Preparing successful grant proposals to receive funding from corporations or foundations requires careful research, meticulous preparation, and graceful writing. Grant administrators will often say that many grant requesters have a limited understanding of the proposal writing process, and as a result their worthy causes lose out.
If you learn how to avoid the errors that lead to the rejection of your proposal, you will be better prepared to help the causes you most admire. This course will walk you through all of the essential steps, including an important discussion of what you must do when the grant arrives.
In this course, you will learn how to become fully familiar with the institution or project for which you are requesting support. You will get valuable guidance in preparing a background statement and a brief financial statement to support your request. You will also research some charitable foundation and corporate giving sources.
Then, you will learn how to put everything together, so you can assemble, write, and submit complete grant proposals to foundations, corporations, and wealthy individuals for any number of your pet projects.
Kim Joyce, GPC (Grant Professional Certified), taught high school English and was a librarian for seven years. After working in education and school administration as a school business manager, she became involved in the nonprofit sector as a grant writer. She has worked as a grant professional and developed content and taught grant writing workshops for nearly 20 years.
Kim graduated from Arizona State University with a bachelor’s degree in English and is a credentialed grant professional, entrepreneur, award-winning business leader, and the author of Grant Writing for Dummies, 8th Edition. Passionate about grants and grant compliance, she considers grants her superpower. In 2010, she founded Kim Joyce & Associates, a national, full-service grant consultancy based in Scottsdale, Arizona. Her firm has secured more than $472 million in grant awards.
The instructional materials required for this course are included in enrollment and will be available online.
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Lesson 1
The Writing Style You Will Need for Your Grant Proposal
There's nothing magical about preparing a grant request, but in this lesson, you will learn some easy and fun tricks of trade that will help you with all sorts of writing projects, even those beyond grant proposals. Additionally, you will learn some special ways to practice these tricks.
Thinking About Your Institution the Way Grantors Do
People who work for causes that they believe in will often care about those causes in a very special and personal way. But grantors, who deal with literally thousands of institutions and causes, have a rather different way of thinking about them. In this lesson, you will put yourself in their shoes and learn how to effectively describe your own cause to anyone.
Information You Will Need for Your Grant Proposal
Now that you have tried on your grantor's shoes, it's time to talk about why those grantors look for certain kinds of information and documents. You will learn what these documents are, so you can dig them out and be ready to supply them when you prepare a grant request.
Special Characteristics of Non-Profit Organizations
There are lots of interesting things to know about each individual nonprofit organization, but all nonprofits share one thing: They're not in it to for the money. Generally, you can measure a good business by its bottom line—whether it makes money or not. But how do you measure the effectiveness of a nonprofit that needs money? In this lesson, you will start to look into it.
Finding Funding Sources—Foundations
The hunt for funding sources is the eternal game of hide and seek that grant writers have to consider. How do you find sources that might be appropriate for you? This lesson will point you toward the most effective research tools available.
Finding Out About Your Foundation Prospects
Once you find some foundations that you think might be a good fit for your cause, how do you choose among a field that might include hundreds? In this lesson, you will learn different ways to sift through these foundations, and in the course of this process, you may unearth sources you haven't even considered.
Finding Out About Your Corporate Prospects
You have looked at all the possible charitable foundations that fit your cause, but don't stop there. What about the corporate world? Corporations have foundations, but they also have other ways of giving. This lesson focuses on packaging your projects for corporations.
Doing the Numbers
Even if you're a word person, you'll need to learn another way to tell your story—by letting the numbers do the talking. The people who review your proposals will attach great importance to numbers, so you can't get away with only describing a project with words. In this lesson, you will learn about preparing numbers effectively. It's not hard to do, but it's essential to the success of your proposal.
Assembling Your Proposal
By the time you reach this lesson, you will have all the pieces you need for your proposal. Now it's time to put them all together and add the finishing touches so you can finally put a complete proposal in the mail.
So You Don't Get a Gift—What Now?
In the grant writing industry, you won't win them all. But when you do get a turndown, there are positive alternatives to doom and gloom. The suggestions in this lesson will help you deal with those inevitable turndowns.
So You Get a Gift—What Now?
Okay, just as you hoped—you did get a gift. There's an old saying in this business: Every gift paves the way to the next. This lesson will ensure you know just how to pave that road.
Some Thoughts About Writing Grant Proposals to Individuals
Now that you have all the elements you need for your proposal; can you also send it to an individual? Partially, yes. But you need to think about what would interest an individual and how you can best present your proposal to them; that's what this final lesson covers.
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