Three critical steps can help you get grants from a foundation, whether you are a neophyte or an experienced development director.

By Patrick O'Heffernan, Fundraising Expert

1. Set up a personal relationship first. Foundations are made up of individuals. Individuals read your proposals. Individuals make the grant decisions. If you are applying to a large foundation, your first contact may be a web page where you find the guidelines and forms to fill to request for funds. Try to go beyond this: call staff members to let them know of a project or a conference that advances the foundation’s agenda, or to connect them with an organization in the field, or even to send them a study. If you do it right, the foundation staff may even help you write the proposal.

2. Build a relationship with foundations the same way you would with private donors. Plan to take time with a foundation just as you would with a private donor, and seek out “connectors” and “influencers” – people who can make introductions for you and whose word foundation staff trusts. Offer to help a current foundation’s recipient that could benefit from your experience. Offer help to a foundation staffer in the form of advice or contacts, the way you would build a web of interest around a private donor.

3. Being in the right place at the right time can be the key to a grant – and being there can be part of a strategy, not just luck. Attend conferences where foundation staff will likely attend as well. Go to conventions of foundations (get yourself invited by a current funder). Publish articles in magazines read by foundation staff, particularly on the subject you seek funding in. Produce studies that advance both yours and a foundation’s agenda and mail them out. These kinds of activities can replace months of relationship building, and even result in a request for proposal.

The bottom line: To get the most out of a foundation, you often must put something in.

Post your questions and comments, or share your experience here.

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 15, 2006 9:46 am (#1 Total: 15)


One of the best ways to be at the right place at the right time is foundtaion sponsored gatherings of donors and activists. You often have to be on the grapevine to learn about them, but if you do and can go, they can shortcut months of work and lead to immediate grants

zelt - Mar 15, 2006 10:04 am (#2 Total: 15)
University of North Carolina

Could anyone on this listserv suggest foundations who fund domestic violence advocacy and research?

 

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 16, 2006 5:47 pm (#3 Total: 15)


MS Foundation for one....do you have access to the foundation center database?

Under One Roof - Mar 16, 2006 7:02 pm (#4 Total: 15)
Mike Marshall


I'm looking for foundations that might be interested in investing in organization with a 15 year track record of generating unrestricted revenue on behalf of local AIDS service organizations.

dtulchin - Mar 17, 2006 8:00 am (#5 Total: 15)
Social Enterprise and Microfinance

Dear Patrick and listservers,

Are community foundations different from foundations in the steps outlined about in relationship building?  And, what community foundations are active in the greater DC area (No.VA. and MD).

thanks

dt

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 17, 2006 10:39 am (#6 Total: 15)


Yes, community foundations are a different animal and they do operate differently. A community foundation focuses its giving in a "community", usually geographic, and it often raises money from wealthy individuals and businesses in the community to redistribute in the form of grants. Community foundations also often focus on social services, education, economic development issues within their chosen community, rather than political issues.

Not all community foundations retrict themselves to a geographic community; a very few define community as a community of interest, i.e., a particular issue, but these are rare.

Check out www.mdcommunityfoundations.org for community foundations in Maryland. The Council on Foundations has a community foundation locator: check out www.cof.org/Locator/ for a site to help you find community foundations in other locations.

rmariagn - Mar 17, 2006 10:43 am (#7 Total: 15)
Rajendran mariagnanam

Sir,

I was trying to find out organisations that would help people from lower economic strata to help themselves .

I found the social edge just by  getting answers to my key word inserts in the yahoo /google search engines.The organisation is wonderful in its build and in its focus to such social matters.

Iam not a founder or co founder of any organisation as such.Contribution to social cause have me been in my mind for last many decades.May be I dint get the right time to focus or circumstances dint allow me to pursue this.

Now Iam 53 years young with lots of  hands on experience in social aspects with social interaction among indians(across indian geographies) .

I do desire to contribute to the people from any where who can be benefited  through my experience and also start up an org for the same to deliver goods by collaberative help by way of advices,couselling ,directions , best practices and ofcourse no the least the funding ,fund raising methodologies.

Lastly to have a close looped linked organisation which can sustain such help and delivery of goods through building a mix of business cum social trust which are interchangeable.

I need the expert advices of the honourable people who are into this social edge to help me in such a venture to carry out the same goals what all of you have.

I do have incorporated an agro pvt ltd company which has not started /comenced any business to  provide jobs in any sector of agriculture or agro related products or services through out the geography. I do need contacts to carry out exports to ensure fund development to side line the other activites of social trust to go side by side . The profits generated will be useful in creating jobs and funds to carry out other job generating activities that brings in better economic stature to socially edged people.

The common facilities for people who really cannot reach or be employed in the unrelated job could be structured through SHGs and othe social trusts as existing in various countries.

Iam planning to start up a trust soon for the cause.

Please give me your views and best practices and correct me if my thought process for the same goal is right.

Also I need help to propagate the business venture to enhance and pursue the goals that is beefited to the cause of social edge.

With warm regards to all wonderful people

Major M Rajendran

 

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 17, 2006 5:34 pm (#8 Total: 15)


it is critical to customize your approach to foundations, and to follow the procedures they publish. A foundation that says no "phone calls" should not be called. A foundation that says "no electronic submissions" should not be emailed proposals. If you want to work with a foundation like Omidyar that encourages participation in its online community, you should participate in its community. If a foundation says it does not accept unsolicited proposals, don't send them one (but find out how they do selelct organizations to fund).

None of this means you should not develop relationships. It is always easier if you know someone than if you don't know anyone. If a foundation discourages calls and meetings and you encounter a staff member at a conference, by all means talk with him or her. If you publish an article and you get an email from a foundation staff or executive asking a question, follow up and deepen the contact if it seems adviseable. Relationships count, but so does following the guidelines.

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 17, 2006 5:47 pm (#9 Total: 15)


Although you are from South Asia, it is uncanny how much your ideas resemble those of a friend of mine - also formerly from the ag sector - who started a foundation to provide micro loans to women in Guatamala (see the film posted last week on the NamesteDirect foundation).

Providing fund raising advice specific to India and even more so, to an organization that delivers goods is something that a loclal expert will have to help you with. I would contact Jill Harris at the Delhi office of LEAD International B-10, 1st Floor Greater Kailash, Enclave Part-II New Delhi 110 048 Phone 91 11 29225474/2921547

LEAD runs workshops and trainings in virtually everything that you asked about plus they have a network of 1200 people around the world - many in India - who work in non-profits and help others.

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 17, 2006 5:57 pm (#10 Total: 15)


The Foundation Center grants search engine lists 2300 grants for aids services and 228 for AIDS research. You should go to http://fconline.fdncenter.org/srch_grant.php and refine the search and look at the available grants to determine which would be helpful. You willhave to register with the Foundation center to search, but it is worth it. You might also check government grants at NIH www.nih.gov/.and HHH www.hrsa.gov/

rmariagn - Mar 17, 2006 9:45 pm (#11 Total: 15)
Rajendran mariagnanam

Dear Mr Patrick,

Thanks for your prompt reply and giving me some vedge to get in.

Iam very thankful to your wide knowledge which I feel would be benefited to me and others.

Hope to keep in touch with you.

With warm regards

Major M Rajendran

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 18, 2006 6:10 pm (#12 Total: 15)


That is what Social Edge is for...people helping people. Let us hear about your experience.

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 21, 2006 11:31 pm (#13 Total: 15)

ruthnorris - Mar 24, 2006 3:01 pm (#14 Total: 15)
Skoll Foundation

Thanks Patrick and colleagues for a very interesting discussion.

I'm glad you clarified the point about tailoring the approach to the specific foundation in question.  I'd like to point out that the Skoll Foundation actively discourages grantseekers from investing time and resources in a process of "cultivation."  Instead, we try to make our guidelines and criteria as clear and specific as possible.  Anyone can find out by visiting our website whether their work and stage of organizational development is a potential match for the Skoll Awards.  And if it is, they can submit their application online to be evaluated competitively with those of other grantseekers in each cycle.  Yes, there are Skoll Award recipients each year whom we had no knowledge of or contact with before their online applications arrived.  The important thing for us is a very close fit and exemplary performance on the  criteria. 

Patrick O'Heffernan - Mar 27, 2006 10:08 am (#15 Total: 15)


Ruth Interestingly, I have heard from some grant seekers that they actually prefer to work with Foundations like Skoll and Omidyar that discourage cultivation -- they say it enables them to focus on what they do, rather than on what may be unprofitable cultivation, and that they use the time they would have spent on cultivation to increase the number of proposals they send out. There seems to be an age and grant size breakdown...older development staff and those working for larger organizations seeking larger ($500K and up) grants, seem to feel most comfortable in the cultivation mode, and younger grant seekers and those working for smaller grants seem to prefer the online and no culitvation routes.

My sample is totally non-scientific, so I make no claims that this is a trend, but there is definently an efficiency argument for eliminating cultivation as part of grant seeking from foundations. But, as you say, the best rule is to follow the guidelines and desires of the foundation, which will make the decision on fit and performance.