Ahead of the Curve: How to Capture the Benefits of Being Well-Informed

Au courant is a fancy way of saying, "aware of what is going on; well informed." Why is this important to the success of any charity seeking grants?

If you have already read the article above, then you would know at least part of the answer. After all, a charity is meant to be a living, problem-solving organism that is continuously scanning its environment, and looking for ever better ways to come to the rescue of those who can most benefit from its help.

There are many ways to show that your charity is a thriving organization that fits this description. 

One of the best ways to make sure that you are sending a message that your charity is au courant is by documenting your evidence of need or the quality of your solutions is by relying only on peer-reviewed research articles that were published within the last two years.  If you depend on older citations, it makes you and your staff with the lazy.  Even worse it may make it look like you and your program are dangerously out-of-date. 

You may be inadvertently leaving the funder with the impression that you are taking action on behalf of others when you really do not know for sure what is going on or what are the best practices for helping them.  Ideally, your grant applications should be teaching the funders about both the actual needs and the best possible solutions. 

Next, it does matter whether not you have mentioned COVID-19.  Failing to mention the ongoing pandemic makes it look like you and your organization are out of touch with reality. This is true whether or not your program has any COVID-19 related features. 

Along the same lines, there is nothing wrong with acknowledging that things are happening in the world in terms of rioting in the streets or the stresses of a presidential campaign. There is no reason for you to take any sides when acknowledging current events. It is enough to simply signal that you realize the world is changing and that you are on top of that change. 

Looking Good: Understand the Ideal Charity Before You Describe Yourself

We have been fans of the James Bond series since we were kids in the 1960s. The genre, of course, was popular for many years and started out as novels by Ian Fleming.

James Bond was sort of the perfect guy, handsome, patriotic, intelligent, and able to handle himself in a fight. To blow away your funder, your charity needs to be something of an ideal too. The funders, after all, may have a stereotyped understanding of what an ideal charity looks like and then use this image to judge your strengths or weaknesses.

The solution? Understand what an ideal charity looks like and become one.

I'm not suggesting that you should live to the funder. In fact I think that is counterproductive . The people that run these foundations or government agencies that giveaway grants aren't stupid. They have their own sources of information including insight from your competitors so I don't think you can count on getting away with things that are untruthful .

Nevertheless you may get away with looking better than your competition by having a clearer understanding of what an ideal charity looks like . Basically in the ideal charity is a glamorous self-less problem solving machine that makes its community dash broadly defined path of a better place .

This means that is going to have some common features , features that you should talk about 80 have fun and features that you should probably add to your charity if you do not. Among these ideal aspects of the charity including adding it up to date profile on guide star or charity navigator . It is too easy for the funder to google you and see where you stand. If you're up to date on these things she looked old-fashion or perhaps like you really aren't paying sufficient attention to your charity and how does seem by the outside world. Remember, these funders are going to be embarrassed if they get the money and then one of their bodies: supper profile and find a pitcher not doing so good .

Next to an ideal charity should have a strong board of directors ideally filled with some of the Mo six else: wealthiest people in the community . You may already have a board like that but you've been to Cheyenne haven't been bragging about how incredible some of your people really are. Now's the time to start bragging .

It's also good to let people know that you haven't audited financial statement . These are important even for smaller charities. I can say with my four heart that could you pay the extra money to have an audited financial statement you easily get that money back by winning more grants .

It's also important to let the funder know that you have a strategic planning process that the charity just isn't moving from crisis to crisis . Your let people know that you have considered your strengths and weaknesses the environmental opportunities and threats and that you're moving rationally on the basis of a well thought out board approved a five year plan . The father doesn't have to know that this is a two page document that she created the day before turning in the grant proposal . Nevertheless that's a good idea to have a document like that in place. In fact it should improve your operations.

It is also important to put in some sort of equity diversity and inclusion statement . These things are rather far most and difficult to follow up on. Nevertheless the funder appreciates it if you put something like that in their . Also the funders are products of liberal and leftist educational institutions . Putting in this sort of skinheads to their politically correct preferences will simply remove one more excuse for them to toss your application out .

Finally, it is important that everything lines of this means that you have the right mission statement , the corrected vision for your charity , a crack team in place , the best possible solution , and the greatest possible need in the community to six . What she may not realize, however, is that all five of these variables can be adjusted . There's nothing wrong with changing your mission statement so it reflects what you really do , there's nothing wrong with identifying the greatest need in the community and then adjusting of other elements of your charity to address that need . If you have one solution that you're really get that there's nothing bad about shopping around in finding an appropriate problem just sat with that solution all that really matters, in the end, is the coherence of your charity . Another words everything he asks a line of all five of these things need to line up so that your charity looks like a smart well organized the machine .

No Time for Boredom: The Best Approach for Creating Grants that Blow Away the Funders

LAGUNA NIGUEL, CA - The new James Bond thriller, No Time to Die, will be in theaters November 25, 2020. Due to COVID-19 restrictions, most of us at Drew & Associates will be waiting to watch the film when it is available at home, preferably on Hulu. This is not because of our health status, but because of our pessimism.

At any rate, the return of James Bond reminds us that one of the most important secrets of success for grant writers is to blow away the funder. After they have read your application, they should be in awe of your charity and what you are doing. This is particularly true when you are writing grants for a newer charity that may not have the built-in credibility or experience of older charities.

This raises the question of what techniques can you rely on to help you come up with a creative, remarkable project that would impress even a hard-boiled villain like Ernst Stavro Blofeld?

To generate excitement, the best and fastest procedure is to trust your own instincts. This means you need to trust your own perceptions of the wow factor surrounding the project. Others have taught that this wow-factor arises in the awesome moment when you realize why the funder will have no choice except to approve your application. 

For us, the sign of truly great grant applications is the feeling that we have had an epiphany. 

According to our online dictionary, some define an epiphany is a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience. 

For us, a better definition is that an epiphany is when you have an intuitive grasp of reality through something (such as an event) usually simple and striking. 

This fits how epiphanies work for us. Amazingly, we find that an epiphany can occur at any stage of the grant writing project. 

It can happen immediately when you hear the idea and understand that no one else has seen something so simple or clever as this before. It may be halfway through the project when you realize that new research gives you powerful support for a fresh approach that no one else has anticipated. It may, in fact, occur at the last minute, when you realize that a single missing piece puts everything else in order. 

Practically speaking, the earlier epiphanies are the best. 

Often early epiphanies appear as moments of confidence when you realize that the only thing the client needed to win a grant was you. This happens fairly frequently because the client may not be aware of the funder's interest in their work.  

By interviewing the client you can identify a unique and original approach at the beginning and then proceed with confidence that you can bring that idea to exactly the right funder. 

One of our secrets for benefiting from early epiphanies is to hold on to them tight. This is because the strategy and vision we set up at the beginning of the grant writing process have been achieved in an atmosphere of relatively low stress and low conflict. We think we are most rational at the beginning of the project. As stress increases - right up to the deadline - we find we are increasingly less likely to make good decisions regarding the overall grant strategy. It pays to hold tight to your initial vision.

Another way to generate an early epiphany is to look for ideas that apply new technology to solve existing problems. 

For us, this has been the quickest and fastest way to create a project that will "blow away the funder."  For example, you might provide access to your program through a new app instead of a personal face-to-face classroom or workshop. You might invent a new way to counsel people through Zoom or figure out how to deliver groceries with a drone. Often, you can spark an epiphany by asking what new technology the client is using or by bringing the value of new technology to their attention.