The secrets to writing a winning grant proposal
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- Опубліковано 30 кві 2020
- In this video, Marte Siebenhar walks through ways to begin or improve your grant writing and unlock funding for your creative work or organization.
Like this video? Please like, comment, and subscribe for more like this: bit.ly/practicalcreativity
Here Marte shares:
- What it takes to be successful in writing a grant
- What a grant is, and who gives them out
- Troubleshooting: why your applications haven't been advancing
- How grants for artists are different from organization grants
- What not to do when creating grant proposals
- Real-life examples of what artist and organization grantors are looking for
- How long it takes to prepare a good proposal
- Why attachments can make or break a proposal
- What to do after you submit your grant
- How to contact her with any questions: info@culturedinnovations.com
Marte Siebenhar, founder of Cultured Innovations, created this video as a tool to help you. She is a classically trained professional musician, coach, and consultant.
Find her here: www.culturedinnovations.com
/ culturedinnovations
/ culturedinnovations
Than you so much for this information. I was so scared of this process, but you simplified things for me.🙏
So glad you found it helpful! Thanks for sharing your experience.
Thank you, I was just asking the universe for grants ❤ namaste
You're welcome! Let me know how it turns out!
exceptional video Cultured Innovations. I smashed that thumbs up on your video. Always keep up the excellent work.
Thank you!
Thanks so much, hoping to gain more details
Hey Arthur, you're welcome! I've found that the best way to gain more details is to create your best draft and share it with an experienced grant writer who can help you and give you feedback on where your application is strong and where it could use some work, clarity, or a fresh approach. I've learned all of what I know by doing, so would encourage you to keep going! And if you don't get funded, you can always ask for feedback on your application. Many foundations do this to help their potential grantees create stronger applications, and it's well worth the time if your funder is willing to share what works for them, to be successful in submitting their applications.
Thank you very much for the insight, it's very helpful. However I wish to enquire on the best way to approach grant writing when you're a new organization with no background tools such as previous annual report, social media presence and past projects?
Start to gather any stories you have about your organization and make plans to document your work. Hire a photographer and sometimes you can also commission a blog post or op ed about your work by a local writer, and you can also write these yourself. In my experience, if the story of your org’s work isn’t out there yet, you’ll have better luck getting known and having fabulous materials for uploads if you get that storytelling started. Consider survey results and testimonials from the partners and beneficiaries of your work. Hope that helps!
@@the_businesshealer Thank you very much. I will do that and hopefully give you feedback in good time!
@@ebenezernobela7761 excellent, please do circle back! Best of luck to you.
Wow! Thank you so much! Super informative.
I have a layered dream to start a community garden where I live but I have no money to buy land, I’m not an organization or (501c3) yet. I do have a team of people and some materials ready and waiting. I would like it donation based but I also don’t want to be stuck not completing a task because we didn’t get enough donations. I want to involve schools, and elderly homes, Art, live music, 4H, spirit horse events, tai chi, dog park, cob oven pizza restaurant, I want to host primitive skills classes, pottery classes, mycology classes, apiary garden, astrology classes, I want to host farmers markets and have craft tents on site, if the place is big enough I want to maybe incorporate a small ren. fair, or settlers events. Things that our community does already, and loves, and people want more of. So basically a community garden/park that has many different events to bring community together.
I personally know teachers in all of these skills, locally, and have talked to them about starting up something like this, and I’m happy to say they all want to be a part of this. They need someone with a dream to organize this idea into a tangible reality and I am so the person for this idea, after all it is my idea. I’m just not a numbers person by nature. And I’ve never been very business driven. I’m a worker Bee 🐝 for sure. It’s not that I can’t learn, its that I don’t know where to start. I’ve always been the person working on all of these community projects in my lifetime and not been the person in the office. So I know how thing like this need to be organized and advertised and the social anthropology behind the whole deal. I have never owned all aspects of this task before. I am not about money really. If I could keep money out of this idea I think it would keep the idea pure, however now a days we can’t really do much without money... like buy acres of land. I want this so badly! It’s so seemingly easy until I start to bring in the paperwork part. Could you maybe point me in the write direction.
Thank you for reading my ridiculously long rant.
Thanks for your comment and watching the video! Grantwriting is about matching a specific funder's priorities with the right project you are proposing, which is a bit different from what you're asking. For general fundraising, in my experience, focusing on relationship building above making asks is key. People give to people, and then to causes they believe in, and usually, only after they know, like, then trust you. Perhaps creating a small version (like an experiment) of your project and inviting people to experience it can help build trust and allows people's imaginations to not just hear about or visualize, but actually witness your idea-in-action. If you're doing such an experiment, perhaps you could capture and share it, and get people's feedback on what you are doing. Then, let them know you're looking for funding and would appreciate any ideas or leads. Often people are generous with advice, and sometimes that leads to funding. But overall, the fundraiser's superpower is to weather the "nos" without letting them derail your intention. Don't take it personally--"no" is part of the process. But if you don't make an ask, whether it's advice (which you already did here, yay!) or funding, it's certain you won't get what you're looking for. Be brave and good luck!
Can you explain the difference between goals, outcomes, and objectives? They are ask for these on grant applications and even though I’ve written at least 10 grants by now I still get confused on the difference between these.
Great question! This is a common one. For me, I look at goals as the “why”-the zoomed-out, top-level things you are accomplishing though your programs and activities.
The objectives are “how” you will pursue those goals. Describe these in as much detail as possible (or as much as you can, and still fit into character counts), and the outcomes are “what” will result from going about the “why” through the “how.”
For instance, if your goal is ending poverty, you might have a starting objective of mapping the areas of high need for what current services are provided to that area by deploying surveys and doing interviews with x number or percent of the population to assess current/existing and potential local solutions, and then the outcome is that you develop a pilot program that responds to the primary needs sourced though the initial data collected, then you could share the work plan in detail on a subsequent question. Hope this is helpful, feel free to email me at info@culturedinnovations.com to set up a time to chat if you have further questions, happy to chat further. Good luck out there in the meantime!
Hi I'm a startup business based in Cape Town, South Africa and I'm looking for a grant for startup. Any advice you have for me
I am less familiar with the for-profit business funding landscape/outside of the US, but perhaps some of these ideas would transfer to where you are. Many local governments here have an economic development agency with an arm focused on small businesses, where you can find networking opportunities and access to capital (grants, loans, etc).
Grants in the US are available locally, regionally and nationally for new and small businesses, but in my experience, those grant application processes are often very complex, highly detailed, and intensive, and the process isn't super user-friendly. Often, what's required to be successful is an experienced grant writer or advisor who has submitted successful grants to such agencies in the past, or who has high familiarity with the technical aspects of the grant requirements. It's useful to have someone to advise or translate what the funder is really looking for, that isn't obvious to someone who isn't fluent in government-speak or in that specific funding opportunity. I probably wouldn't recommend a first-timer trying to tackle this process just due to sheer volume of work and unlikely odds to succeed without a connection to someone who is more familiar with the process.
That said, there are some fabulous networks in each locale where peers and experienced, funded organizations will have specific advice for accessing your area's opportunities for grant funding. There are also some free resources to entrepreneurs such as Axis Helps and SCORE, which can offer coaching, guidance, and sometimes funding. I would suggest getting to know some startup peers in your ecosystem to learn from, get mentoring, and have a better sense of how to navigate the landscape of opportunities. Hope this is helpful.
foundation center database whats that called now?
hi Paul, I believe it's the Foundation Directory Online (FDO). Hope that helps!
@@the_businesshealer Nam myoho Renge Kyo...thanks
@@paulostrowski6280 You're welcome!
If a grant source wants their money to go to a specific purpose, and won't bend, then they have to file to become that kind of foundation, for their money. Different applications are hard to follow, convert to an acceptable language/order, and then contribute all of the time and resources necessary to submit a worthy application. Old school should come back in to support those that specialize in the charity give.
Thanks for your comment! I agree that it can be tough to navigate the process with many of the funders asking roughly the same questions but wanting applicants to hit their own very specific priorities. It's definitely a process that foundations design for themselves rather than their users, and I've only heard of a couple of instances where there is a "universal application" for funding across foundations that have agreed on a basic set of questions. Wouldn't that be nice for all of us?
That means that the onus is on the applicant to recognize each funder's own specific priorities, strategize internally as to how to best frame their work to show their work meets those priorities (which many orgs do, but don't necessarily talk about in that way that speaks to the funder), and complete this process for every distinct funder, every application, every time. It's a big lift! There are a couple of foundations that are simple and old-school, with short applications and big funding, but they are in the minority. My advice is to keep going! And it helps to target the funders that are the absolute best fit for your work, not to waste your time trying to do narrative backflips in hopes of the "maybes." Good luck, and keep at it!