What’s Your Grant strategy?

Some charitable programs are perfect matches for specific grant opportunities. Your youth program is starting a garden project, so you apply for a grant that funds youth garden projects. No overarching strategy required.

But when you take a look at all of the services you offer, services that of course need funding year after year, some old some new, some big some small, some innovative but some predictable--how can you package them into fresh, timely, themed initiatives? How do you make the same old story sound compelling and new?

I once got asked to spiff up an important proposal for a regional food bank. The organization wanted to go for the maximum grant amount so had listed multiple food assistance services with associated costs. Each was important and clearly met community needs, but unfortunately the proposal read like a wish list of random items.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t a slam dunk either.

I sat with it until I saw a thread, a theme. In addition to ongoing, core food bank type services, the organization was adding a few new services targeted at increasing fresh produce consumption and increasing participation from underserved groups. The new services were small budget items compared to the recurring core services, but they had the potential to make those same-old, basic (and of course utterly essential) services provided for decades by every food bank in the nation seem special.

I gave the collection a name: Better Nutrition for All. We were able to link the food bank’s basic, unchanging services with timely themes of inclusivity and nutrition as a social determiner of health.

Not only did the organization receive full funding for this big proposal, but it worked in reverse too. Smaller asks for single line items seemed a lot more compelling within this overarching context. New sources of funding opened up. The organization even won a competitive national award.

All because we gave it a name.

The next year, we looked at emerging community needs, budgeted for some tweaks in services to meet those needs, repackaged the whole thing, and gave it a new name.

Annual fund managers will immediately recognize this approach. Each year, the same ask from the same people needs a new theme, new stories, maybe even a new logo. But it works as a strategy for grants too.

So I ask, what is your grant strategy?