Your Opportunity to Shine: Meeting with the Foundation Officer Face-to-Face

In general, if the funder asks to meet with you, then you are virtually certain to win a grant from them. In my experience, you chance of winning something after a site visit from a funder is about 90%.

  

All in all, I think these site visits are a good idea for everyone involved in the grant winning, grant giving process. The funders are surprisingly fearful of new organizations and concerned about being embarrassed about making a bad decision. A quick face-to-face visit is often all they need to determine that you and your charity are genuine and capable of implementing a grant effectively to serve clients. Consequently, the time funders spend meeting with you is quite valuable to both parties.

Visiting Think & Do in Cairo, Egypt

Accordingly, I have a couple of tips for managing these brief moments a charity shares with a funding organization.Ideally, your first meeting with the funder should be an exciting time of discovery. Here are my tips for how to handle this precious moment:

1. Reread the Grant: Definitely ask your Executive Director, Program Director to reread the grant proposal. In my experience, the funder will often ask you to repeat the evidence and program details contained in your original grant application. You will look foolish and/or out-of-touch if you have not refreshed your memory about these specific details.

2. Use Your Winning Slogan: Train everyone to implement your winning line-of-the-day during the visit. This means everyone who comes in contact with the funder's representative should know the winning slogan that advantages your charity against the competitor charities who are also seeking funding - often from this same representative.

3. Clean Up the Office: It is amazing to me that I can tell an awful lot about an organization from a quick glance at their office space. As I take in what I see, I quickly get a feeling for their mission, their resolve, their level of energy, their sense of synergy and a lot of other things which are not readily apparent in an on-line or paper grant application. Assuming that the funders are as quick to pick up on these details as I am, I like to prepare for their visit by tiding up the little details in the office including the plants and the artwork. If a charity is neglecting its plants, I assume they are also neglecting their clients. If the pictures are crooked, I assume they lack empathy about everything else. For these reasons, I like to take the brown leaves off the plants and straighten the art work so that it is not crooked looking to a viewer.  

4. Make Sure You Offer Refreshments: Ironically, one of the things that a funder will remember the most about their visit to your charity is your hospitality. Do not be afraid to go over a little board and offer them coffee, tea, water and so on.