Nonprofits Fundraising Development Coaching Services

1
How To Evaluate Your Fundraising Grants
Management Program
2
The many factors that affect grant writing
success are incredibly diverse. They include such
things as the reputation and professionalism of
the organization the quality of the program or
evaluation design the qualifications of proposed
staff the needs of the funder for diversity in
the geographic distribution of awards or types of
beneficiaries foundations giving priorities
and more.
3
However, there are baseline metrics that, once
analyzed, can provide a diagnosis of the health
of ones Grants Management Program. Following is
a presentation of the basic baseline steps to
take to evaluate the health of your Grants
Management Program. 1) Determine what stage
your Grants Management Program is in. Often, what
takes up a significant portion of a Grants
Managers time is the establishment of an initial
Grants Management Plan through conducting
comprehensive research to build a portfolio of
prospective foundations. This research can take
up to three months worth of dedicated staff
time. The number of grants that your organization
can write will depend on whether or not this
research needs to be conducted. Once you create
this Grants Management Plan, it will require a
yearly update to ensure the year-to-year
accurateness of application deadlines and other
pertinent submission requirements. It will also
require surfacing new additional funders.
However, this annual refresh does not require a
significant outlay of the Grants Managers time.
Thus, the Grants Manager can spend more time on
actual application creation and submission.
4
2) Determine the number of grants your
organization has written. While there are no hard
numbers regarding the number of applications that
a Grants Manager should submit in a year, a
small shop, full-time Development Director has
the potential of submitting anywhere from 20-40
private foundation proposals totaling 500,000 or
more in requests. In some cases, grant writing
positions can sometimes be required to
participate in staff meetings and functions,
other fundraising events, and other activities
that take away from dedicated grant development
time and the number of proposals that one can
realistically expect. Not all of the grant
submissions will be in the form of full
proposals some will be Letters of Intent or
Letters of Inquiry. You must consider this in the
numbers as well, as they are often simple
one-page letters.
5
3) Review the types of grants that you are
submitting. Applying to different types of
funders (foundation, corporation, government)
require varying amounts of effort. For instance,
Federal and state proposals are more complex and
require greater time demands sometimes even
several months worth of work to prepare as a
grant writer cannot rely on boilerplate
language for such proposals. These proposals, by
their very nature, are more complicated and
involve a lengthy and arduous application
process. Also, submitting a continuation grant
will take less time than seeking a new,
competitive grant application. 4) Review the
number of funders. While hit rate alone is not
a good indicator of competence, as many variables
come into play, the number of funding requests
submitted are somewhat more indicative. Review
the number of grants that your organization has
submitted over the past two years to see trend
rates. Benchmark your organization against others
of similar scope of services and size.
6
5) Review the number of grants awarded funding.
With all Grants Management Programs, this is the
end goal. A good grants writer should at least
cover a percentage of their salary. Many grant
writer positions salaries are about 10 of their
annual fundraising goal. 6) Review the overall
professionalism of the Grants Management Program.
When it comes to grant proposals, I cannot
overstate the value of teamwork. Highly skilled
employees can lead a team project efficiently.
But, they can also serve as one of the
workhorses, contributing ideas and knowledge and
graciously accepting guidance from the team
leader. Because a successful grant application
requires input and collaboration from
administrators, other staff members, community
members, and beneficiaries, a grant development
professionals ability to work with others and to
facilitate group processes should be a key
consideration. The best grant applications
demonstrate a thorough understanding of the goals
and objectives of a particular program or
project.
7
After reviewing all of these essential baseline
benchmarks, you can then make an accurate
assessment of the health and effectiveness of
your Grants Management Program. From here, you
can determine if increased investments, a
restructuring, or keeping the program operating
as is makes sense. In any case, a yearly review
of your grants program is an important measure to
take. Read More _at_ https//developmentconsultings
olutions.com/evaluate-fundraising-grants-managemen
t-program/ Development Consulting Solutions New
Bedford, MA [phone] Email
rcabral_at_developmentconsultingsolutions.com