In the eighteen years I’ve spent in nonprofit fundraising, and especially in my years as a consultant dedicated to grant writing, I’ve had my share of rejections from grant funders. Do you feel like you’ve been in a slump lately working your fingers to the bone only to be met with disappointment after disappointment? Do not despair!
#1 Focus on donors who have the same mission as you. Are you really spending enough time searching for potential grant funders or are you just using a machine gun approach and launching applications whether you qualify or not? When nonprofits ask me why their grants aren’t being funded, this is the problem I see most often. The nonprofit organization simply did not take the time to research the funder’s interests, their funding restrictions, and general general guidelines. A lot of headache (as well as time and energy) can be saved by focusing only on quality leads.
#2 Follow all grant guidelines to the letter. Believe it: you are always in competition with other nonprofits for that donor’s money and funders will take every opportunity they can to get rid of applications that can’t even follow simple instructions. You may think it’s unfair but it’s the truth. Grant makers are bombarded with applications and it makes it easy for them to remove as many as possible. Do you want to be the first to throw out the trash? So please take my advice and follow all instructions provided. Not some. Not the majority. All from them.
#3 Use concrete evidence to convince funders that your need is a true community issue. You will most likely use a variety of data to support your claim; just make sure your data collection is well documented. When using the Internet search, make sure that the websites you refer to are reliable and up-to-date. If you are using your own assessment, please provide your collection method and explain how the data was collected. When citing authorities that speak on your topic, document who said it and the source where you found it.
#4 Include an evaluation component in your proposal. Do you have a solid evaluation plan in place to measure the success of your proposal? Grant funders want to see that you have a method for collecting data about your project. The data can prove that your proposal was exactly on target or can find improvements that need to be made to your program. Don’t be afraid of evaluation: it can be as simple as a small focus group where program participants are asked questions before and after the project. Grant funders like to see that you are as invested in the success of the project as they are.
#5 Ask them why you didn’t receive funding. You may be surprised at what you will discover. I once called when we got rejected and found out my proposal was actually the highest ranked! I won’t go into details here, but I was instructed to submit basically the same proposal next year and it would be funded. And that was. If I hadn’t called, I might have assumed they would never be interested and the nonprofit would have missed out on a $75,000 grant. In this case his rejection was not a “no” but a “not now”. It was simply a matter of time. You can dance around that, but I always suggest calling to speak to a program officer about a declined grant.
