13 Secrets of successful grant seeking

This week I’m teaching successful grant seeking in my Management of Cultural Institutions class at Brown University.

While perusing materials from a number of trainings  Jon and I have taught on the subject, I found a handout entitled Secrets of Successful Grant Seeking. 

You may have heard grant proposal writers say that 80% of the success in grant seeking happens before you ever lay fingers to keyboard. Just sending an out -of-the-blue proposal into cyberspace is usually like playing the lottery.

Here are a lucky 13 strategies that will help raise your potential for success.

1. Design and implement quality programs – that’s what it’s all about, right?
2. Cherish results and learning  – measure, evaluate, revise, adapt. Funders want to fund organizations whose work is making a difference.
3. Build strong peer relationships and partnerships: because it’s the right thing to do and because funders often turn to them as references for your organization or proposal.
4. Keep your promises to your funders. Most funders understand when new programs may not achieving their desired results. But they are not very tolerant when you don’t do what you said you would do, especially if you haven’t communicated with them.
5. Engage the ultimate decision-makers at family and corporate foundations.
6. Cultivate knowledge and relationships with your program officer.
7. Find connections and build relationships with potential funders. Seeing is ususally better than reading.
8. Find donor value in your programs by discovering hidden value or bundling projects for maximum impact.
9. Speak to your funder’s world view – understand how they see the world and their theory of change.
10. Or yes, have a theory of change that is explicit and defendable.
11. Create newness by incorporating new issues into existing programs, offering new audiences for donor portfolios, or developing new programs from what you have learned
12. Be a thought leader in your field and communicate like one.
13. Think and plan ahead — grants funding cycles are long and future oriented.

And when you do get to writing your proposal, follow the funder’s required format.

What’s on your list?

Other reading:

How we got the grant – Part I

How we gpt the grant – Part II