Providing the facts about your organization

Any funding source you approach will have questions about the grant applicant organization’s legal name and structure, such as nonprofit, unit of government (village, town, township, city, county, or state government agency), association, or membership-based organization. Although the wording may vary slightly from one application to another, the cover documents (if applicable) and narratives of grant applications generally ask for the same basic information. Understanding exactly what the application is asking for and knowing how to reply in the right language is critical.

Don’t hesitate to call or email the funding source for assistance if you have questions about any portion of the application. Asking a funder for help won’t hurt your chances of getting a grant. In fact, doing so may even help because you’re filling in online text boxes that have limited space. This means that you have to hit the funder’s expectation target with your written responses in each of the text boxes. Calling or emailing with queries is another way to connect on a higher level with potential funder communications.

If you’re trying to enter your responses into an online electronic (e-grant) application, pay special attention to any word, character, or space limitations and stay within those limits. Also, don’t try to copy and paste any graphics or other nontransferable formatting like bullets, underlining, italics, or bold font from your word-processing application into an e-grant application template. I tell you more about e-grants in Chapter 23.

The basic applicant information requested by all funders includes the following:

• Legal name of the grant applicant: Be sure to list your organization’s legal name here. For charitable organizations, associations, and foundations, the legal name is the one that appears on the organization’s IRS 501(c)(3) or 501(c)(6) letter of nonprofit determination. (If you’re not sure, 501(c)(3) is the charitable designation, and 501(c)(6) is the association or membership designation.) For cities, townships, villages, county units of government, and public schools, which have a different classification of nonprofit status, the legal name is the incorporated name.

• Type of grant applicant: Check the box that best describes your organization’s forming structure. For example, you can choose from state agency, county, municipal, township, interstate, intermunicipal, special district, independent school district, public college or university, Native American tribe, nonprofit, individual, private, profit-making organization, and other (which you have to specify). If the grant applicant is a nongovernmental organization (NGO), indicate that early on in your funding request. You may be asked for proof of registration as an NGO with your country’s approval officials. Read more about NGOs at www.state.gov/non-governmental-organizations-ngos-in-the-united-states/.

  Is your organization a type of applicant that isn't eligible? Search for a partner (government agency or nonprofit) that can be the lead grant application responder. Doing so gets dollars into the front door of your organization because you’re incorporated into the funding request as a subcontracting partner.

• Year the grant applicant organization was founded: Enter the year your organization was incorporated or created. Often, the year of incorporation differs from the creation date because many nonprofit founders start providing programs and services first and seek incorporation several years later. You need to explain any such discrepancy in your opening narrative, which is the background/history narrative section.

• Current grant applicant operating budget: Supply the organization’s 12-month operating budget total for the current fiscal year. Note that some funders also request the operating budget for the time period that the grant would cover. Always comply with whatever information is requested.

  When it comes to money, be sure to supply information that portrays the truth and nothing but the truth.

• Grant applicant organization’s employer identification number (EIN) or taxpayer identification number (TIN): This portion of the form asks for the seven-digit EIN/TIN assigned to your organization by the IRS. The EIN/TIN is also called a taxpayer reporting number. You can find the EIN/TIN on your IRS letter of nonprofit determination or by calling your organization’s financial person/department.
• Grant applicant organization’s fiscal year: Indicate the 12-month timeframe that your organization considers to be its operating, or fiscal, year. The fiscal year is defined by the organization’s bylaws and can correspond with the calendar year or some other period, such as July 1 to June 30.
• Grant applicant organization’s contact person information: Name the primary contact in your organization for grant or cooperative agreement negotiations, questions, and written correspondence. This person should be your executive director, board of directors’ president, or program director — not the grantwriter. Why? Because you, the grantwriter, have no legal or financial authority to act as the contact person. Communications clearly need to be with the governing body or the authorized executive-level staff.

• Grant applicant organization’s address: Provide the current street and/or mailing address for the applicant organization.

  Potential funders view a post office box address as a red flag because these addresses tend to be used by grassroots nonprofits and fly-by-night (here today, gone tomorrow) grant applicants. Stick with a street address on your grant application.

• Grant applicant organization’s telephone/fax/email information: List the contact person’s telephone and fax numbers (with area code) as well as an email address. Some nonprofit organizations use online fax services, such as eFax (www.efax.com).
• Grant applicant organization’s website address: Organizations seeking grant funds are wise to have a website that funders can refer to that includes an overview of the organization.

If you’re applying to a federal funder, you also need to provide the following information:

• D-U-N-S number: Federal grantmaking agencies require that all grant applicants have a D-U-N-S number that lets others more easily recognize and learn about their organizations. The D-U-N-S number is a nine-digit identification sequence that provides a unique identifier of a single business entity while linking corporate family structures together. You can register for a unique D-U-N-S number by visiting the Grants.gov website (www.grants.gov/web/grants/applicants/organization-registration/step-1-obtain-duns-number.html) and following the on-screen instructions.

  You'll need to register with SAM.gov (sam.gov/content/home) to have your D-U-N-S fully integrated for government grant identification purposes.

• Grant applicant’s congressional districts: On a federal grant application, you need to list all the congressional districts in which your organization is located and your grant-funded services will be implemented (www.govtrack.us/congress/members/map). You can also get this information by calling the public library or surfing the Internet to locate your legislator's website, which will contain their district numbers.

  Knowing and developing ties with representatives in Washington, D.C., and at your state capital is critical. You always need friends in high places. (See Chapter 4 for more on connecting to government officials.)

Writing about the project in need of funding

Filling in all the blanks on paper or electronic grant application and cooperative agreement cover forms and budget forms is critical. Leaving any fields related to applicant agency and project details blank makes you look nonresponsive, and this impression alone may stop a reviewer from reading your document any further.

Luckily, most electronic grants and letters of inquiry are programmed to alert you to missing information and won’t let you upload the document until you supply the missing information. Just in case, though, I use the following sections to highlight the blanks you must pay particular attention to so the reviewer doesn’t lose interest in your organization.

Storytelling with facts

Over the years, the field of grant writing has shifted from technical “just the facts and nothing more” writing to a kinder, friendlier way of cozying up to the grantmaker’s decision-making staff. Now, if you want to secure a grant, you must put life, personality, and compassion into your request. This type of writing approach is referred to as storytelling.

Here, I give you some great tips on the type of information to include in each section of your funding request and how to turn the ordinary into the extraordinary in each narrative section you’re likely to see in any funder’s grant application format (I provide more in-depth advice and examples for these narrative sections in Part 4):

• Background/history of the grant applicant organization: Write with passion about your organization: its founding date, its purpose, its mission, and its location. Include quaint, not-so-common information about the founder and their reason for creating a nonprofit organization.

  If you’re writing about a unit of municipal government (city, town, township, village, hamlet, or county subdivision of government), include trivia on how the community was named, started, incorporated, and so forth. Also, include information on any major grant-topic-related accomplishments the grant applicant organization has achieved.

• Current programs and activities: Write with excitement about the current initiatives the grant applicant organization is involved in. List in chronological order all the organization’s programs and activities.

  Include specific program names, dates started, and outcomes-to-date, such as the number of participants who have received services and the benefits they gained because of their involvement in the program.

• Description/demographics of your constituency: Write with accuracy about the population the grant applicant organization provides services to. Include age range, gender, ethnicity, economic status, educational level, and other characteristic descriptors. The funder needs to know whom you serve and what’s special about your target population.

  Include a case scenario, a story about how a participant has encountered multiple life barriers and is now on a waiting list to be served by the grant applicant organization.

• Description of community: Write with innate knowledge about your community’s makeup where the grant applicant organization is located or where its services will be provided. Describe the community by providing a combination of city and county information. This section is about the virtual picture of your community — facts and statistics — not trivia, which belongs in the background section.

  Use compelling words and colorful (but true!) descriptions; funders don’t want to read a book report about your town. Don’t just copy and paste census information from the Internet. Where you do use statistics, incorporate them into tables, graphics, and figures.

  Cite your sources, and don’t use statistics that are more than five years old. Copying and pasting information you find on the Internet is okay as long as you include a reference citation (footnote by copying the website address where you found the information). Just make sure your online sources are reliable. Never cite anything you find on Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_is_not_a_reliable_source#:~:text=Wikipedia%20is%20not%20a%20reliable%20source%20for%20citations%20elsewhere%20on,progress%2C%20or%20just%20plain%20wrong.&text=Wikipedia%20generally%20uses%20reliable%20secondary,vet%20data%20from%20primary%20source).

• Description of work with partnership agencies: Write about the grant applicant organization’s demonstrated partnership experiences with community, regional, state, and national partners. Create a table with header rows for partners and their roles with the grant applicant organization. You can even add a third column to the table for years of affiliation.

  You can’t copy and paste tables or other graphics into online e-grant templates. You can only include them if the funder allows you to upload word-processing files or PDFs. Chapter 23 includes more tips on e-grants.

  Add shading to the table’s header row and to each column. Just be sure to keep it legible and not distracting.

• Proposed initiative: Write with certainty about what the grant applicant organization plans to do with the grant or cooperative agreement award. State the intentions simply and directly in one or two sentences.

  Write something like “The purpose of this request is to secure the necessary financial infusion to conduct extensive research to fulfill the mission of Project R².A.I.S.E.”

• Statement of need: Write with compassion about the problem the grant applicant organization will combat with the awarded funds.

  Use gripping words to relay the gloom, doom, drama, and trauma of your situation and why your organization needs the requested funds. Be honest, cite hard data that demonstrates your need, and don’t just use anecdotal observations.

• Program design/plan of action: Write with the knowledge of demonstrated best practices about the process you’ll implement to solve the problem or need. Incorporate evidence-based practices (proven intervention/prevention best practices models, which you can find on the Internet); by doing so, you demonstrate to the funder that you’re relying on proven research to design your program. You let the funder know that you’ve taken steps to avoid reinventing the wheel. (No funder wants to pay for a clueless process of discovery when the intervention process has been perfected elsewhere.)

  • Goals: In futuristic and global terms, create numbered project goals.

    Detail where the target population will be when the grant funds have been expended.

  • SMART objectives: These specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, and time-bound objectives show the funder how you’ll measure the program’s success.

    Write percentage-driven benchmarks for your target population or program that are achievable within the grant period (including annual benchmarks for multiyear requests).

  • Activities/strategies: Write about the proposed activities, tasks, or strategies you’ll implement to reach your goals.

    Put this information into table format and shade each row and column differently (but don’t use too many colors).

  • Timeline: Incorporate target dates for your objectives and activities/strategies. Note when the objectives will happen and when the activities will start and end. A timeline presented in a table looks great to readers. This timeline chart or table is often referred to as a Gantt or implementation chart. When the applications indicate required elements in the timeline, be sure to include every required element in your final timeline chart.

    Shade your rows and columns if the funder allows graphics; otherwise, just include the information in narrative format.

  • Impact on problem: Write about how the grant applicant organization’s proposed action will reduce the problems discussed in the statement of need.

    Note how similar interventions or preventions in other locales demonstrated impact and resolution of the problem(s).

  • Project significance: Write about the impact the grant applicant organization’s project will have on the target population from a wide viewpoint.

    Write this section in italics. When you incorporate italics, you’re speaking more directly to the grant reader/decision maker. Project significance can be stated in a brief paragraph.

  • Systemic change: Write about how the program the grant applicant organization plans to develop with funding support will positively change society or improve rigid and antiquated systems.

    Use futuristic, hopeful language.

  • Performance evaluation plan: Write about who will conduct the performance evaluation, what it will cover, and the timeframe for evaluation activities. Keep in mind that the collection of frequent and unbiased feedback from members of the grant’s target population is critical to an accurate performance evaluation.

    If the funder’s format allows graphics, create tables that incorporate the previously written SMART objectives (see the earlier bullet) and how they will be measured. Otherwise, present this information in narrative format.

  • Dissemination of evaluation findings: Write about who will receive a copy of the evaluation findings. Dissemination of evaluation materials is important for reporting to current funders and can sway future funding sources when you attach them to grant applications and cooperative agreements.

    Propose to disseminate findings beyond your local areas. For example, present the findings at a national conference or regional round table where other organizations will benefit from your experiences and results.

• Key personnel/staffing: Write with familiarity about the staff, contracted consultants, and volunteers needed to carry out the program or project. For each position, indicate what percentage of the person’s time will be allocated to the project and which budget — cash match, in-kind, or requested — their salary will come from. (Cash match refers to cash your organization has available to allocate to the grant-funded program, when funded.)

  Format position titles and time allocated to the projects in bold.

• Management plan/organizational structure/administration: Write with confidence about who will report to whom and where the built-in assurances of administrative and financial responsibility will be established. Be sure to add your financial staff to the management plan. Funders want to see that your organization has strong financial accounting and stewardship practices in place.

  Incorporate this information into a narrative paragraph.

• Sustainability: Write with accountability about how the grant applicant organization will continue some or most of the grant-funded program components after the initial grantfunding timeframe has ended.

  Tell funders about the funding plan your board of directors and administrative staff or development office staff have in place. Let them know that you’ll be working hard to identify continuation funding for their starting grant investments.

• Adequacy of resources: Write with confirmation about any financial, physical, and personnel resources the grant applicant organization already owns or has access to that can be used for program activities.

  Use dashes to list the resources.