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Grant Writing Tips

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A Social Psychologist On Five Elements Of Good Writing

grantmakers become more isolated from most grantseekers, and most grantseekers become less visible to grantmakers, the art of writing becomes more and more critical to relationship-building success. There are a thousand good articles on good grant writing. Joachim Kreuger, a social psychologist from Brown University, offers these universal writing good elements:

  • Relevance: A good text conveys the information that matters, although a few exceptions can spice things up without much distraction.
  • Economy: Wordiness debases writing by diluting it. I began this post with the sentence “Good writing is hard,” when I could have written, “It has long been recognized that writers must overcome many difficult challenges before they can deliver an appealing and comprehensible body of text.” Look out for boilerplate and run-on sentences! Even if a sentence is sound, most adverbs and adjectives can be stricken without loss of information. Strong action verbs communicate better than noun-heavy phrases.
  • Vividness: Good writing evokes images in the reader’s mind. It is perceptual and hallucinatory. A poor text allows readers to hear the words in their minds without evoking images. Again, action verbs help.
  • Coherence: The text must hang together, tell a story, and follow a narrative arc. Lists don’t do this, and this post is playing with fire. Each part of the text has its own mission. Section headers can help, but an elegant text won’t always need them. When the writing is good, readers know where they are in the story.
  • Humor: A good text is entertaining, and humor is a spice that keeps boredom at bay. Good humor is subtle and not thigh-slapping. Good humor lets the reader in on a joke without being condescending or obscure.

What’s in Font?

The Washington Post has a couple of tests you can take to determine which font is right for you, your organization and your prospective donors. It’s probably not what you think.

Grant Writing 101: Know Your Impact

Grants consultant, Barbara Stratton, recently did a piece for the Chronicle of Philanthropy that  critiques “faulty” grant requests to illustrate “How to Write Grant Proposals That Get Results“

Fundraising Event Experience survey

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Classy, a leading online fundraising platform and thought leader, highlighted donors’ 2022 Fundraising Event Experience in a survey of 1,000 event attendees:

— 26% attended live events, while 36% went virtual because there was no live event or because they preferred a virtual experience
— In-person and virtual attendees gave roughly the same dollar amounts (beyond ticket sales). 20% of virtual attendees gave $500+ and 22% of live attendees gave over $500.
— 96% of virtual attendees rated the event excellent or good, while only 87% of live attendees thought the event was excellent or good.

Top Five Favorite Virtual and Live Events:

VIRTUAL ATTENDEES– Endurance Events (32%)
— Performance (31%)
— Auction (31%)
— Galas (26%)
— Competitions (24%)

LIVE ATTENDEES

— Endurance Events (43%)
— Performance (38%)
— Auction (36%)
— Galas (36%)
— Competitions (29%)

Virtual Volunteers

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For years, Grantseekers told grantmakers that the only way they’d receive a grant was if a corporate employee was on their board of directors.

The pandemic sort of wrecked that plan.

Not that Employee Involvement with a nonprofit is less important. It is still worth lots of bonus points when it comes to grantseeking. And, corporations are still working to encourage it – but it is leading some to now look for virtual volunteer opportunities for their employees: Mentors, fundraising, connecting with isolated constituents, and even teaching classes or workshops.

Here at AP, learning of this got us wondering:
Survey Time: Who among our readers has such opportunities?

Please share this with us, and we’ll publish what we learn in the next newsletter.
Tell us about your virtual volunteer opportunities. ——>

The Equitable Evaluation Framework

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Insights for Grantseekers… when funders place equity at the center of their giving

The Equitable Evaluation Initiative group recently published a paper in partnership with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations entitled The Equitable Evaluation Framework.

While it’s a little on the academic side, the paper’s work will be very interesting to grantseekers who are now faced with a shower of requests to judge their work within the context of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

The EEI paper asks grantmakers and grantseekers to imagine “What might be possible if evaluation was conceptualized, implemented, and utilized in a manner that promotes equity?” Not hypothetically, but really and truly.

This led us (specifically Access Philanthropy Researcher, Laura Wilson) to wonder: If foundations are really beginning to place equity at the center of their work, how can grantseekers effectively demonstrate their work in this area to prospective funders?

That is, if the funder follows the principles behind the Equity Evaluation Framework, and needs to know how your organization’s historical and structural decisions have contributed to the conditions your organization is addressing, how do you support your proposals in the terms of that Framework?

Hover to enlarge image

Here are a few take-aways, we pulled from the Framework that can assist grant-seekers:

— Highlight how your organization fits into that specific foundation’s strategic philanthropy plan.
Emphasize your role in addressing the larger issue.
— Showcase intentionality behind your decisions, actions, and program design.
— Demonstrate how your programs address the funder’s core issue; provide services that produce equitable results.
— Reflect on inequities in your approach to providing services to the community followed by specific actions you are taking to grow from those mistakes.
— Offer, implicitly or explicitly, to be closer partners, learning from each other and suggesting new approaches to an issue.

Above all, think reflectively about the work you do.

Have ongoing discussions with staff and board members about what’s working, what isn’t. How can you demonstrate your impact in ways that show it is advancing equity? Can you educate grantmakers on what you want to measure and need to evaluate to succeed? How can the community be involved in evaluating your work?

This is a long-haul process, one that could be very meaningful, if we are all active participants.

Funder Affinity Groups

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Funder Affinity Groups

Funder affinity groups are ongoing open-facing collaborations of grantmakers interested in a specific area of grantmaking (health, environment, K-12 education, for example). Inside Philanthropy explains Affinity Groups:

— A group or network of funders that come together around a shared interest.
— Circles where funders can interact, and often collaborate, to maximize impact.

There is a funder affinity group for about every community or issue imaginable.
Most affinity groups are hosted by a larger organization, such as the Minnesota Council of Foundations. We thought we would jump on the wagon and provide a couple links for affinity groups sponsored by the national Council of Foundations and Minnesota Council of Foundations:

— The National Council of Foundations affinity groups
— Minnesota Council of Foundations affinity groups

Implications for Grantseekers:

— As a prospecting resource, lists of affinity group foundation members are a good way to find out which funders are interested in K-12 funding or homelessness.
— Also as a prospecting tool, sometimes affinity groups will list the names of program officers who represent the foundation at the affinity group table. Good to know which program officers are serious about health issues.
— Often affinity groups will talk about upcoming conferences or webinars. It’s good to know what issues are in the forefront of climate change funders and what kind of language and terms funders are using.

Impact of Mega Grants on smaller nonprofits

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Most philanthropoids seem okay with the huge McKenzie Scott-size grants that foundations are putting out for good causes. But some foundation employees are side-barring concerns about the impact these grants are having on everyday grant programs.

Two Ford Foundation (low level) grant people point out the $420 million commitment the Foundation made for equity last month takes away $80 million/year from the grants budget.

These guys believe it won’t be the big annual grantees who will suffer from this decrease, but small, newer, less well-known groups, who will have an $80 million smaller chance to develop a relationship with Ford and other funders.

Hopefully, the mega-mega $400 million commitment will have a larger-than-life impact on equity, and this will overshadow and justify fewer grants to smaller, newer, community-led groups. It worked for health, libraries, and school lunches at the beginning of the 20th century. So, maybe.

A look at the funding shifts in Mental Health in MN

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Mental health has long been a neglected issue area among funders. The money designated for mental health usually went to hospitals. But, during the last decade, we have seen funders taking this area more seriously, and considering its issues independently of physical health issues.

Access Philanthropy took a look into the top funders and what they’re most interested in, in our new report: “Mental Health Funding Trends in Minnesota”. Link to the Report