The Current State of Federal Grants

The recent changes have led to increased scrutiny of federal grants, potential termination of existing contracts, and a temporary freeze on new grants and contracts. This situation has understandably caused concern among grant recipients and applicants. However, it’s important to note that while challenges exist, federal funding has not disappeared entirely. Agencies are working to interpret and implement new guidance, and some funding streams are beginning to resume.

Diversifying Your Funding Portfolio

In these uncertain times, diversification is essential. Following are some alternative funding sources to consider:

1. Private Foundations: Many foundations offer grants for research and educational programs. Research organizations like the Gates Foundation, Ford Foundation, or field-specific foundations relevant to your work.
2. Corporate Sponsorships: Businesses often have corporate social responsibility programs that include funding for research and education. Look for companies aligned with your field of study.
3. Crowdfunding: Platforms like Experiment.com or GoFundMe can be effective for smaller, targeted projects.
4. State and Local Grants: Don’t overlook funding opportunities from your state or local government agencies.
5. International Funding Sources: For some research areas, international organizations or foreign government agencies may offer grants.
6. Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs): These organizations focus on community-based projects and may offer attractive terms for certain types of research.
7. Partnerships with Industry: Collaborative projects with private sector companies can provide funding and real-world applications for your research.

Strategies for Securing Alternative Funding

1. Refine Your Proposal: Competition for alternative funding sources may be fierce. Ensure your proposals are well-crafted and clearly demonstrate the value and potential impact of your work.
2. Network Actively: Attend conferences, join professional associations, and engage with potential funders to build relationships and learn about opportunities.
3. Collaborate: Consider forming partnerships with other institutions or researchers to strengthen your applications and share resources.
4. Stay Informed: Regularly check funding databases and sign up for newsletters from potential funding sources to stay aware of new opportunities.
5. Adapt Your Approach: Be prepared to adjust your research focus or methodology to align with the priorities of different funding sources without compromising your core objectives.

While the current federal funding landscape presents its challenges, it also opens up opportunities to explore new avenues and diversify your funding sources. Instead of viewing this as a setback, now is the time to take a proactive, creative, and persistent approach to navigate these changes.

The post Navigating the Shifting Landscape of Federal Grants appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Once, when I worked for a small, under-resourced organization, we created a project that perfectly fit a community need, was structured for efficiency, and had a large return on investment from donors. I approached an eager donor who was familiar with our efforts, our successes, and our available resources. I asked him for $1.3M. He told me he loved the project, was thrilled with our design, and really wanted to give us the gift. Then, he said, “unfortunately, your organization doesn’t have the ability to receive a gift as large as $1.3M.” I was dumbfounded. We had done everything right in evaluating, justifying, and planning a strategy to meet an essential need in our community. Yet, as an organization, we didn’t have the operational structure to receive a large donation. In that instant of excitement and disappointment, I realized that all fundraising efforts should only start after a close examination of an organization’s situation, their board, their staff, their infrastructure and their standing in the community. Each of these will influence an organization’s potential for raising funds.

The key steps in the process of assessing your fundraising capacity are: understanding how your organization is perceived internally and externally, knowing your strengths and weaknesses, and prioritizing your efforts and resources. Likewise, a solid market analysis is essential in developing a diversified and successful fundraising strategy.

After these initial strategic considerations, the next level of capacity building is to determine the size of your potential donor database. Once you identify these donors, begin making the match between you and them and solicit funds to develop projects of mutual interest.

Specifically, the steps to build your organization into a financial success are:

1. Know your organization by creating:
   1. Strategic plan
   2. Market analysis
   3. Needs assessment
   4. Current assessment of potential donors
2. Build a successful board consisting of:
   1. Community leaders
   2. Business leaders
   3. Political leaders
   4. Philanthropic leaders
3. First level fundraising strategies consist of:
   1. Classic and contemporary media presence, from local news to social media
   2. Regularly scheduled newsletters and updates
   3. Direct solicitations to the donors you already know
   4. Building member databases
      1. Collect emails at public events
      2. Provide free membership while sharing emails
      3. Use current members to introduce new members
   5. Annual appeal letters to donors
      1. Tell a story
      2. Explain how the potential donor can help
      3. Ask for the money
   6. Exploring area philanthropies & corporate donors from
      1. Community foundations
      2. Local businesses
4. Second level fundraising strategies consist of:
   1. Grants
   2. Small to medium-sized special events
   3. Planned giving programs
5. Top level fundraising strategies consist of:
   1. Capital campaigns
   2. Large scale events

Fundraising strategies vary from one type of organization to another. If the organization is small, it is best to employ a strategy that builds your supporter database and directly solicits them for cash donations. In contrast, a large, established organization may be in the perfect position to host a sizable gala.

When your organization has a track record of successes, strategic efforts should be made to attract the most powerful and influential board members. These board members will bring credibility to your organization as you begin to seek larger donations. As your board stature grows, so will your options in fundraising.

An honest assessment of your organization and your place in the community will help you understand the best approach to take to effectively secure funds. Thus, with broad community recognition, a strong track record of success, financial efficiency, and influential board members, you’ll be able to employ a large diversity of effective fundraising strategies.

The post How to Build a Successful Nonprofit appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Choose the Right Platform

The main platforms are probably familiar to you: Facebook, Google+, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Do your homework and review the avenues that seem to be a good fit for your campaign, but keep your selections to three or four accounts. Most full-time employees can only manage a handful of accounts.

Build the Right Campaign

Plan your campaign goals as carefully as you would your research goals. Investigate and choose the type of campaign that works for you. This could mean posting videos to YouTube and notifying your audience via Twitter, or posting updates from four different platforms three times a day. Many tools, such as Hootsuite, can assist you in getting organized.

Create Worthwhile Content

Your content must connect with your audience and be high quality. Cutting edge research and hot issues that appear in the media are topics that will pique almost anyone’s interest. Keep in mind that new social media users will likely need to spend more time developing an audience than creating content.

Grow Your Audience

Growing your follower group is perhaps the most significant undertaking of a social media campaign. Your content may be compelling, but if only ten people see your post, it will be virtually impossible to get a return on the time you’ve invested. As with other steps in the process, many tools tailored to various platforms are available with a range of free or paid services.

Analyze Past Content to Improve Posts

After a few weeks of posts, take a look at your metrics – the measureable aspects of your campaign. Track this information to help you narrow or shift your focus to accommodate the content to which your audience responds. Some platforms can even conduct an analysis before you post!

Include Visuals with Posts

Including a graphic or photo is an excellent way to enhance the performance of a social media post. Posts with a visual included have been experimentally shown to draw much more attention.

Deliver Consistently

Remember that you are trying to persuade your audience to help fund your research. You must provide regular updates to reward followers. Be sure to keep your posts relevant, interesting, and valuable for your audience.

Use Analytics Tools

Hundreds of tools have been created for the express purpose of analyzing campaign successes and failures. Use them. Many are free and sometimes part of the site itself, while others provide a third-party analysis. Don’t just collect reports; read them and translate them into action.

Timing Is Key

Find out the best days and times to post for your industry and follower demographics. For many organizations, this is Monday through Friday between 10 am and 4 pm.

Build Relationships

The relationship between donor and researcher is one reason social media marketing is powerful. Foster these relationships by posting updates that your audience wants to read, using a regular schedule, and avoiding a never-ending stream of sales pitches.

Crowdfunding is well within the realm of possibility for many types of projects and research. Running an efficient social media campaign is, perhaps, the primary method necessary to make your crowdfunding event a success. When executed correctly, social media campaigns can yield a high volume of donors, thereby helping you meet your funding goals.

Read about how crowdfunding might work for you here.

The post Use Social Media to Get Crowdfunded appeared first on Grant Training Center Blog.

Where Do You Begin?

Everything from breast cancer research to potato salad recipes is being funded through online donation sites. Although the amount initially raised may not be large – say, a few thousand dollars – it beats not having any funding at all. Crowdfunding allows good ideas that do not appeal to conventional donors to get support from the Internet. In addition, it contributes to word-of-mouth advertising. It all depends on how appealing your project is to potential donors and how big an audience you have at your disposal. Social media and other online resources are tools that can help you grow your audience and idea.
If you’re in academia, you’re in luck. Universities are beginning to comprehend that traditional sources of funding are drying up and involve more competition. Savvy colleges have created their own crowdfunding portals or have partnered with a site – like Oxford University and Hubbub – and are training staff on marketing techniques and strategies. If your university doesn’t have its own platform, you might also consider Hubbub’s open crowdfunding site that doesn’t take commissions. There are other research-focused portals, but many charge commissions from five to ten percent.

What Should You Know?

• Building your online network through social media is crucial to your success. It’s not an immediate method to receive all the money you are seeking, but it will increase your online presence. Over time, your network of followers will expand, thus increasing your donor base.

• You need to be realistic about the amount of money that can be raised with this approach. A few thousand dollars is most likely the maximum you can expect in the beginning of your venture. However, funding may increase as your online presence grows, along with support from your institution, foundations, and corporations.

• An important or urgent topic, such as researching the Ebola virus or providing Ferguson protestors with aid, is the best way to immediately attract attention and money from the crowd. Other types of topics can be successful, but must be compelling to inspire donors to give.

• Crowdfunding works best when used as a supplement to an existing network of donors. Using this system to fund research or project will never be the sole method to raise all the money you will need. Instead, consider it one section of your funding portfolio.

• Smaller projects, such as afterschool programs, small equipment, and scholarships for students tend to work very well within this system. Your needs are likely immediate, but not overwhelming, resulting in a very wide base of donors who give in small amounts.

Why Should You Be Cautious?

As a serious researcher or project leader, you must consider the cons of this approach. The biggest threat is that your idea could easily be copied. You are exposing your research and methods in a public forum. Another problem arises if you need a large amount of money to conduct your research, especially for long-term projects. A broader issue rarely discussed is the supervision, ethics, and checks and balances concerning your research. Traditional grants require continuous monitoring of a project. Reporting, evaluations, and the donor’s request for accountability are all used to keep a proverbial eye on what you are doing with the grant money. Crowdfunding does not lend itself to this type of scrutiny. In all likelihood, the responsibility will fall on the shoulders of the institutions where the research is being conducted. However, it is just as likely that projects will move forward without controls.

Where Do You Go From Here?

The issues above are being debated within the research community, but without any definitive answers thus far. Just as with any other career opportunity involving public interaction, your perseverance is required. You must have a backup plan or network of donors to be successful, and the support of your institution would be a bonus. If you decide to pursue crowdfunding, remember that it is a system built around you. You determine how to grow your social media network, what topic to use, and what amount to seek. If you make these choices effectively, crowdfunding could be a great alternative to fill the gaps in your project’s funding.

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