A Game-Changing Way to Stay Competitive for Major Grants
I bet you’ve never seen a garden with just one plant. It’s feasible, but it doesn’t happen. Gardeners look for a balanced design and efficiency. They can plant multiple seedlings, tend to the soil and water, and get many blossoms with the same effort it takes to grow one.
This same idea holds if you want to nourish a garden of major grants.
Of course, you will focus on individual foundations, just like you’d prune each plant. But you wouldn’t consider adding compost for just one of your six sunflowers.
Most grant training helps people foster one prospect at a time. Today, I’m sharing a model I use with clients to nurture multiple funders.
The Major Grants Virtuous Cycle
This approach benefits prospects you have identified and those you haven’t. Foundation staffers increasingly seek grantees proactively. This model makes your organization both appealing and visible.
When you drive these areas forward, you attract funders that are receptive to your nonprofit’s current level of sophistication:
Revenue
Foundations like to see nonprofits with existing gifts or grants in hand before they make significant investments. Yes, in the case of private grant seeking, revenue begets revenue.
It doesn’t take much to start. Even a small base of support, initially from founders and friends, shows a core that believes in the work. As revenue grows, your nonprofit will appeal to investors with comparable financial heft.
Handle the next parts of the cycle well, and you stand to attract funders well beyond your current stage.
Credibility
Study proposal writing or budget creation all you want. Major grants success relies on your organization’s credibility. I define it as the ability to inspire belief.
There are many types of credibility and many ways to boost them:
External validation. Grants, awards, and other third-party credentials show potential supporters that your nonprofit has been vetted by an outside entity.
Public relations. It’s not enough to secure the above. Showcase them, along with stellar outcomes and testimonials, across vehicles that your potential funders frequent.
Brand recognition. The more well-known your leaders, partners, and funders, the greater the evidence that others believe in your organization.
Organizational development. Credibility deepens as your nonprofit becomes healthier. Study organizational development so that you know how to give potential investors confidence. Even where your nonprofit is weaker, it helps when you know how to talk about next steps in strengthening those areas.
Credibility determines the likelihood that someone will take interest in your organization. The more you build it, the more leverage you have to engage funders.
Leverage
In physics, leverage refers to levers in a pulley system. The more you have, the more easily you can move heavy objects with less force.
In philanthropy, your “heavy objects” are your major grant prospects. The more credibility your organization has amassed, the more easily you can move funders toward your nonprofit.
Each next investor sparks greater confidence in your work: You publicize a big industry award. Funders talk. A network of philanthropies begins to vouch for your work.
This all takes time, but when done right, you highlight each next achievement to a segment of philanthropies most likely to care about the next level of success. While it’s hard to track each tick of the cycle, you can feel the momentum as it builds. I regularly see it lead to historic investments.
The Cycle in Action
A client’s largest private grant was $100,000. It would make requests much larger than that but only secure those equal to or below that threshold. It had reached a plateau.
The next award at that level came from a funder that was a leader in this nonprofit’s field, so when the grantee blasted the news throughout its circles, others took note.
When this client reached out to another industry-leading funder, it marked the first time in 18 months of attempts that this foundation responded. Coincidence? Maybe. It’s also possible that this nonprofit’s name had become more credible.
The organization leveraged its newfound credibility to secure more revenue from increasingly prominent funders. Staff worked across departments to amplify each phase of the cycle.
Fast forward several years, and staff members saw funders proactively approaching them.
The Cycle’s Ultimate Goal
Think about the implications of funders increasingly coming to you. The field is moving that way, so why not build a strategy designed to capitalize on it.
Such truth!