Many fund development professionals look back on seasoned careers and think of those first grant requests they ever sent out, where a little more talk and finesse and a little less nervous approach would have been useful in relationship building with prospective donors.
It’s a fault that everyone in nonprofit development has likely experienced at one time. The over-eager submitter; the strapped for cash startup that sends the same boilerplate proposal out to seven foundations, none of whom they have ever spoken to before; the 20 year-old seasoned nonprofit who calls a funder with a question regarding the proposal and hangs up the phone without ever introducing themselves to the person on the other end of the line.
Soliciting much needed grant funding understandably brings out the eager beaver in all of us. That’s just the problem though- it brings it out in all of us. For every unsolicited “stranger proposal” your organization sends in to a foundation, be sure that they have received 100 more unknowns and categorized them as such. Likewise, for every pile of unknown grant applications in a funder’s inbox, there is a pool of proposals with familiar names.
Familiar names may never have met the funder in person, or treated the funder to lunch. But, many have called the foundation and developed a working relationship with the front-line staff as they wrote their proposal. They’ve taken this front line relationship to the next level by requesting the email or direct phone number of the executive director, program officer or president of the board of the foundation. The bottom line- the name of your organization and your tag-line should have been seen and spoken about at that foundation office, (ideally by the executive director) before your proposal arrives.
Yes, the first step in moving out of the stranger pile is about getting your name spoken. The rest (such as long lunches and site visits) shall follow suit. Getting yourself talked about brings “relationship building” down to a simple first step. This is great, since relationship building with foundations can sometimes feels a bit more like pyramid building. The idea is to move from an “unknown” to a “known” before submitting proposal- not to introduce your organization to the funder with your proposal.
Will taking the first steps in relationship building guarantee your funding? Of course not! It can’t be said enough though, how important it is to get out of that unknown category before submitting. This will prevent the wasting of valuable time and money at proposal attempts that make their way to the bottom of the stranger pile and shortly after, to the recycle bin. Further, some foundations limit the number of attempts you can make per-annum. This means if you are tossed out, you’ll be forced into a waiting pattern of a year or sometimes longer before you can attempt another proposal. Thus, call ten times, speak five, apply once. Repeat as needed.
This approach to relationship building means that I spend more time with most clients convincing them not to apply and coaching them on relationship building than actually sending proposals in. This is part of my anti-spray & pray method of grant writing. What’s the spray & pray method? An organization sprays out as many proposals as possible, and prays for dear life that one of them is funded. This analogy is courtesy of Susan Chandler, a national Grantsmanship Center trainer and friend.
Many colleagues and clients have worked with me to develop concrete plans to steer clear of the spray & pray method and exactly why it is bad for an organization. I’ll detail this in Part II of Relationship Building, next entry.
