in which it might be ideal for nonprofit to hire an outside grant writer versus try to bootstrap or DIY the grant writing themselves sure and that's another excellent question I mean people the first thing they'll go to I think mentally is you know resource allocation do I actually have the dollars to do this and you know our pricing is pretty flexible there's things we can add or subtract or ways that we can work with our clients because some of the most inspiring things at nonprofits out there are the ones that are relatively new necessarily have a budget you know to pursue a thing which isn't guaranteed you know there's no guarantees in life generally and there's certainly not in in Grand applications so um we get it I but I think the most direct obvious answer is maybe best start do an analogy right so you went to school to do something and you finally figure out hopefully what is really wanted to do and you focused on that I want to be a piano player I want to be an urban planner I want to be a grandma whatever the things and you do all these classes and you talk to people and you do an internship whatever the thing is you spend years at it and then you get out there and you find out one of the keys to success is nothing to do with what you learn it's actually writing and doing grants and researching this stuff online and computers and other icky stuff like that um what we tell people the first our only pitch is that you are doing what you want to do with your nonprofit because that's what you think is valuable that's what you to be doing um you don't want to be all this you know prospecting and and shaking bushes and things you would much rather police all the people I've talked to much rather be doing what you you want to do and and and work to benefit the communities you're serving and that's what big reason I think that you would ever consider spending money on these people um us people and um it's it's valuable um you know it's it's something that um I think people have to come to because they're so used to especially with smaller nonprofits doing everything themselves like you said bootstrapping it's a great great term and getting to the point where you can liberate yourself a little bit and just even see just do it one time one time I got um clothes tailor made I didn't want to do it because I wanted fancy clothes I just wanted the experience of someone going through that with me and understanding than it was I hardly ever I think it was a suit I hardly ever wear that suit anymore they may bury in me that's proba only time I get to wear but I really enjoy that little process of you know someone tailoring that thing for me and seeing what they thought about as they're going through about that that's the right color this pattern goes with this this is how you do your sleev all that stuff is really cool because when you watch a grant writer do it you may pick up a lot of things that aren't in a contract about how you research things about how you define good fit uh between the all the different and there are thousands and thousands of potential granting agencies and your own um you know what's the right link for this how do they do their writing what voice do they use yeah you know all these things if you really are observant you can pick a great amount of information so maybe just doing it once and seeing you know getting the value from it that way um and those things are are kind of cool too they all kind of help create kind of an experiential benefit to the nonprofit and the staff there so um hopefully you know so when we work with nonprofits we try to be very open trans ER because we're kind of the business of teaching and learning from them at the same time and so um I have all these years of experience all these different things they have years of experience doing what they do and what works great what's really magical the the thing you're trying to Def find the secret sauce is when that communication happens kind of organically and you discover things um together that neither one of you would have figured out on your own and there the over and over again we've had these kind of epiphanies happen with with our clients I think they have to yeah I've talked about in past videos this idea of opportunity cost you know sometimes it's just more valuable and efficient to pay for like someone who's an expert in something to do it for you than to spend a significantly more amount of try time trying to figure it out yourself um and I've talked about in videos where I talk about some of my past regrets or mistakes running a nonprofit one of them is trying to do it all myself because looking back it just would have been faster and better if IID relied on the people who were very skilled in that and leaned into my own strengths in other areas oh absolutely and you know no judgment here on my part I am the worst because I really think in my head I can do just about anything probably why um if I really put my mind to it but you know that unfortunately as you begin to grow and evolve in the organization is really detal to what you're trying to accomplish unfortunately and it's hard to say that sometimes or certainly hard to come to that level of maturity um but that maturation process is critical because you'll just Plateau out you won't even know it your organization will Plateau out in terms of the number of people and communities that can impact and you'll go why did that happen why didn't we grow in 2023 well it's a pretty good reason is that you you know you were reluctant to expend the resource to you know reach out to more poten poal Partners or work with a you know Grant run whatever the thing is um and understanding that being want to take the step back in that perspective again it does require honestly some some maturity to get to that point but I think when that happens I think again it's a huge light bulb goes off and I think people understand that they can spend more time doing what they want to do and have these other people that you know spent a lot of time learning and getting certified all those things all that experience they have and bring that to your table you know for relatively you know low cost I mean you got to value your own time too right I mean it's easy to talk about contract cost but hey your time's worth something too I mean um you used had this uh conversation uh with a partner I used to have and I'd say you know my time is worth something too I could and I did building my own deck house but you know my time is worth something too um uh and so value your own time um just make that slide adjustment today do it today everybody listening value your own time what's it 15 an hour 20 an hour okay 20 an hour say that math is easy um so how long will it take you to do the grant well we say it's competitive Grant usually around at least 30 to 40 hours honestly to to get to that point where you're ready to hit the submit button well 40 time 20 you know that's a big number that's $800 right there and that's just doing one you know fairly simple application so think about it that way and once you think about it that way like an economist got help us um you begin to understand the value and being able to put you know dollars where they belong and your life where hopefully it belongs definitely all right so we know when you're entering into any new partnership or contract or agreement with with someone helping you with your organization that um you know there's things involved on both sides that need to be prepared to make sure it can be successful so let's say you are thinking about you're ready to hire a grant writer what are some of the things that you would need to pull together and prepare for them as a non as a nonprofit leader to make sure that that partn partnership can be successful my goodness it's okay um I'm gonna stop saying that's a really good question because I think I'm getting boring but it's a that now we're getting down to the important stuff um so I really wish people would ask that question of themselves and us more often and sooner so the biggest problem number one problem is that you hear about this grant thing that's already on the street and you're you know there's four weeks left to do it you don't really have a grant money helper you know or you don't have the family to do it yourself as you said before um well now you're under the gun and now you know the professional has to learn about you your organization the mission the immediate short-term projects that the grant might help fund all these things and you know you end up with you know a couple weeks left to do this and um that's just not the way to to Really optimize your chances and that's what it's all about our process I think is fairly detailed uh and and thorough I mean we really as I alluded to earlier we start off focusing on communication that's again the thing communication is a thing and that takes time to get to know people a little bit whether it's a personal relationship or professional relationship you got to spend that time uh making that happen one tool that we use um is something that we've and others call Project perspectives and so it's a simple one-page pretty summary of your organization what you want to get do what you want to do the next year or so for the grant and you know your performance metrics your impact to your communities all on one page so if you can do it on one page you've got to know it and so that's our ass of test can we explain back to you what you want in a single page and as a added benefit you the nonprofit get to take this away with you and you can throw it down in front of your next corporate sponsor or group event and you know it's already there people love that LE by stuff so so Scott really quick for example can I can I articulate this back to you so folks what he's talking about is understanding what you need and why it's important and how you're going to get there so something like uh you know with $50,000 we can beautify this school for underserved kids K through 12 you know like and so you know the amount of money you need to achieve the goal that you have and obviously there are many different ways to explain this based on your program or project or even if it's for General operating support but basically that's what you're talking about summarizing in this perspectus right yeah I mean that's exactly right I mean again if we can get this down to a page and feed it back to you and you're not in your head know this is what we want you're right um you know we're ready I feel we're confident we ready to go to start prospecting opportunities to even begin you know thinking about what the shape of a grant narrative might look like and um it it's just very helpful and you're right A lot of people unfortunately we talk to who don't exactly know what they want um we'll do I'll try to do a couple of tips in here that I'll hope be very helpful in short term for people besides knowing exactly what you want and framing it clearly in an elevator pitch um you know um think about the the scheduling and the timing of that think about um you know is it operating strategy you know operating funds you want that kind of strategy you kind of need that's fine a lot of Grant here's the tip part you know they want to do something unique you know we're funding this new program that so and so is just launching and they want to be the first one the first dog in the fire hyr right they want to have something brand new and shiny so keep that in mind to operating funds are great quite a few grants aren't um necessarily set up that way so um think about you know unique cool you know unfortunately bad word right but sellable things that are are easy to position on the Grant application that's something that you know we really try to encourage people to think about as they as a looking for dollars yeah and uh that is that is true and I've had that experience myself um though I am encouraged that more Grant makers these days seem to be talking more about the need for General operating capacity building support so hopefully folks in the next couple of years we'll see some grant writers um I'm sorry some Grant funders being more flexible and in what they're willing to fund but you know to your point sometimes I'll hear from folks and and they saywell I can't plan my program until I have the funding but you actually have to do a bit of the planning and thinking through that that timeline like you talked about the resources you need before in order for the funders to be compelled to give you the funding so it's a chicken and egg situation there yeah absolutely so even if it's like General operating funds okay um but don't just say that don't just stop there so if you know say you want to hire a new staff person you know to help you with the operation well what would that St person be working on maybe that you weren't working on before because it under the bandwidth well maybe you want to enhance a youth program that's already existing or maybe you want to start a new you know uh youth arts in the community um adun program those are new but and so doing that and financing that that will help pay the salary of your general operating person and so you know think about innovative ways of positioning that description so that um when people read that you know a foundation reviewer reads it or a board reviews it you know they're understanding what they're funding and they really have a very clear idea um that you know this is going to be some you're doing great stuff already in past years you're proving yourself this is going to be even better because of what we're going to do for them right so just a quick recap things to know and prepare before you could engage a grant writer or even write grants yourself just before you can do any fundraising you really need to have Clarity of your programming um what it needs in order to run the Staffing you need the resources you need what it's going to cost you need to be doing that research is what I heard from Scott and then um how the grant funding will make a difference to your organization so instead of just give us money and we're going to run on that money and you know like obviously that's the dream but you know the funders want to know how will your organization be able to be different as a result of funding even if it's General operating right do I have that right yeah I think you've got it I think you've got it you passed April thanks so I know this is probably a question on the minds of anyone who aspires to have grants written for them or hopes to get grants but what are are some realistic expectations Scott of getting grants and how can someone how can a nonprofit develop a fundraising strategy that's going to be effective that accounts for the grants they might get and also rounds it out with other opportunities too sure let's uh let's start with the grant stuff first so um although it is a bit of an art form we try to in at least mentally when we're assessing opportunities doing prospecting research think about at least a 20% chance of winning um and not you know not uh including anything things our prospecting um research that doesn't least we think hit that Target so the next question if I was a nonprofit person talking to a a grant writer person is oh how do you know that and um a lot of the tools that we mentioned earlier in in um cast you know a lot of these tools will tell you past amounts awarded they'll tell you the geography where things were awarded from that Foundation um you know they'll tell you the kinds of even the entities that have received the past Awards so we try to align and go you know deeper to get to that longer short list we mentioned earlier to get to a place where um we're checking a lot of boxes in terms of what these funders have done in the past um obviously when you get down to the really short list you know two to five that you're really I'm hopeful about again we kind of rely on more communication more phone calls digging deeper into 990 firms things like that to understand you know what they're really looking for and um and then you settle on a preferred gr tour and you start the whole thing over again with the actual Grant application and obviously I shouldn't say Obviously um compliance is a big deal so making sure that you meet all the various compliance things and we don't rely on you know um an RFP or a website to tell us this we we get down to that two to five Mark the first thing we talk about is compliance to make really certain because there is no worst feeling in the world to go through all this submit the application and you find out you weren't really even uh in the running and that's a that's a bad Vibe um you asked things about you know things that are Beyond grants we've already mentioned a couple of these right the the Donor advised funds um individual wealth accounts um like it or not there's a lot more individuals who are quite healthy and happily they are tend to engage in various philanthropic work Donor advised funds are kind of a um have a two sides to them one is I suspect that they're probably suying a little bit of life out of foundation grants perhaps um but you know if you can figure out how to leverage them it's uh in some ways a much more flexible source of funding if you can figure out how to approach the The Da fund advisors to to to work with you and see if they're willing to to work with you early on you know we talked about grants talked about some alternative funding channels a couple of them we mentioned corporate sponsor you know individuals um you know I encourage people and we found this to be a great value ad for us is the things I mentioned earlier about Lori being a fantastic um her her career is decades long in marketing and positioning various kinds of organizations for success and you know working on client sales and things like that and so she comes at it from a private sector side in a way of you know having to really prove to a customer that this is something they want to have and that's not a bad mindset to think about at least it's you know one tool in the Arsenal uh to think about that you want to have when you think about um positioning the nonprofit for Success how does this look to the customer how does this look to the granting organization or the the individual donor or things like that and so at some point invariably we come back and have a discussion with them about the website or about the LinkedIn profile 's doing on Tik Tok whatever the thing is and we try to give them good just honest feedback about this honestly sometimes the job you don't pursue is where you make the most money and because you can waste a lot of time and so if we find something that you're really interested in or you tell us something you're really interested in and it turns out it's not a great fit you got to have a consultant working on your side that's honest with you and tells you we don't think that's such a good idea to pursue this one um for this this and this reason and just being a sounding board and partner and a collaborator it's not just about the application right it's really about the process you go through and really taking time to learn about what that each individual nonprofits needs are um and that's kind for us honestly it's the fun part um because the people are just we've just been overwhelmed by how great the people are in this profession and um that's where you start from and honestly when it's all over you win you don't win whatever there's always Mone coming down the pipe um you know was it a good process for you did they listen to you did they write do a good product all that stuff um was is it big really important one client we had we didn't win the grant be quite honest you don't always win didn't win the Grant and but the funding strategy we did as the first product they picked up one of the other 15 or so on that list and guess what they apply to that one themselves using some of the language we had in our narrative and they want it and you know so there can be successes all kinds of different ways it's not just one single little skinny narrow path you know and I think that a good listener and a good partner a good collaborator someone's really interested excited about what you're doing will bring that to you I hope everybody finds that happen yeah and you know grants are one of those things like you've been saying there are some factors you can control and some things externally you can't control you never know who you're up against in competition for those grants or you know some of the you can't read the minds of the grant makers but what I'm hearing is what what professional grant writers can do is really increase your odds and do you know put you in the best possible position in addition to actually getting those grants out there yeah yeah absolutely couldn't said that well Scott it has been awesome to hear from an actual professional who does grant writing if folks are more interested in learning about right angle or getting in touch with you what should they do uh super simple try to make this simple um www.right angle. net and right angle is spelled wri i t a n g a right angle I think it'll be below the podcast somewhere so you can uh get a grip on it and it's got all of our resumes in there it talks about the landing page who we're talking to and inspired by and that just changes all the time because there is so many we have a LinkedIn presence too that if you did a LinkedIn search on wedding sure to pop up as well but website's good and like I said it has a lot of information about us and the kind of different skill sets we have and how to reach us so that's the easiest one to remember right angle right angle. net awesome well it's been great chatting with you thanks so much and sure I'll see you around yeah I think you will all right bye okay okay what did you think have you ever worked with a professional grant writer and what was your experience like or maybe you are a professional grant writer and you have some more tips to add to this conversation share those in the comments below as I mentioned before if you're in the process of starting starting a nonprofit or developing a fundraising plan check out my two online courses at founder Toof full time.com and my newslet linked below where I send out funding opportunities resources and tips finally last but not least check out my group change the world or bust on Facebook because we have thousands of people from around the world trying to make an impact in there just like you and we'd love to have you join that conversation that's me that's all I have for you today um once again I'm Amber Melanie Smith and I will see you next time bye

Channel: Amber Melanie Smith

Views: 1,820

Keywords: grant writing for nonprofits, grant writing, how to write grants for nonprofits, nonprofit organization, grants for nonprofit organizations, non profit grant writing, nonprofit grants, nonprofit grant writing, grant writing 101, grant writing career, grant writing for dummies, grant writing tips, non profit organization, nonprofit, nonprofits, grantwriter, grant writer, nonprofit grant writer, professional grant writer, non profit, nonprofit fundraising

Id: bJy4y_Q7etM

Length: 39min 7sec (2347 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 28 2024