Take all the ingredients that go into your typical funder approach. Which one has the strength to win your organization’s next financial prize?
Some clues: It’s a thread that runs through all your nonprofit’s activities. It encompasses your public communications, organizational achievements, and employee interactions.
This key factor is credibility.
I define credibility as the ability to inspire trust. Before you secure a major grant, you need foundation staff and board members to believe that your organization can fulfill its promises and use its money wisely.
You demonstrate credibility in everything you say and do.
Let’s say you request $1 million from a funder. It’s the first time your organization has done so. There’s no guarantee that the investment will achieve the intended targets. So how will the program officer and the foundation board find a new level of confidence in your organization?
Dr. B.J. Fogg is a behavioral psychologist who identifies four types of credibility, all of which I find useful in prepping a nonprofit to secure major grants.
Presumed Credibility
These are the general assumptions we hold about a brand, even if we don’t have firsthand experience with it.
Presumed credibility explains why you might contribute to Doctors Without Borders after a typhoon, even if you have never interacted with that organization. You might think, “I believe doctors are the best-equipped people to help injured residents after a natural disaster.”
Your organization doesn’t need to be as well-known as Doctors Without Borders to be credible.
Each person associated with your nonprofit contributes to outsiders’ assumptions. Every day that your coworkers serve the community well, they build presumed credibility. Collective achievements uplift it. Your communications team plays its part by ensuring that the branding looks professional, and by amplifying the things your organization does best.
Your role is to help your colleagues understand these expectations and their effect on fund development.
Reputed Credibility
Reputed credibility relies on reputation, especially from word-of-mouth recommendations.
I contribute to many organizations because people or publications I trust vouch for these groups. The more trusted the source, the more weight those recommendations carry.
People who are far from your nonprofit’s inner circle can hold powerful sway over your reputed credibility. Celebrities or influencers wield this effect writ large. In the funding space, you can tap existing supporters whom you know to be connected within the foundation world.
Internally, your externally-facing colleagues all help build reputed credibility. Your board members do their part when they are well-connected and know their role as ambassadors of your mission.
You can play an active role in educating them all about how directly their actions—and inactions—impact your nonprofit’s community-level status.
Surface Credibility
First impressions form the core of surface credibility.
When foundation staffers come across your organization organically, it happens in one of a few ways:
Social media
Your website
Your introductory email
You and your colleagues hold significant sway over how these assets strike people who are unfamiliar with your brand. Things like brevity, clarity, appearance, and tone can draw people in or chase them away.
Newer nonprofits will want to focus here, since we can all name brands that got their first looks because of savvy media. No matter the age of your organization, development and communications specialists can work in sync to create a seamless experience that flows from one platform to another.
When you land on branding that works well, stick with it. Focus instead on getting that successful content to as relevant an audience as you can. Your job is to promote it within the platforms, groups, and convenings where your funders gather.
Earned Credibility
The pinnacle of credibility comes via firsthand experience.
It arrives via stellar customer service when a donor calls with a question and gets a timely, warm response. It comes when a volunteer attends a training event, and the experience is high-quality and ends on time. It happens when a program officer receives a grant report before the due date.
Encourage coworkers to fulfill promises or, ideally, exceed expectations via a personal touch.
When your team delivers on earned credibility, reputed credibility skyrockets.
Credibility by Any Other Name
If you worry that your nonprofit is stuck with a sordid history that might affect its spectrum of credibility, help your colleagues start fresh.
Let your organization ooze with hope, creation, and possibility. Those are the emotions that draw people in and allow you to reveal the present and future, both of which draw investments.
It’s not outcomes, budget, or anything else proposal-related that determines the fate of your major grant. Credibility is an unwritten criterion. It’s one thing most every funder has in common.
Brilliant article, Susan. Again!
I've been sawing away on a related idea: trustworthiness. In particular, how fragile it is. Not just to deliberate acts, but to neglect as well. I think credibility is in a similar position. Your article has left me with a question to ponder over the next few days: What can we do to make our organization's credibility (and trustworthiness) more anti-fragile, as Nassim Taleb might put it.
As our friend from Down Under would say, I'll be snaffling these ideas.