Finding funding
Grants for non-profit organizations
Ross Woods, based on Geoff Pearson, Agenda communication, 2005. Reformatted 2022.
Finding funders
The first stage is to look for organizations that give funding. Although this e-book only discusses grants, there is a variety of government allowances for at-risk groups:
Long-term unemployed
Rehabilitation of the mentally unwell
Indigenous persons
Persons over normally employable age
Incentive schemes for training and traineeships
Etc.
In some of these cases, funding is not competitive. As long as you qualify, the funding is provided.
Start by pooling your knowledge. Here’s a surprise: everybody in your own organization knows of one source of funding that nobody else knows.
Ask people you know. Networking is essential. People in government have enormous networks of their own, partly because they tend to move from place to place. If you ask the right questions, they can refer you around in their networks. The key questions are:
What funding is available in the next 6-12 months?
What other people or organizations should I contact?
Where is it advertised/publicized?
Do you have a mailing list?
Government departments are not the only source; some funding agencies are private.
You will need to work with others and look for synergies. You may be able to put together funding applications in cooperation with people with whom you would normally compete.
Keep track of advertised funding. The task of keeping up to date on what is available is too big for any one individual. You should allocate people different avenues: websites, newspapers, etc. Then regularly put funding on meeting agendas to pool knowledge, and make sure it is written down in your organization. You don’t want people to leave and take the knowledge with them. With time, you’ll build a good database and a pool of fund-seeking expertise.
Interpret the brief
"The brief" is usually a formal statement of what is required to gain funding, stating all conditions specific to the grant. Read through the whole brief at least twice. Unfortunately some of them are not well written, and jargon is often a significant problem.
Then ask these questions. The answers may be in more than one place in the brief.
What is the overall goal of the brief?
What specific goals are there?
What are the essential criteria that you must address?
Are essential criteria equally weighted? If not, how are they weighted?
What constraints must you consider?
Eligibility
Methodology
Evaluation
Budget
Timeframe
Composition of project team
Credentials of project team
What must funds not be used for?
What background knowledge is relevant to making a proposal?
What practical outcomes are you expected to achieve?
Fully discuss everything with others when you interpret the brief. Make sure you clearly understand the terms of the brief. Pooling your thoughts will make better sense of it, because different people see different things in the brief. There may also be things written between the lines or strings attached. Some conditions may be so simple and obvious you can easily ignore them.
Read other documents quoted in the brief to get an idea of its background. These are often strategic policy directions that the grant supports. If you can usefully quote them in your proposal, you show that you have researched the requirements.
Ask of your interpretation: "What things did you miss? What questions arise?" Read between the lines in the brief and identify implications. Some briefs contain more than they appear.
You need to understand the funding body and their motives for doing what they do.
Don’t be afraid to speak to them:
They like explaining it.
It helps you know where they’re coming from.
It does not give you either preferential or prejudicial treatment.
You’ll seldom or never speak to anyone who’ll decide the tender, and even it happens, that person will be only one voice on the committee.
It is their job to give away the money and they want to do it. But they also need to make sure it meets their guidelines.
Look at the relevant issues and any implications they have for meeting the terms of the brief.
Briefs often ask for "innovation." This looks frustrating if you already know the best way to do what is needed and have done it before. However, "innovation" in a brief does not mean that you need to create a totally new kind of program. In this context, it means creating an alternative for the target population that didn’t exist before.
Some briefs are unclear on critical points. Ask the funding organization, but don’t accept just a phone interpretation; get it in writing. Email is the best way—write what they said on the phone in an email and get them to confirm it.
It is in their own interests to make sure these ambiguities are cleared up. No funding organization wants an applicant to come back afterward asking, "Why were we rejected? You have misinterpreted your own criteria."
Typical catches and awkward arrangements
Many funding organizations require that if accepted, your proposal will act as a contract. Don’t write in something you can’t really deliver. While you probably won’t tell fibs, be careful of exaggerations that are less than completely truthful.
Some funding proposals have two stages: An expression of interest and a full proposal, the latter of which may be negotiated.
Some funding for large projects is given half at commencement and half at completion. This is hard for a small organization because it has to pay for the second half out of its own resources and then get reimbursed. See if you can get other organizations to put in the interim funding.
Some funding is dollar-for-dollar, which is not much use for small organizations. It could be useful if you can provide something in kind when you have grossly under-used resources (e.g. vacant office space, staff with low workloads, program development already done).
The funding agency might include terms that they will own copyright of materials if the proposal is accepted. They can then use and distribute them.
If you want to retain ownership of intellectual property, use pre-existing materials, and be able to prove that they are pre-existing (e.g. creation dates on computer files, backups).
Another way to go is to get authorisation to use and modify those materials within your organization. In fact a continual improvement or sustainability requirement would strongly encourage them to do so.
A provision that states: "uses only local resources" can mean that they want local organization, not interstate or overseas organizations. It can apply more to products than to other services, and especially applies to rural organizations that will source supplies in that town. In your proposal, it is ideal to state that you are a local organization acquiring supplies from local suppliers, with a preference for locally made products where they exist. You might need to add a "comparable price" clause.
The requirement "Projects will not qualify for funding if they are designed as a substitute for existing levels of expenditure by the applicant." usually means that it will be a new, especially-created program for which they are providing funding.
If the brief has a confidentiality clause, you might be able to simply copy it straight from the proposal.
Some proposals require that you advertise their organization. Depending on the situation, you can easily promise to:
put a suitable statement and their logo on all your advertising literature related to the program, such as covering letters, posters, brochures, etc.
put their brochures in applicant information packs
display their posters.
invite a guest speaker from their organization to speak to students.
Develop your idea
Brainstorm the actual criteria that will be used to assess your proposal. Get as many ideas as possible. For example, try pinning large sheets of paper on a wall and adding ideas to them as you think of new things. (It works best on paper rather than electronic documents.)
It works better if a lot of minds think about it. If you only have one mind on the job, you’ll probably miss important aspects.
Then work on the relevant ones and eliminate the irrelevant ones. Give it time for ideas to gel and important details to emerge.
Write a draft proposal
Write a rough draft of your proposal. By this stage, you should understand exactly what is required and be able to propose a good project.
Here are some key tips:
Explain clearly who you are, even if you’ve applied to the same body many times. Funding organizations tend to change the members of proposal committees fairly frequently, so your proposal will quite likely be read by people who’ve never read one of your proposals before.
Put the proposal in clear, plain English. People don’t want to get tired reading it. "Buzz words are icing on the cake. They don’t help if there’s no cake." You can leave them out.
Answer "Who, what, where, when, why, how, who for?" This is a very good thinking structure to make sure you get everything important.
Make sure you get the implementation (methodology) right. Explain exactly what you will do. The lack of explanation on this point is the most common fault in funding proposals and the reason why most of them fail. You have to demonstrate to the reader that you can do it, and within the permitted timeframe.
How much detail? Enough to show that you know exactly what you will do and how you will do it. The bigger the grant, the more detail is necessary.
Give some hard data on the target population and their exact needs.
If you have, say, four criteria to meet and your response to one of them is very weak, you should fill it out with enough concrete, useful detail.
If you need to include much statistical information, try a simple diagram. The reader can get all essential information very quickly and easily. (The alternative is to use an appendix for complex data, as long as you stay within page number limits, but it probably won’t get read.)
In competitive tendering, you need to find ways to make your idea better than those of competitors. It isn’t enough to meet all essential criteria. Many "adequate" proposals could be knocked out by better ideas.
Address desirable criteria if you want to be competitive.
Offer things that are not requested (e.g. program evaluation or impact statements, statistical reports).
Show initiative in developing the best possible idea. Look for synergies and opportunities to innovate.
If you have a bad track record with that funding organization, state how you have fixed the problem.
Budget
First, read carefully the budgetary restraints in the tender brief.
Realistically cost the job. If you are too low, it will look like you plan to do a poor quality job. If you’re too high, it will be uncompetitive. But apply for what you need. There is no problem applying for a bigger grant if you can show that it is well used and needed.
Say who will be involved. These might be instructors, support staff, guest speakers, etc.
How many hours will each one be in the project?
How much do they need to be paid? This is usually given as an hourly rate:
As a guide for paid staff, government college staff are paid anything from $35 - $95 per hour. The union would give an exact guideline.
Skilled volunteers should be valued according to their skills.
Unskilled volunteers are valued according to the national minimal wage, about $12 per hour at present. You’ll need a way of getting them to commit to the program or have back-stop people--backouts could be very difficult if you have to hire people at full pay.
How much on-costs? These include superannuation, insurance, and other employment costs. It is usually between 15%-30% of wage costs.
Any other costs: postage, phone, photocopy, couriers, travel, rent, etc. Country travel costs can be very high and proposal reviewers don’t necessary understand that, especially any distance into the wheat belt and beyond. Explain the details.
If you have otherwise unused resources, this is the place to get paid for them.
Add a profit of 5-10%. This can be used for risks and contingencies (e.g. breakdowns, etc.) If there are none, then it is yours to keep.
Get someone else to check the budget to make sure you didn’t miss anything. If you miss things and your proposal is accepted, it will be a contract and you will have to pay for those things out of your own funds.
If the budget is too high but the committee otherwise really like your proposal, they might come back to you to trim the fat, but only if you’re a community organization.
Compliance costs might be a factor in some proposals, but it might be better to include them in the itemised costs.
The point is that you deliver the service at the fee quoted. If you quote and get $50 per hour for an instructor but pay the instructor only $40, the $10 difference is yours to keep. You don’t need to disclose it as long as the person really did the work
You can make a list in the budget for your own contribution to the project. Even if capital items are disallowed in the funding proposal, you should list them as your own contribution. That’s because you are not asking them for funding for it.
Assess your idea and improve it
Evaluate your idea. Where is it strong, weak, vague, or inconsistent? Get someone else to play the devil’s advocate: find faults. (Don’t manufacture them, but expose anything that might be a real fault.)
Assess your idea against all essential criteria. Proposals that don’t clearly meet all essential criteria are knocked out on first reading.
The following criteria are not necessarily essential, but tend to be favoured by funding organizations:
The applicant
Does the proposal reflect energy and commitment?
Does it state the credentials of the people involved?
Are there more organizations involved, rather than just one?
Are there relevant letters of support?
Program design
Is the program clearly defined?
Is it the best idea? Does it have the best synergies and innovations?
Is it clearly linked to funding body’s goals all the way through the application?
Are there positive consequences and by-products? Does it lead on to something else?
Does it provide the maximum effectiveness for a greater number?
Is it sustainable?
Is risk minimised? (e.g. quality assurance, credibility, track record.)
Is it ready to go, or are there extra set-up costs?
Are outcomes measurable?
Are there other in-kind contributions?
Target population
Is there hard data on the target population and their needs?
Has the applicant demonstrated the ability to maintain contact with target group?
Does it reach a group that has not been well-funded and well-serviced?
Then edit the draft proposal. If you have started early enough, this shouldn’t be a problem.
Afterwards
Most twelve-page proposals get allocated 20 minutes of reading. If it isn’t simple enough to understand easily, the readers are less likely to favour it.
The local Department of Education essentially has three main criteria in assessing proposals:
What exactly are you going to do?
What’s in it for the funding body?
How do they know it is safe?
Their process is as follows:
They appoint a committee.
They photocopy all submissions and give each committee member a copy.
Each committee member reads all proposals and scores it on a 0-6 scale:
0 didn’t answer.
1, 2 not good
3 meets minimum requirements
4, 5, 6 exceeds minimum requirements
The proposal is rejected immediately if it does not address all essential criteria.
They look at what is good or could be better, and at the strongest points.
Then they report to the group, ranking proposals in terms of total score. The group then adds scores (to make an aggregate for the whole group) and compares comments.
Those at the top of the score and comment list are automatically approved. Others are considered. Some may need to be negotiated.
If you put in two applications that are both very good, committees tend to say:
Choose the best one
Choose only one if it’s your first proposal with them.
Go for the one that doesn’t duplicate something else that has already been approved.
For government grants, freedom of information laws give you the right to know why your application was rejected.