Byline Grant Proposal Template Made Easy

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hi guys thanks so much for watching the social life the place to be for entrepreneurs to the purpose so some of you may have noticed that I don't talk about grants very often at all on this channel and there is a reason for that you may hear me talk about seventy percent of your money that comes into your nonprofit generally comes from individuals and Charity Navigator and a few other places have done Studies on this and that is what they found so I don't believe in really spending time where like it's 15 percent or less of your funding that comes in now grants can be super helpful and I think that if you can get them I think it's awesome I've had maybe one or two grants or sponsorships that have come through that I've actually put in some time to get and mainly those are through your local community and nothing big like going through you know like Dick's Sporting Goods or something or Target or anything like that but I did want to just come on and make a short video about ten things that you should know if you are going to go for grants just so that you guys just know and I've put it out there for you so I want to jump right into that but you guys know I'm all about giving you real talk so on this little grant thing that one thing I want you to keep in mind is that in general most grants want you to be in business with your 501c3 nonprofit status for at least two years so after you've done any sort of piloting and you've you know maybe try it out your your organization maybe you try in a fiscal sponsorship maybe you just tried it out and then trying to apply for your 501c3 and all of that and then having your two years it could be up to about three years after you had the initial idea or started your pilot for you to be eligible for a grant so that's another reason why I try to minimize the amount of time that I spend talking about grants on here because I know a lot of you are just starting out or thinking about starting a non-profit or your new and I want to make sure that when I give you information at something that you can use today so with all that being said I will jump into my ten tips for you if you are thinking about getting a grant my first tip is to do your research okay and with everything I think you should really be researched out you should know exactly what you need to know about the organization that you're asking and you should know what the requirements are for their grant and you know what if you have to have the 501 C 3 what they want to see from you what information what documents what financials they need from you all of those things you really need to be dialed in and really understand what your what the expectation is for you when you fill out the grant that would be my number one tip number two is you know what it is a place that gives out grants but there are people behind those people who who actually give the grants and generally you're going to go in front of a board or your packet will go in front of a board and it's important to know that you can call them you can talk to and sometimes you can get the person that's actually going to be reviewing your grant and it's a good thing to just get in front of them and let them see your proposal and let them see what types of things you know you can ask them like hey do you mind just checking over my my grant and and they'll let you know how you might be missing the mark or if your information is not correct or anything like that because you would hate to get your grant in front of the the person reviewing the grant and you don't have all the information you need or maybe your messaging was wrong or there are lots of things that can go wrong with grants and so you want to make sure that you have all of that information ready to rock so that would be my second tip is just to make sure that you know you give them a call and put your grant in front of them before it's time to review it and my only caveat to that is you know have your questions ready to go like have all of your questions ready to go because you don't want to keep calling them over and over / this would be more like a one-time hey I've completed my grant application and I just wanted to make sure you received it and if there's anything I need to look over or you know send in if I'm missing anything you just want to make sure and if you have any questions about maybe what the grant writer is looking for anything like that you can ask at that time just make sure you have all your questions right now for you my third tip is to start as early as you can for this process because you what you'll come to realize is that when you're running a non-profit you are going a million different directions all the time and you want to make sure that you leave enough time for yourself to actually sit down and write the grant because this is kind of a big deal so be sure to do that they can be time intensive and tedious number four is to um you know go for both grants go for large and small grants if there's a grant that's two hundred and fifty dollars get it if there's a grant that's you know twenty five thousand dollars don't hesitate to go for it doesn't matter how large it is you the most important things how large or small it is you the most important thing really is that you need to know what you're going to do with those funds and that's why I save for you guys to always have a wish list on what you want to do with those funds I've been in a position before where I've been asked hey hey what do you want to do with $10,000 and I'm like what what do you want to do with $10,000 and I don't have an answer but if you have a wish list then you have an answer you know you want to get a new space you want to pay for rent you want to get a new computer for the program you need new computers for your classroom whatever it is that you're working on you need to really have all of that together so that when you are asked that question or when it's time to write a grant you know exactly what you need and what you would do with those funds so don't make that mistake number five is to understand the expectations of the grant proposal and like I said earlier is the same exact thing and should you be the recipient of the grant and do you meet all the requirements that they have sometimes they ask for regular information to be sent in it's times and you really have to take a step back and look at do I have this kind of time to be able to put this information together in the amount of time that they want it sometimes its quarterly sometimes its monthly sometimes they need to know information that maybe you don't even have track of like maybe you haven't added that into your setup of your organization so you need to make sure that you are able to provide the information and meet the expectations that they will have if you are the recipient of the grant don't be afraid to ask how many grants they plan on putting out and the denominations of those grants it's okay to ask that and because you want to know like hey do I even have an opportunity to receive this grant is it gonna be a two thousand dollar grant a five thousand dollar grant a ten thousand dollar grant and if they only have you know one grant and there are fifty people who are applying it may not be worth your time and so you have to make judgment calls like that so it's important to know so don't hesitate to ask and if you make that call and don't hesitate to ask you know and would you mind telling me how many grants you have available and and how many you're giving out or what the denominations are or whatever the information is that you want to know just make sure to have that question written and ready to go so you don't have to keep calling back and you may be able to actually find that even on the website so check there first make sure you're not calling about information that is readily available for you to find on your own and my point in saying that is don't be afraid to call and ask yes they are giving you funds but those calls are good because they get to know you they get to put a face or a voice or questions or the way you are your personality with your grant proposal so just remember that now one thing before you apply as my seventh tip before you apply make sure that your mission aligns with their organization you should really only be applying for things that you're like this is very clear that my mission should be applying my organization should be applying because our missions align so just make sure that you've done your research and you've looked to make sure these missions align and that this is the right place for you because otherwise you're wasting time and not only your time but their time as well and nobody's got time for that so so number eight start inside your community and move outward so think about the places that are within your community that might be calling for a request for Proposal and those are called RFPs if you're not sure how to look those up you can put you know RFP plus your or you can put request for Proposal plus your city name in the google search bar and generally i will come up with different organizations who might be having a request for proposal at that time the other thing is to also ask around to other nonprofits about potential grant opportunities ask your board for grant opportunities that they've heard about or organizations that do give away grants for whatever your niche is maybe it's you their construction or whatever it is that you're focusing on and you know start to make some sort of database that you can keep track of when those grants are putting out their request for Proposal when the due date is and and you know any other information that you need to know that's pertinent to your organization applying for that grant number nine you want to be sure you are serving the communities they are looking to help so a lot of times people will put in grant applications and they're putting it in for their you know community but they're they're maybe applying to a larger region or something and maybe the region is focused on a rural community or an urban community or they're very specific on what they're giving funds out to so just make sure that you've checked and double-checked who the organization wants to fund and what they're looking to fund what niche they're looking to fund just make sure it totally aligns with what you're doing and your mission and your purpose so that you really don't waste your time because these grants can take a while to fill out information so the last tip I want to give you is really a tip that will help you if you truly decide to go forward with the grant grant process and it's a video that I found gosh a long time ago and it's old it's a really old video but it's extremely thorough and I think she is a grant reviewer and so she goes through all the ins and outs of everything you need to know for for grant writing it's what she's giving you a much better service than I would ever do for you because I don't talk about grants very often so um you just need to know that this video is available I will leave the link in the description and it's to a playlist that I've created for you to watch so go ahead and watch that video it's probably about an hour maybe an hour and a half it's a presentation and it's like sitting down with a grant writer to help you write your own grants so I think it's a huge resource if you need help in writing a grant or you just want to you know get some ideas on what you should put into your grant and this is a great video so anyway if you watch that let me know if it helped I think it's it's a great video and she's very thorough she does a whole PowerPoint and everything so thank you guys so much for watching don't forget to sign up for the social life Diaries that's the place that I put in all of my live video dates and times and where I'll be so I'm go ahead and sign up for that the link is down below so I hope to see you there thank you so much for watching now get out there and unleash your something amazing bye guys