if you're thinking of applying for grants to fund part of your nonprofit organization's efforts what
are the typical components of a grant application that you might encounter that's what i'm going to
go through in this video welcome or welcome back to my channel my name is amber melanie smith and
i'm a non-profit founder and executive director of the nonprofit that i started i've written quite
a few grants in my time in the nonprofit world for better or worse um when some you lose some
and i'm excited to share some of the things that i've picked up from that experience so um i hope
that you find this video helpful and useful and if you do please give it a like and subscribe to
my channel for more content like this i also have some resources on my website foundertofulltime.com
including a couple of online trainings one of which is all about fundraising and i go into
a lot greater detail about grant writing in there too so check that out so i've covered a bit about
grants and grant writing and some of my other videos including what types of grants exist
out there for non-profits and some of the things you might need to prepare before you can start
writing grants or being competitive for grants so i encourage you to check out some of those
other videos and i have a whole playlist just about grant writing so hopefully those will all
help you out but in this video i want to go back to the basics i want to talk you through some
of the most common components of a typical grant application or proposal that you might encounter
and i will say if you can take the time to think about your answers or how you would respond to
each of these typical sections of a grant proposal early on you're going to have a lot smoother and
easier grant writing experience so i hope that you kind of think to yourself as as i go through these
how would my organization or or i answer this particular section and just start brainstorming
that in advance and writing down in your notes as you think of things all right so let's get
right into these i'm going to go through about 14 components and just briefly explain what they are
component number one is something you are likely to encounter before you even start writing the
actual application or proposal portion of the grant and that is an eligibility quiz the idea
here is that funders want to essentially screen out those organizations who they already know
are not going to be eligible for applying for a grant with their organization so in an eligibility
quiz you might encounter such questions as what geography do you serve do you have your tax exempt
registration officially filed with your government what populations do you serve what is your budget
size sometimes foundations or grant funders only want to support organizations of a particular
geographical region or of a particular budget size or you know who serves a particular target
population so this is their way of screening you out or if you pass knowing that you're likely
to be a decent fit for their funding opportunity the second component is of course the application
itself and all of the pieces of that most founder i'm sorry most funders that i encounter these days
do have online applications i still come across the occasional um old school like
write a grant proposal in a word doc and mail it in but that's very rare these days i would
highly recommend though even if you're doing an application online that you do write your answers
to the grant questions in a separate document so that you can save them in case you need to
edit them or collaborate with other team members before submitting it on an online application
and sometimes those online applications do not save your drafts for you so you need to
have a safe place where you can do that the third component is just your organization basics things
like the name of your organization of course the organization's mission perhaps the year it was
founded your organization's website url perhaps even a little bit of organizational history here
major milestones over the past couple of years if you are an organization that has been around
for a couple of years etc the fourth component is the need statement and this is a very very
important part of your grant application the funders want to know what need in the
community or in your geographical service area is your organization meeting or filling through
its programs presumably the same programs that you are seeking funding support for and funders
are looking for you to back all of this up in your needs statement with well done research
and citing your sources so it's going to ask you questions like uh how many people are affected by
the area by the by the particular issue area that you're tackling let's say that your organization
is tackling hunger or food insecurity so how many people in your region are impacted by
hunger and food insecurity who is impacted how deeply are they affected by this problem and what
are the statistics and the data proving that this is the problem at the scale that you describe it
in your proposal the fifth component is something i alluded to a little bit earlier and that is your
organization or program's target audience this is basically who does your organization serve
is it children is it animals is it um particular areas of the earth is it a particular age range
or group of people is it just women you know like what are the demographics of the target
population that your organization serves through its programs that are seeking funding
in the sixth component of a typical grant proposal you and by the way these are not in order so i'm
just saying it's six on my list you're going to be putting forth the description of your
program or services so we spent a little bit of time in the other areas of the application talking
about the community need and the target population while in this program or project description
you're now talking about how you're meeting those needs so here you want to provide
a description of your programs what activities does your program undertake in order to meet
the or the outcomes that you desire for uh serving the people that you want to serve so what are the
goals of the program and how are you meeting those goals day to day the seventh thing on my list
um is of course the amount of funding that you're requesting from that funder so what is the actual
dollar amount you are asking that funder for and i will give you a little bit of advice here
funders typically want to obviously know how much you're asking for from them but they also want
to know how much you have already secured or are seeking from other funders as well and the reason
is that it's very rare that a funder will want to provide all of the funding you need for a program
or your organization they want to know that you have buy-in from other community supporters so
probably it would not be advisable to ask for more than 20 to 30 percent and i'm just throwing out a
number that sounds right to me 20 to 30 percent of your programs total budget from a single funder so
just be thinking about that as you go to apply for grants considering who else you're going to
ask for contributions in order to piece together the total amount that you need understanding that
a single funder is not gonna most likely want to or be able to provide a hundred percent of
everything you need eight is your goal outputs and outcomes so this gets to the heart of the
question of if you got this funding how many people or or whomever is in your target audience
would you be able to effectively serve during the grant period usually a year or a couple of years
so they want to know the outputs which is the resulting products or services from your
activities and then they want to know the outcomes which is the actual change that has occurred in
the lives of the people you're serving so take the example of homelessness an output might be
the number of people that your organization placed in affordable housing that's something you've done
in the short term but the long term outcome might be something like how what percent of those people
actually stayed out of the cycle of homelessness five years later so the funder wants to know what
are those short term outputs and those long term outcomes so that they can see your vision for
tackling your problem that your organization is tackling over the long term ninth is the timeline
of your program or project how long do you expect the program to take if it's if it's ongoing then
what does an example timeline look like for that particular year so what are the activities
you're undertaking in the months of march and april and then in june through the summer et
cetera what does a typical year look like for your organization and the program being funded
tenth is how are you going to measure success for your program we talked about outputs and
outcomes and how those are important but what are the actual tools and strategies you're going to
use to measure whether or not you have met those goals those outputs and those outcomes will it
be focus groups will it be surveys will it be tracking the data of the people that you have
served you need to describe in this section your actual methods for determining whether you have
met your goals eleventh is partnerships and collaborations a lot of organizations who
are providing grants love to see collaboration between organizations so in a section like this
the funder is looking for you to say whether you have partners in that particular program
who those partners are and then describe why those organizations are the ideal partners
for the initiative and it can sometimes be other nonprofits or businesses government
agencies etc twelfth is your current annually approved budget so funders want to see a copy
of your organization's budget for that year and they're talking about the version of the budget
that has been approved by a vote of your board of directors so this is the official budget for your
organization 13th is past financial records so a funder might ask to see past tax forms in the
united states this might be the form 990 that you would file for your organization each year
or a past audit the goal here is that the funder wants to make sure that your organization has
sound financial practices and that they're able to make sure that you do by looking at your records
the 14th component is just the extras a couple of other things that funders might ask for could
include your list of board members it could include copies of some of the policies that
your organization has like a conflict of interest policy or an anti-discrimination policy they just
want to see more about the infrastructure and the strength of your organization's
systems and operations in some of these extras that you might encounter okay it can feel like
a lot i know but if you can plan for these sections in advance like i mentioned before
you're gonna feel way more prepared and be able to get through grant applications a lot more
smoothly so i really hope that this sort of overview of just some of the things you might
encounter has been helpful for you so now i want to hear from you are you thinking of applying for
a grant which sections that i just talked about feel like they might end up being the hardest for
you or the easiest i'd love to kind of hear your feedback so be sure to share in the comments below
and as i mentioned before if you are starting a non-profit or trying to develop your fundraising
plan check out my website foundertofulltime.com for some resources i hope those will help you out
finally i have a newsletter for non-profit leaders and change makers i send out resources and
thoughts and ideas every month the link to subscribe to that if you're interested is in the
comments below as well and check out my facebook group change the world or bust we've got a couple
thousand folks in there from all around the world who are passionate about making an impact talking
about their journeys and what they're working on so come join us there i hope that you found this
helpful once again i'm amber melanie smith and i hope to see you next time thank you so much bye