Why Your Major Grants Are Not Closing

Major grants are like a dance. With practice, you improve your posture, tighten your steps, and align yourself more with your funding partner.  

When your results are less than graceful, stop the music. Take time to understand whether you’ve made a one-time mistake or can spot a pattern.  

We all feel clumsy at times. If your major grants aren’t closing as consistently as you’d like, see which of the following reasons resonate. Then adjust the way you work. When you do, your next steps are likely to be more elegant than your last. These are some of the most common obstacles:

You’re not on the radar of your ideal funders.

You know this routine: You repeatedly call or write to program officers and don’t hear back.

If you regularly send messages on a one-way loop, reconsider your prospect list. Focus on foundations that share the greatest alignment with your nonprofit’s current plans. Maybe you can’t make inroads with 20 new funders this year, but you can create magic with five. A narrow prospect list allows you to refine networks, messaging, and strategies so that you dial into the best options.

Your ideal funders know of your nonprofit but don't recognize their work as aligned with yours.

At most every strategic planning session, one board member has only a vague idea of the nonprofit’s mission. Imagine what external parties think.

Give each of your best prospects a chance to learn about your work. They need to see compelling, up-to-date messaging. They need to see it repeatedly.

You might feel like a year-long communications theme gets stale, but for those outside your office walls, repetition becomes knowledge. Like that dance, people need an opportunity to learn the steps.

Your ideal funders recognize your work as aligned, but they don't yet trust you.

Even the most exciting proposal goes nowhere unless an investor trusts your organization’s ability to produce results and steward the money well.

Your proposal tells a story of your nonprofit’s future. Make sure that you weave in the story of what makes your organization qualified to undertake the proposed project. Bonus points if you’re able to build a relationship in parallel.

Your ideal funders trust your nonprofit’s solution but don’t see it as cost efficient.

It’s easy to talk up your proposed initiative’s innovations or expansions and lose sight of the financial angle.

Tout your work’s efficiencies. Highlight return on investment. Underscore other financial superpowers your staff or board has achieved.

If you have a relatively expensive business model, acknowledge that and explain why. Honesty trumps expense when the outcomes are promising.

Your ideal funders see a partnership with your nonprofit as too risky.

The obstacle might lie in shaky financials or frequent leadership turnover. The larger your asks of foundations, the more your organizational health matters.

Like cost efficiency, address potential barriers head on. If your CEO is new, that will quickly become apparent to a funder. Rather than let a foundation board wonder how long your new leader will stick around, acknowledge the transition. Assert that this CEO has an average tenure of eight years at each previous organization. You can’t make promises, but you can make a fact-based case.

Your plans are not exciting potential funders.

When I read nonprofits’ proposals, the chief reason they sound infeasible is lack of a compelling vision.

If it’s major grants you seek, you want to fit your request into a larger context that illustrates a journey with a destination. It’s about the previous work, the proposed project, its next iteration, and the final destination.

Your proposal is not as compelling as it could be.

Yes, you can always sharpen your writing. That’s one of the most obvious solutions to grant seekers.

It’s not necessarily proposal writing instruction that will advance your work. Read widely in your field and beyond. Learn all you can about sharpening your case. That includes a deep dive into your nonprofit’s subject matter, its peer organizations, and its cross-cutting themes that interest your prospective funders.

You would benefit from a more collaborative office culture.

Examine the level of cooperation you get from your colleagues. Do you lack the collaboration that leads to stronger budgets, evaluation plans, or program goals? Your co-workers may have little idea of what you need or how best to position their work in a development setting.

If they do know what to do but the office culture does not support their engagement, it’s your job to seek change.

If major grants are a dance, it’s easy to think of them as designed for couples—you and your funder. It’s more than that. It’s a line dance, with your colleagues all swaying in sync, while they shepherd you across the floor, funding partner at your side.

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What reasons do you suspect have kept your major grants from closing?