Thorough understanding of grantfunding reporting and accounting requirements
Ability to track and report cash-match commitments by budget expense line items
Ability to understand how to track and report in-kind (soft cash) contributions by budget expense line items
Procedures required for grant award risk management
At this point, you’re likely wondering why risk management is even necessary. To ensure organizational ethics are in place in the event of a funder’s audit or a lawsuit filed by a disgruntled client, participant, partner agency, staff member, or volunteer. It’s better to be safe than sorry!
Liability insurance coverage for the board of directors
Sexual molestation insurance rider if you are providing services to youth
Drug and criminal background screening policies and practices
Policy for check writing and the number of authorized signatures needed (who can sign and countersign)
Board of directors composition reflects the population you serve with grant funding
Building your governing board’s capacity
If your board of directors has not been trained in nonprofit organizational capacity building, get them trained fast. What do they need to know? Let’s take a look at all of the areas that a new and/or small nonprofit board needs to know about:
Boardsmanship (Robert’s Rules of Order) (www.rulesonline.com)
Board member roles and responsibilities (https://boardable.com/blog/board-member-responsibilities/)
Teamwork and consensus building (www.forbes.com/sites/forbesnonprofitcouncil/2020/03/16/13-tips-for-facilitating-teamwork-with-a-nonprofit-board-of-directors/?sh=17cd0527786e)
Responsibilities of board committees (https://boardsource.org/resources/board-responsibilities-structures-faqs/)
Strategic planning for sustainability (https://nonprofitinformation.com/nonprofit-sustainability/)
How to raise funds for your nonprofit organization (https://boardable.com/blog/nonprofit-board-fundraising/)
Assessing your nonprofit organization's capacity to seek grants
It’s important to do an annual organizational self-assessment. The assessment’s findings help you identify capacity strengths and challenges so that your organization can create capacity building goals. Here are the most important areas to assess:
Leadership capacity: Your leadership’s ability to inspire, prioritize, make decisions, provide direction, and know how to innovate existing static programs into promising fundable programs.
Adaptive capacity: Your board and leaders’ ability to monitor, assess, and respond to internal and external changes related to grantseeking and managing grant awards.
Management capacity: Your leadership’s ability to ensure the effective and efficient use of organizational resources, such as in-kind soft cash match for grant awards.
Operational capacity: Your leadership’s ability to implement key organizational and programmatic functions to fulfill the written promise of a funded grant request.
Creating a Grantfunding Plan
Your grantfunding plan is really a guide and a roadmap for where the dollars will come from for two years to support your programs. Just a few years ago, the trend was to create three- to five-year long-range funding plans. Today, if an organization wants to be on the cutting edge and able to roll with the economic punches, as well as the shifts in priorities by existing funding sources, its strategy needs to focus on two fiscal years. Yes, that’s it — 24 months.
If you have current funders that traditionally fund your organization year after year, their decision-making processes will be shorter. For example, if you have a track record for implementation success (carrying out the program’s goals and activities that you committed to in writing), then there is likely a turnaround time of six months or less from the time your organization requests funding until you get the check in the mail.
On the other hand, if you’re planning to approach new funders, which means building a relationship before asking, the time between the grant application’s submission and the funding decision could be longer than 12 months. What you thought would be awarded in this fiscal year won’t be coming into your bank account until the next fiscal year. This means you need to track funding priorities and decision-making timeframes so you don’t build your annual organizational operating budget on dollars that won’t come in for 12 to 24 months.
In the following sections, I get you acquainted with the components of a typical grantfunding plan, show you an example of one, and give you a checklist of how to keep your plan in tiptop shape.
Looking at the funding plan components
The grantfunding plan (created in table format) that I use the most for grantseeking captures eight fields in this order (see Figure 2-1):
Program, Service, or Activity: This is where you list the program, service, or activity priorities that are written in your organization’s strategic plan.
Funding Source: In this column, you identify the funding source(s) that you plan to approach to support your programs, services, or activities in the current and next fiscal years. You can have multiple funding sources that you contact for one program. Putting all your eggs in one basket (applying to only one funder) and then receiving a rejection letter nine months later is not your goal. If you did that, you would have to start all over with only three months left in the year. Approach multiple funders for every program, service, or activity in need of funding.
Address, Telephone, Email, and Website: By incorporating this column into your funding plan, you have clickable links to quickly email
