How to Juggle Grants Efficiency with Quality

If you have tried to juggle, you initially wonder where to look. Do you watch the ball as it leaves your hand? The one you’re about to catch? Neither, I learned. Nor do you dart your eyes across the whole array of flying objects, which was my instinctive approach.

You fix your gaze at the top of the arc, which provides balance. When you train your eyes on that changeable high point, you allow the objects behind it to flow.

Professionally, that highest ball is your most ambitious funding partner. It might be an existing investor or a prospective one. When you keep your eye foisted on that grant maker, the benefits spill over to your other prospective and current foundation relationships.

Juggling Act

I’m not suggesting you ignore 99 percent of your foundation portfolio to focus on a singular prize. Instead, approach your work with your largest funder or prospect as a model. Make it a focal point. That mindset, and the preparation you do to achieve it, will inject a range of benefits into the rest of your work.

Granted, some funders are more idiosyncratic than others. So, if your very largest funder doesn’t give you a model worth applying to others, set your sights on a more ideal example.

When you move from watching the parade of foundations to the peak, you can create the practices, rhythms, and standards that enhance the rest of your portfolio. What does it mean to juggle a growing number of grants and keep your eyes on those at the top? A few examples of how that can play out:

Thinking Big

Your major prospects and funders force you to confront all those vague internal conversations around growth or strategy or innovation.

I helped one organization build out and price the platinum version of its signature program. The discussion had previously dragged out for years. During that time, modest grants funded an ad hoc approach to the initiative. It took an opportunity that would quadruple this program’s annual budget for staff to commit to its potential.

No matter the size of your largest grants, you are likely to chart your course more diligently than you do for smaller ones. You can infuse that work into solicitations of all sizes.

Illustrate your organization’s big-picture plans—the roadmap you’ve prepared for your $250,000 funder—and you can entice a $20,000 funder to come along for the journey. That’s a more attractive approach than one that focuses on a $20,000 project budget alone.

Leadership

The larger your grants, the more investors need to feel confident in your organization’s leadership. They want to know:

• How long has your executive team been in place?

• What qualifies your chief executive to serve in that role?

• Is your C-suite and board diverse, especially in light of the demographic your organization serves?

Answers to these questions are sometimes mandatory, but the largest foundations care about leadership whether or not they ask about it explicitly.

When a client and I incorporated the answers into all major proposals, and then all proposals, and then solicitations of all kinds, we noticed an uptick in the number of supporters that specifically mentioned their confidence in the organization’s leadership. That’s a win for credibility, no matter the size of your funder.

Messaging

You spend considerable time choosing your words, especially on your most ambitious projects. Once you’ve got text that makes you proud, repurpose it.

I often see teams write a case for support, only to use it with their mid-level supporters and revisit the thing for the largest funders. Why not work in reverse? The wording you use for that most important account is surely attractive to the rest of your portfolio.

I worked with one client to pull text out of a major grant proposal that we thought would resonate widely. The result became the crux of funder talking points, introductory emails, and other communications for over a year.

Even the communications director used this language to launch a donor-focused awareness campaign, a first for this nonprofit. When you don’t have the benefit of a formal case for support, this can be the next best thing.

Mission Clarity

One nonprofit created a theory of change for the first time—not for any foundation requirement, but so that staff could better articulate its work in support of a bold new strategy. The work came in advance of a meeting with a mega grant maker.

The resulting infographic was a hit with the funder and with the nonprofit’s staff. That visual of a complex mission helped the development team refine its positioning. It eventually landed in front of all potential supporters, including individuals. I’m convinced it helped generate a doubling of philanthropy over three years because staff articulated its mission with a clarity that was previously absent.

Eye on the Ball

The act of seeking competitive grants forces organizational excellence.

Rather than treating major grant work as a one-off, consider it a chance to reframe or reenergize all institutional partnerships, or even your whole supporter base.

Many of the wealthiest grant makers are also the savviest. When you set yourself up to respond to their priorities and questions, you are better prepared to attract investors of all types.