Your Needs Statement or Problem Statement addresses the issue that your nonprofit organization is attempting to solve. This important segment of your grant proposal must address the reason why this is a problem and why it is important to solve this problem. It is one of the most critical segments of your grant proposal.
How To Lose A Grant
Losing a grant that you applied for is not uncommon. Most grant applications fail. That does not mean it was wasted effort. In fact, many times, it is essential to apply and fail more than once in order to help a foundation build a file on your organization before they decide to approve you. The more familiar they become through you numerous requests, the more comfortable they become with supporting your cause. It also provides you opportunity to learn about areas you need to improve on in order to qualify and receive grant funding in the future. In this case, failure is part of the approval process.
Launching a Capital Campaign
Capital campaigns require significant planning and research prior to launch. Today, we will discuss the steps you need to take in order to launch a successful capital campaign.
Grant Success Through Community Engagement
Many new clients come to us thinking that grants are the solution to their funding needs. We spend time explaining to them what foundations are looking for and steps they need to take in order to be grant ready. One of those steps is community engagement
Board Involvement in Securing Grants
Grants are often considered the focus of the grant writer or grant manager. Many nonprofits do not realize the importance of board involvement in the grant seeking process. The board does have responsibility in financial and legal oversight of the organization, but they also hold responsibility in facilitating pre-award participation to improve grant award success.
How Much to Request
How much do you request for each grant application? That is the real question. We have experienced many clients who think they should always ask for the maximum amount that the foundation offers. We do our best to try and help them understand how this works, but today we will write in more detail the process involved for a foundation to consider your request and how appropriate your request amount actually is in the larger scheme of things.
Budget Narrative
Writing a budget for your nonprofit is a basic requirement for successful functionality and for grant applications. However, it is more than just numbers in a line-item budget. In order to qualify for many grant applications, you must also offer a budget narrative.
Fiscal Sponsorship
Tax-exemption is only qualified if moneys were contributed to an IRS designated 501(c)3 entity. This also disqualifies you from grants until approved. This is where fiscal sponsorship comes in.
How Budgets Impact Grant Requests (and Funding)
Budgets are the mainstay for your annual funding planning and spending. These are required for a business to run and maintain an appropriate strategy in order to prevent loss and guarantee that expenses can be covered. This also affords the ability to see where shortfalls are and what is required to rectify that gap. Budgets also significantly impact your grant requests.
Tips to Strengthen Your Fundraising Cycle
Today, we will discuss the various things you should implement to strengthen your fundraising cycle.
Measuring Fundraising Effectiveness (Video)
Not sure how to measure your organization’s fundraising effectiveness? Or how to communicate the right message to your donors? Watch this video interview with Andy Davis, director of education at BoardSource. Andy explains how to discuss the cost to raise a dollar with your board members and how to steer the conversation with your donors from costs to focus more on impact.
Email Best Practices
Communication is a key factor in the success of any organization, especially nonprofits. Knowing the best way to communicate with your supporters, volunteers, donors, and the community is critical to your mission’s success. Knowing how to garner support through email marketing also increases your support from foundations. The following are email best practices to assist you in your nonprofit’s efforts.
Building a Modernized Fundraising Strategy
Nonprofits come in many shapes and sizes. Those who have been around a while are often quite confident in their traditional fundraising strategies. Unfortunately, we are living in an ever-changing world that requires everyone to stay up to speed with the new methods to achieve our organizational goals. Aging demographics means that those who were target donors are one portion of your focus and they may require a different fundraising strategy than the younger demographics who operate quite differently in a world full of technological advancement. This means that nonprofits have to have more than one fundraising strategy and skill-set to ensure the most effective outcomes.
Crafting Your Proposal
When clients first sign up with us, we send them a Client Information Form to complete. This form is pretty comprehensive and covers a lot of details that not all of our clients have considered before. Although we do not pressure our clients to submit this form rapidly, we do request that they take the time to complete it thoroughly. The more thorough their responses, the better the grant application we can generate for them. This post discusses one aspect that seems to be a challenge for some of our clients when they first begin.
Building Multiple Revenue Sources
The tools, resources, and knowledge included in this guidebook will help you to raise more money through targeted development strategies that are catered to your organization’s unique stage of development, strengths, and community resources.
This was not written by us. We have obtained this guidebook for you from Nonprofit Ready. The direct link
Planning a Fundraising Event – Event Follow Up
The final installment of our Planning a Fundraising Event focuses on the event follow up steps you need to take after the event. It is easy to assume that the work is done and all the money that was raised is all that will be raised, but that would be a mistake. The work is not complete after the event, and the fundraising for the event target is also not complete. How you take advantage of the excitement generated by the event after the event is over can have a significant impact on the overall funds raised and the impression made on donors. It can also impact your vendor relationships.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Auction
So you want to have an auction at your fundraising event. There are simple ways to do this using paper and pen. There are live auctioneers who can run the show. Then there are auction management software solutions. Today, we will discuss the many benefits of utilizing an online auction management software solution.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Fun & Games
Your event will have many entertaining facets to it. One component that is important to implement is something that makes the evening feel like it is an opportunity to have fun and play games. Games? Well, that can take many meanings, but the traditional concepts such as silent auctions, goal meters, and such are aspects that are frequently associated with competition and winning. These types of activities raise the level of excitement and motivation to participate. Don’t limit your fundraising efforts at the event to mere ticket sales or the traditional direct ask. Induce a social component which will bring a level of deeper community collaboration to participate and do what it takes to raise the funds. Plus, who doesn’t like to be a winner?
Planning a Fundraising Event – Promotion
You cannot have a successful fundraising event without effective and sufficient promotion efforts. Once you have everything in place or in progress, you can begin your promotion campaign to spread the news about your exciting fundraising event. You can simplify this process down to four steps.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Website
Today we will focus on why a website that focuses on connecting with your donors and encouraging immediate gift collection is the best investment you can make during and after your event. Your website is its own fundraising administrator that once set up properly, can continue to serve your organization long-term. It is especially helpful when it is used in conjunction with a specific fundraising event.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Partnerships
One of the most crucial things that your fundraising planning entails are your partnerships with local businesses. It is always a good idea to formulate relationships with local businesses throughout your organization’s ongoing efforts to assist you in easier collaboration, negotiation, and ideally better rates or donations to supply your fundraising events.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Theme
Every fundraising event has a theme. The theme sets the tone and the focus for the event and inspires donors to be taken on a journey of your choosing. This means, you need to consider what the donor might like to experience. Make sure this aligns with your organization’s mission and the program that funds are being raised for at the event. Best of all, you can make this fun!
Planning a Fundraising Event – Budget
The previous installment of Planning a Fundraising Event focused on setting goals. Within the goal setting, a budget will be developed. This is to help establish the concrete numbers necessary for the cost planning for the fundraising event as well as the establishment of a fundraising goal that exceeds this budget.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Goals
Every fundraising event starts by determining a fundraising goal. This is the purpose behind the event and the driving force that generates all activities surrounding the fundraising event. Although it might seem obvious, there are many who interpret a fundraising event as a general effort to raise funds for the overall functioning of the organization. Although this can be a goal, it is more critical to identify a concrete goal.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Volunteers
Every nonprofit understands the value of good volunteers. Some are great at handling the smaller time consuming tasks and others are great at generating public support. They can help to make your event run smoothly, and they can reassure donors that they are very pleased to be involved with the organization’s efforts. They are true advocates for your nonprofit in every aspect.
Planning a Fundraising Event – Staff
This is the first in an 11 part series to walk you through the steps of fundraising event planning. Planning a fundraising event is a major undertaking. As such, it requires a significant amount of planning and budgeting to ensure that the costs and efforts truly bring positive returns. Not only do you want to make your money spent on the fundraiser returned, you want to bring in an abundance of additional funds to provide for your programs and projects. Today’s focus is on staffing.
Fundraising and Word Selection in Campaigns
Word selection can make or break your fundraising campaign efforts. How do you know when to use what word? The focus is always on how you wish to appeal to the audience and who needs to feel something. More often than not, the word that needs to be focused on, is the word ‘you.’
Boosting Online Engagement for Event Planning
Qualifying for grants requires additional sources of income. This takes the form of individual donors, other grant sources, and fundraising events. Fundraising events are not only a great source of sustainable revenue, they are also fantastic opportunities to encourage supporter engagement. This level of engagement makes supporters feel included and helps to reinforce what your organization does and how their support truly helps your organization achieve its goals. Fundraising events come in many forms: galas, street fairs, silent auctions, and more. Planning the event is crucial, and the supporter engagement must be planned intelligently to ensure strong engagement before, during, and after the event. This post is designed to assist you in utilizing the various online supporter engagement opportunities available to you.
Multichannel Donor Relationship Development
What are multichannel donors and why do you want them? Multichannel donors contribute to your organization in multiple ways. They donate through different platforms and volunteer their services to your cause. They will be the most engaged and most consistent contributors to your nonprofit organization’s efforts. So, how do you obtain multichannel donors?
Welcoming New Donors with an Email Series
First donations are opportunity to cultivate a long-term relationship. While not all donors will contribute regularly, it is hard to know by a first contribution who will be there in the long run. Some small donors turn out to be your largest donors years later. No donor should be treated as an after-thought, regardless of how small their contribution. They could also potentially become great community allies or volunteers. Value varies, but all are important. So how can you nurture that new donor to put your best foot forward in fostering a long-term relationship? The first step is to send a welcome email series.
Fundraising and Donor Relationships
Today, we will discuss how all actions your nonprofit takes are interconnected. Every decision and action taken by all segments of your organization will impact every single one of your strategies, so the key focus today is on how to plan your strategies to ensure that they enhance the efforts of the other parts. If done correctly, better contributions, support, and functionality will be achieved.
Major Gifts
Major gifts are a large component in your budgeting and fundraising strategy. Major gifts mean different things to different people, but there is a common understanding that without major gifts and donors, most nonprofits would be struggling more significantly and they may not maintain financial sustainability.
Donor Stewardship
Procuring new donors is painstaking work and takes many hours for all development professionals in the nonprofit world. Much like the sales process in for-profit industries, closing on first time gifts can require continuous follow-up, repeat efforts to secure a conversation to close the gift solicitation, while ensuring that the donor feels heard, respected, and valued for their contribution to your nonprofit’s efforts. Closing the gift is not the end.
Board Best Practices
Every fiscal year, it is important for your Board to not only address the upcoming annual budget and financial reporting. It is also critical to review current board best practices.
Board and CEO Relationship
Running a nonprofit is a group effort. There are differences in responsibilities, but how can they work together to find the greatest results? More specifically, how can the Board assist the CEO or Executive Director to their best ability?
Fundraising Campaign Planning & Implementation
Creating, planning, and implementing: Capital Campaigns, Recognition Programs, Major Gifts Programs, Special Events, or Bequest Programs.
Marketing, Development, and Donor Acquisition
Marketing is entirely based upon understanding your target market. This is true for any business, and no different for nonprofit organizations. There are different aspects to marketing.
Fundraising & Development
Fundraising and development are frequently confused as the same thing. Development is about relationships with potential and current donors. This ensures continuation of support and procurement of future support. Fundraising is merely raising funds. Wait? Isn’t that the same thing? No.
Board Member Philanthropic Involvement
It is essential that all members of the organization, including the board members, are actively engaged in all fundraising activities. To do so not only solidifies their purpose on the board, it also asserts their determination to see the nonprofit thrive. Disinterest relating to fundraising has to go beyond personal comfort and become something bigger than the individual. Charitable giving is currently rising above $400 billion in the United States. As thrilling as that may sound, it does not come by easily. Those dollars are in heavy competition with many others who feel that their organization deserves the funding more than yours. Personal donations, government grants, corporate gifts, private foundations, and other fundraising platforms are continuously expanding. Smaller nonprofits are not finding themselves on the positive end of the receiving stick.
Hiring a Grant Writer
Every nonprofit will seek grant funding at one point or another. Some wait years (or even decades) to begin this process. Others think that this is the way to start their nonprofit. It isn’t a simple as this. There are many factors at play when seeking grant funding. The writer is only one aspect.
The Importance of Governance
Choosing your board is a critical component to effective nonprofit management, obtaining 501(c)(3) status, and qualifying for grant funding.
Strategic Planning
Starting a nonprofit is time consuming and can be taxing. It is a major undertaking. Ensuring the proper forms are completed, articles of incorporation are complete, bylaws are completed, and the board is properly established is essential. The next critical step is generating your first strategic plan.
Tips for 501(c)(3) Compliance
Launching your 501(c)(3) and receiving that coveted letter of determination is just the beginning. In order to maintain your 501(c)(3) status, there are compliance regulations you must adhere to. Without complying with these regulations, you can lose your tax exempt status or even have your organization administratively dissolved due to failure to adhere to administrative compliance regulations.
Why Obtain a 501(c)(3)?
The importance of careful 501(c)(3) application and what it means.
Nonprofit Start-Up Guide
Starting a nonprofit can be complex. Use our handy nonprofit startup guide to help you strategize your efforts effectively.