1. Secure Informational Interviews

The best way to start your foundation research process is by asking peers at other organizations how they go about fundraising from foundations, and what they’ve learned along the way. We’re all in this together, and nonprofits are pretty good about sharing resources and best practices. You will likely gain insights into particular funders that may be a fit for you and where your contacts know someone. In addition, look locally. Who funds your geographic location, and which of them care about the issues you’re focused on? If you are new to foundation fundraising, try to secure two to three informational interviews with local or regional foundations that support similar work.

These interviews will help you gather facts, hone your meeting skills, and get a sense of how foundation funding works in your area. The goal of this initial process isn’t fundraising per se, but is for you to learn about foundation fundraising overall. Often, though, even though you’re not really going into your full pitch, you can still get practice summarizing your work to funders. In addition, you can also secure valuable input on potential targets and regarding that particular foundation’s grantmaking process, and gain helpful insights on how to refine your efforts moving forward.

To secure these meetings, simply call or email with meeting requests. Make it clear you’re just looking for an informational interview that you’re new to foundation fundraising, keep your message short, and include who you are, and a short snippet of your work. Again, make it clear that you’re not soliciting and that you just want to hear their input on foundation fundraising overall. This will help you develop relationships that can be used in the future.

2. Get Your House in Order

Are your organization’s mission, strategy, and programs well-established and clearly articulated? Do you have a strategic or operating plan in place to provide confidence that your strategy is well-established and feasible? Do you have financial systems in place so you can track and monitor impact, especially as it relates to grants? Things such as program evaluations, quarterly reports, and impact reports will help foundations feel confident that you have the staff and systems in place to deliver on what you want to do and adequately report on your progress and impact. Aggregate these key documents so they’re easy to access and share, and make sure you familiarize yourself with them before talking with potential funders.

3. Prepare Your Pitch

Now that you have your strategy in place, take the time to identify exactly what you want to fund and how much capital is required. This starts with your overall organizational needs, but also includes each of your programs, plus the initiatives you’d like to launch if and when they’re funded. These “fundables,” as I like to call them, are like arrows in a quiver, and being crystal clear about each of them will help you seize opportunities that arise with potential funders and donors.

Simply identifying your needs, with clear budgets for each, is not sufficient; prepare a one-page overview for each of your fundables, along with a compelling 30- to 45-second elevator pitch that succinctly conveys the need, your solution, and the impact it will have. It’s crucial that you be able to articulate your organization’s mission and goals in an inspirational yet concise way, as well as each of your programs and initiatives. Knowing these elevator pitches really well is absolutely critical to succeeding in fundraising, including securing and maximizing foundation calls and meetings. Practice these short pitches in advance as much as possible and ask for input to fine-tune them on an ongoing basis. This will prepare you to present whatever fits best with the priorities of funders and donors.

4. Narrow Your Sights

Once you’ve completed the above steps, you’re ready to conduct the research needed to identify your most likely funders. The best resource for finding potential funders is Foundation Center’s Foundation Directory Online, which is available online through paid subscriptions and can also be used for free through Foundation Center offices in five U.S. cities, as well as through its network of more than 450 libraries and community centers worldwide.

More importantly, when you access their robust database through these venues, an experienced guide can help direct your efforts and show you the in’s and out’s of their system. If you’re not as concerned with having an expert support your search, another unpaid option is their Foundation Directory Online Free, which provides grantseekers with essential information about nearly 90,000 foundations and enables keyword searches for more than 250,000 IRS Forms 990-PF.

The Grant Professionals Association is another great resource that offers free access to its prospect research database through regional partners and a paid online subscription. And of course, there’s the Internet. Use the Web to research specific foundation prospects once you identify them through other tools, and also to identify the funders of other organizations in your field and region. Once you have a list of prospects, dive deeper and determine what drives their giving and, ultimately, whether they’re truly a fit for your needs. Prioritize your leads based on connection and capacity—just as with individual and major donors—and whittle your list down to the top 20 or 30 prospects, so you can focus your efforts where you’re most likely to gain traction and funding.

5. Get in the Door

I promised to share the secret to increasing your grantwriting success rate from 5 percent to 50 percent when we started this chapter. It starts with what I personally consider the cardinal rule of foundation fundraising: never apply for a grant unless you’re invited. You wouldn’t show up to a party you weren’t invited to, and the same is true in foundation fundraising. But this isn’t as easy as it may sound; program officers and other grantmaking decision-makers are very busy, so you’ll need to be both persistent and strategic in your outreach to get that crucial call or meeting.

The best way in the door is through leveraging a personal connection to the foundation. If you or someone on your board or staff knows someone at the foundation, even if it’s the office manager, have him or her make a personal introduction. LinkedIn is a helpful tool to uncover these connections, and you can also obtain the foundation’s board and staff list from their website or Foundation Center’s database. Email that to your team and ask whether anyone knows any of the people there, but do this with one prospect at a time, so you don’t overwhelm your board and staff with requests. If you’re lucky enough to find a connection and get an introduction, follow up immediately and, if you don’t hear back, continue to follow up every 10 or 20 days until you do. The key to success here is walking the fine line between being persistent and being annoying.

Your initial message should be brief: keep it to no more than one-to-two short paragraphs and focus on getting the call or meeting or a referral to a decision-maker. Thank your colleague for the introduction and quickly summarize why you think you’re a fit with the foundation’s priorities. Use the language of the organization, if possible, for example: “Given your work eradicating poverty in San Francisco, I’d love to talk with you about our innovative microlending program.” Anything that lends an authentic connection also helps; perhaps you went to the same university, you have a friend in common, or you’re partnering with one of their other grantees. Most importantly, propose one or two specific days and times a week or two away for the call or a meeting. Again, if you do not hear back, follow up every other week or so. You may also have luck by reaching out to the decision-maker’s assistant or the relevant program associate to see whether that person can get you on the program officer’s calendar or refer you up the chain of command.

Finally, be sure to leverage social media. You can glean a lot of important information through Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Facebook and LinkedIn are great for identifying shared connections, and Twitter is a useful forum to gain a better understanding of both the foundation and the program officer’s interests and to build social capital by retweeting and following them. Google Alerts (http://google.com/alerts) is another useful tool, especially if you’re having a hard time securing a call or meeting. Set an alert for the program officer’s name and you’ll receive an email whenever a new web page is posted that references him or her, including speaking engagements. Then you can prioritize attending those events and meeting your prospect in person.

6. Maximize Your Meeting

Once you’ve secured your call or meeting, your primary goal is to secure an invitation to apply for funding, which will double the 5 percent success rate of going in “cold.” Just as being invited to a party is useless without the date, address, and time, success with foundation fundraising requires a bit more effort. Spend the first five or ten minutes of your conversation building the relationship, asking the program officer to share a bit about his or her background and connection to the work, and then ask open-ended questions to ascertain what drives the foundation’s and program’s funding decisions. This is essentially the same as the “appreciative inquiry” process outlined in Chapter 9.

It’s critical that you do your homework before your call or meeting; nothing turns off program offices more than fielding questions that can be answered through their website. Instead, focus on “level two” questions that both demonstrate your familiarity with their efforts and provide useful insights as you prepare to contextualize your pitch in a way that’s most compelling given their goals. For example, why did the foundation choose to focus on combating climate change, specifically by reducing carbon emissions? What specific impact are they hoping to generate from the grants they make? Ultimately, you are trying to figure out how you can help them do their job and fulfill their mandate. If they indicate that they are not interested in this level of conversation and relationship building, don’t force it and move immediately to your pitch.

Now comes what I call the “pasta test,” where you quickly share your various elevator pitches and see what sticks. As outlined above, 30 to 45 seconds is all you should need to give them a top line of each of your fundables, and be sure to only share the pitches that are most likely to resonate. Make sure to pause between pitches in case the program officer has any questions, but often he or she will wait until you’re finished with the aggregate 3- or 4-minute pitch before asking questions and sharing which of your initiatives are most interesting. It helps to say in advance that you’d like to share a bit about your organization and X particular initiatives that you believe may be of interest.

Typically, he or she will let you know if anything resonates and feels like a fit, and why. Take copious notes and be sure to capture which initiatives are of interest and the exact language the program officer uses to explain why it’s compelling. For example, “I think your vocational training program could be a potential fit for our economic security program, given our commitment to offering those in need a hand up, not a hand out.” Many times this language is used internally and guides decision making, but cannot be found on their website or public documents, and you’ll want to include it in your proposal.

If the program officer doesn’t indicate that any of your pitches are a clear fit, you will need to ask outright by saying something like: “I see you’re taking applications for your environment program, and I think our climate change initiative might be a good fit. What do you think?” or “I know you don’t accept unsolicited proposals. Do you think we’re a fit? Can we receive an invitation to apply?” Either way, if you proposed something in alignment with their goals, they may well ask questions and want to know more about the initiative. Go as far down the rabbit hole as your audience wants, but always remember to focus on the need and the impact.

At this point, you’ve received an offer to apply for grants for specific fundables, and hopefully secured a bit of context in terms of why they’re a fit, but your success rate is still only 25 percent or so. Your work isn’t quite done yet!

Your next step is to ask what size grant you should write for each of the fundables the person expressed interest in. Your research will likely give you a sense of an appropriate ask amount, which should be on the high end of their range, since they’ll tell you if you’re overreaching. But if you’re operating in a vacuum, I suggest giving a range of 50 to 100 percent of a program’s budget, or 12.5 to 25 percent of your total budget for a general operating support grant, since funders never want to underwrite your entire organization.

This sounds something like: “Thanks so much for your interest in our art therapy program! The overall program budget for next year is $100,000. Would it be realistic to apply for the full amount, or as a first-time grantee, might $50,000 be more reasonable?” or “We’re ecstatic to hear that you’d consider making an unrestricted grant to support Save the Whales! Our operational budget next year is $1 million. Do you think a quarter-million-dollar grant request is reasonable, or would $125,000 be more appropriate?” After each ask, be silent and let the person think and respond. It’s critical that the program officer be the next person to speak.

Providing the foundation with two options often leads to a response that also includes a range, for example: “Well, honestly, even $50,000 is well beyond our grantmaking range. We typically keep first-time grants to $10,000, but perhaps we could consider something as large as $25,000.” The next thing you’re writing down after that statement is the ask amount for your proposal: $25,000. In your proposal, always ask for as much funding as possible within the range they’ve shared.

About one-third of the grants written at this point will hit home, but there’s one final piece of the puzzle that can take you to 50 percent, which I call my “Jedi mind trick.” After you have all the other information outlined above, ask the program officer if he or she would be willing to review a draft of your proposal before it’s formally submitted. If he or she agrees, make sure to ask when you need to send the draft to leave enough time for the review. Realistically, though, I’ve used this trick many times and program officers almost always say “yes,” but almost never deliver. That’s OK: what you’re after isn’t edits and fine-tunes, although that’d be even better, but more importantly, your goal is to get the program officer to “adopt” your proposal and actively champion it as it’s reviewed internally.

Now that you have the 50 percent secret, there’s only one final question to ask, which is who else you might approach for funding. Program officers tend to be knowledgeable and well connected in the areas they fund, so they are a great resource for identifying additional prospects. As any seasoned fundraiser or salesperson will tell you, you should never miss a chance to ask a prospect or supporter for referrals to other leads, ideally including a personal intro via a short email or at least someone’s contact information.

7. Stay in Touch

After your call or meeting, be sure to follow up, ideally with a hand-written card or at least an email expressing your gratitude for the time and insight. Reiterate any action items and timelines, possibly including a bullet point list of next steps. Be sure to promptly deliver any information, documents, introductions, or anything else promised in your meeting.

If you were lucky enough to receive an invitation to apply for funding, it’s important that you are in contact before submitting the proposal, as well as afterward, even if you don’t get the grant. Keep in touch and send occasional updates on your work as it relates to their funding goals. Two to four updates a year should suffice. Add them to a list in your address book that you can use to share big news, such as a front-page article or an exciting new hire. Stewarding these decision-makers as you would a major donor will help you build valuable relationships, increasing your chances for funding from that foundation and others over time (see Chapter 9 for more on stewardship).