your time-on-task when sending out a letter of inquiry (I provide an example of this type of document later in this chapter). And, most important, the phone number is handy when you need to speak with the designated contact person for the funder.
Contact Person/Title: Research the funder’s website and even call their office to make sure that you have the correct name of the contact person and their title. Make sure to ask how the contact person gender-identifies, if there’s any chance of confusion. Names like Chris and Pat can belong to men and women.
Request: The amount of grant funding that you plan to request goes in this column. Make sure to review the funder’s profile for their grantmaking range. Stay below the top of the range if you’re a first-time grant applicant with the funder.
Application Deadline/Giving Cycle: This column captures the grant application’s deadline(s) and when grants are awarded by the funder. Some funders only accept and award grants once a year, while others may have multiple grant application submission deadlines and giving cycles.
Assigned To: In this column, you add the name(s) of the board member(s) or administrative-level staff that are assigned to making contact with the funder to continue previous funding conversations or begin initial conversations with new funders. In Chapter 22, I explain more about this process.
Status/Results: This is where you insert the status of the funding request — for example: “Contacting in September,” “First contact meeting went well on September 5, 2022,” “Grant application submitted on September 5, 2022,” or “Funding declined for September 2022 giving cycle; letter indicated to apply again next year (2023); follow-up meeting requested to discuss problems with grant application.”
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FIGURE 2-1: An example of a funding plan.
Updating critical funding plan information
The Status/Results column of your funding plan (refer to Figure 2-1) must be updated continuously. After you meet with the funder and can assess their level of interest in supporting your organization, you’ll need to change the meeting status note to the feedback received and add the next step (for example, “Apply this cycle,” “Wait until next year,” or “Not interested in this project”). Here are some essential activities needed on your part to keep the funding plan a working document:
Write it down. You need to officially document your funding plan ideas. Create funding plan templates and hand one to everyone at the meeting. This way, all parties are onboard and writing/talking about the same things in the same sequence.
Use it. The funding plan must become a daily guide to help your organization decide what programs or services have funding priority and how to fund them most logically.
Keep it up to date. Update your funding plan’s Status/Results column every time you apply for grant funding or receive the results of your efforts. Record whether you’re being funded, and if so, the funding amount. If you don’t secure the money, find out why your efforts failed.
Review and revise it annually. Why? Both your needs and funders’ priorities change, sometimes as often as annually. For instance, just because a lot of money is available for programs for after-school academic programs this year doesn’t mean that this funding area will still be the focus next year. Your plan must change to reflect what funders want to fund. In other words, your funding plan isn’t just about what your organization wants or needs; it’s about what funders want to fund within the parameters of your organization’s mission.
Increasing Your Chances for Grantseeking Success
When you’re ready to start your grantfunding research, keep your funding plan template close at hand. You’re likely to find a lot of potential funding opportunities, so reading the opportunity and then perusing the plan to make sure the opportunity fits is a smart move. You’re searching for perfect fits between what you need and what the funder wants to fund.
In the sections that follow, I explain what you need to know to find a broad range of potential funding sources.
Looking for needles in a haystack
To identify as many potential grantfunding sources as possible for your organization, you need to carefully research the primary sources of funding: the public sector (federal, state, and local government) and the private sector (foundations and corporations).
As you read information on each funder, you see few, if any, funders want to receive a grant proposal without any warning from the applicant. For many, you need to, in a sense, be invited to submit a full grant request after you’ve met each funder’s initial contact requirements. That’s why your initial approach (your first contact with the funder) is so important.
Review each funder’s initial approach preference using their website or funding database subscription to find what initial contact or approach document they require. In Chapter 6, I tell you how to find private-sector funders and mine the right information. You can find more information regarding these documents in the later section “Using
