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hey there so in today's video I'm going to talk about how to organize the grant writing process and the tools you need to do that let's get started [Music] hey everybody this is Tiffany with a boss on a budget I help people start their nonprofits and raise money for their new non-profits if you need help with your non-profit you need to subscribe to this channel I have a bunch of videos but I also have resources I have workbooks and toolboxes and things like that to help you navigate your startup Journey so in every video make sure you check out the description box because I have a bunch of links available for you and in today's video I want to talk about the grant writing process and five pieces of that process because just understand when you're applying for Grants it's like a pipeline that you go through you don't just show up or pull up and write a grant and that's it there's a way to organize that overall process and so I'm going to break it down into five ways but I'm also going to share some tools to help you in each of those steps of the process to help you get organized so you can start winning more grants now if you need help understanding the grant writing process just overall I do have a grants master class and I go through from beginning to end what it takes to find grants and to apply for Grants and I also have a bunch of resources that are included in that Master Class so make sure you check it out the link is below so the first part I want to talk about is how you're finding grants now when I'm talking about the steps the grant writing process in this video I'm not necessarily talking about like the Strategic ways like how to think about what you do and the key words you need to identify to find funders and how to build relationships with funders I talk about strategy in other videos this video is literally like how to do it it's more tactical right it's more Concrete in terms of like this is the actual processes that it's going to take so if you're looking for more of like strategy I suggest other videos that I'm linking below but the first step of doing this is actually finding the grants and what are the tools that you need to find them just want to let you know if you are Savvy enough or if you have enough time then you can find grants for free and you never have to pay for a particular Grant service so if you're looking for Grants you don't have the money or the budget to find them then there are strategies you can use to find grants and I know people who are grant writers and people who've been doing this for a long time who have never paid for grant opportunities and one of the best ways to find grants when you don't want to pay anything is just to look at similar organizations and to see who funds them and also just to look in your local area because they're always some kind of organizations corporations that are funding work in the local area and if you begin to track like who that is and there see their connection to the community you'll likely find by going through those trails that they give in the form of Grants and this is could be directly from corporations this could be government agencies this could be through foundations there are multiple options when it comes to find a grants so I wanted to get that out the way but if you don't have the time or you don't have the skill set to find grants or the patience let's just talk about the patience y'all to be searching then you can pay for tools to make that process quicker and easier for you so I'm just going to share some of the most popular ones and these are ones that I have some kind of some level of Engagement with I've used them at certain levels right some more than others but I'm going to call out a couple that you should know about the foundation directory online is like the OG and it's the Original Gangster that's what I mean by Og and it is like the directory of Foundations all across the country and they also include International foundations and so you can find out information that's supplied in their 990 forms that is their tax form that they submit to show what their activities were for the previous year and who they funded and what they funded and how much that information is put into a database and the foundation directory online keeps that database of all that data and you can use their tools to look and search and find funders that are aligned with the work that you do so if you're looking for funders who do work in the Animal Welfare space or who do work in a domestic violence space then you can search that and find them and you can filter it by different things like where they're located so that is the OG that is like the database of all the information that you could find about a foundation and their Associated costs with that and then there's also instrumental which pulls a lot of this information from the foundation directly directory so that means that they get the source of their information is from that database but they also have tools to make it easier and user friendly for you so instrumental is a grant search database you sign up for monthly fee and then you can search and you can filter you can build projects in their in their system you can track how you're applying you can have people log in and see your progress instrumental is built for really for people who are deep into grants who are serious about grants who regularly apply for Grants and it's a good tool actually for grant writers because because of its expense you really have to be invested in the grant writing process but it gives you so much it gives you so much flexibility in terms of looking across like I'm working on this project so this was my last search and then I want to see my updated search and things like that right so if you're interested in instrumental or Foundation director we don't want online I'm putting the links to both of those below and also if you would like 50 off your first month of instrumental I'm including my coupon code below another Grant search database you should be interested in is called Grant station and I have a lot of experience with rent station Grant station is very good for people who are super new who may not be deep deep into the grant writing process yet but they're still looking for grant opportunities for their non-profit and it's a reasonable enough cost that even if you buy it and don't necessarily use it every month it's still very useful and Grant station tends to only focus on and Grant station tends to focus on opportunities that are unsolicited like funders are okay with you just applying to them it's more of an open process there are a lot of funders who do not take unsolicited requests they will only request information from you but Grant station tends to not focus on those they tend to not put those in their database and they regularly update it to see what the process is for the funders Now instrumental and Foundation directory online just includes all of them right whether they take unsolicited requests or not but Grant station is especially for those who are really just trying to get traction and trying to find opportunities that are more likely for them to win and they provide a great summary of information that you can use to get started Grant station is a reasonable cost so if you are interested in using Grant station you can check the description box below I'm also including a link the last database that I'm going to share is called flux I have the least amount of experience with flux but I have heard good things about the use of it and it also sources from the foundation directory online which is my understanding so it's pulling from the source of information of Foundations but it compiles it or summarizes the information in a way that's easier to process honestly so Flex I'm saying the least about because again I've seen it I've been inside um and people have talked about its usefulness but I don't have a lot of information about it so I'm also including the link below so you can check it out for yourself the second part of the grant writing process that you need help with is how to track your applications how to track your progress throughout the application and track your wins so you need some kind of system especially if you are building momentum and you want to write grants on a regular basis side note if you want to win more grants you need to write more so you need to be tracking that and having goals around how much you want to write I just have to throw that in there but you need some kind of system so you're not like confused about okay what did I apply for and how much did I ask for and do I have enough to cover this program am I asking for enough you want to be organized about that process so you do need tools to help keep you on track so the first thing I'll say is I mentioned instrumental in the last segment and instrumental does have built in to their system a way you can manage your project in a way people can log in to see where you are in the project gray station has some of that capability in their system and it's also my understanding that flux has that capability so I'll just say this if you're looking for a way to track grants you can actually do that with the service that helps you find grants as well so that's one option for you but what if you don't want all of your information in one place right like what if you have to leave instrumental or you decide not to use it anymore so you can also track it externally and I'm gonna give you some options for tools that you can do that now again when I say tracking I just mean you know what grants do you want to pursue when do you want to pursue them how much are you asking for and then some general information about the funder like what does the funder typically find what's their average Grant what's their website what's the description of what they do like you need a way to capture that to make it easier on yourself during the process so that's what I mean by tracking so you could use regular project management tools and you can build templates or build ways to use them to track the grant writing process people do this all the time so a couple of project management systems that I'm aware of and some of them that I have used the first one is click up which is by far my favorite project management tool it's a tool that I use in my own business if you would like to see click up and use my affiliate code the link is below you can use it to track your project you can also use tools like a sauna and Trello and notion right and I've been inside and used in some capacity all of those and honestly it just depends on your personality and how you like to use software right so you may like Trello better because Trello tends to be more graphical like you can track things through like Post-its and boards but click up gives you a board view as well so it just depends on what you like and what you respond best to but I wanted to throw some of those out so you can understand that and then you can also rely on Google Sheets or an Excel sheet I'm saying Google Sheets because it's if you use Google Sheets then multiple people can access the information so you not you don't have to always send updated forms or updated Sheets if you're only using Excel but you could also just use Google Sheets and track it in the spreadsheet and that's 3.99 so I just wanted to throw a couple different options out there for you but just also to remind you that you should be tracking like your pipeline of grant writing be organized the third part of the grant writing process you should be paying attention to and you may need tools for is how to organize your documents and where you're storing them this one is going to be really quick but I just want to throw out there that when you're writing grants you're going to be writing the same things over and over again so the first part of this is you want to have a sheet that you can pull from that you can just copy and paste because almost every Grant is going to ask for organizational background they're going to ask for a statement on your mission right they're going to ask for certain statements that you're going to see over and over again so you want to create a document that's stored somewhere that's easily accessible that you can just pull the information from I've talked about this a couple different ways you can have what's called a master proposal where it's all the typical things that you would be putting in a Grant application a proposal that you can just pull from or you can have what's sometimes called a swipe file swipe files is information you want to quickly swipe from or borrow swipe files are a little different because you can a lot of times people use things they find elsewhere as examples and they swipe from where they use so swipe file is you know kit has different contacts but it's the same idea you get it right you want a place where you can go to that's easy to find you can just pull the information when you need to get it quickly but the other side of this is every Grant application has a different process and they're going to ask for different things and so you need a way to organize all the different files that you're going to need to submit sometimes for some Grant applications especially if it's a government application or a government proposal you're going to have to have so many pieces of paperwork you're gonna have to have so many attachments and you need a way to easily organize this within folders and have everything in one place so my biggest suggestion for this is Google Drive or if you're a Microsoft person do OneDrive but I'm a Google girl so so I use Google Drive to organize everything but there are other systems out there to help you organize your files like people do SharePoint or people do like base camp or you can even use the project management systems that I had mentioned before like a click up or Asana to organize files or at least point to where files are so you can easily access them too so there's so many different options that you have I'm just going to throw out there though that you need to have some kind of organization to this because it's the worst thing to be in a position where you have to submit a grant quickly and you can't find a document you're looking for it's the worst or it's the worst feeling knowing that you're doing something over and over again and you know you are but you can't find when you wrote it last or you could just easily have just pulled from somewhere else but you don't know where it is it's such a horrible feeling to know that you're wasting your time and you're not being as efficient as possible so think about where you want to store your documents and how you want to organize them so you're ready before you even start writing the Grant and again I like Google drive to do that it is easy at least to me and the great thing about it it's easy to give people access to your file so multiple people can be working in the same document and you can see changes in real time the fourth part of the grant writing process that you may need tools for is keeping track of the information you need from other people now this is sort of related to what I talked about in terms of organizing documents but it's different in that sometimes you need information from other people and you need a way to track that whole piece because that's what's going to take the most time and honestly that could be one of the most frustrating parts of a grant proposal knowing that you have to rely on other people to get you information and you're waiting for it or you're not sure where it is you're not sure when the last time you asked for it or you if they even Supply the information to you so you need some kind of system to track that just to make your life easier so for example sometimes you may want to put a letter of support together and that's just a community organization maybe or like a community stakeholder vouching for your organization so you can draft a letter for them and just send it to them and ask them to put it on their letterhead and sign it for you but even doing something that simple can take a long time and honestly these people don't have really an incentive to do that for you they want to do it for you but there's no real incentive to do it in a quick manner so you're going to have to track when you sent that information and you need to give them deadlines and when you need to get it back and then you need to track the deadlines to make sure you got the information in time and then you need to make sure when you set those deadlines they give you enough time to be able to compile everything to submit so writing grants is so much more than just sitting down and writing this is a process to this thing and you got to think ahead you got to anticipate what may be happening and you got to anticipate the moves of others another example may be you need financial statements or financial reports and you have an accountant doing that for you who child if it's a certain time of the year then it may take a long time for you to get that information that you need right so the other thing about this is you want to track before you start writing especially if it's a very detailed proposal you want to track and set a timeline for yourself so you know when you when you should get things back and make sure you're giving enough time for people to get things back to you then this can be for external people and it can also be for internal people people who are writing pieces of the proposal and are doing different pieces that you need you need to track that too so make sure you have a system for tracking your timelines I gave an example timeline for writing a grant in my grants master class so again if you need help thinking really strategically about writing grants that Master Class is a great overview for you and I also included resources and templates you can use for yourself but if you're thinking about tools to track deadlines and things like that y'all I gotta go to my Old Faithful click up I love click up I love click up for tracking deadlines between projects it's also good so people can visually see everybody's piece of a project so if people are added to your click up workspace they can see what other people are doing or what other people are responsible for and what the deadlines are and click up can send reminders and it can also sync with people's calendars but click up isn't the only services that does this Asana does this Trello and notion the ones that I've mentioned before they do this monday.com is another one as well that I just thought about but you can also go old school and you can use Google Calendar or people's calendars so you can track for yourself when things are due and you can send calendar invites or send calendar invites to yourself as reminders and you can track that way it's whatever makes the most sense for you whatever you're comfortable with you just need to make sure you have a system for that in place and finally number five you need a system for accounting and Reporting once you get a grant award I don't talk a lot about this because I talk more so about how to get grants but a very big piece about grant writing is what the heck you want to do with it once you get the money and it's not just you getting the money and then that's it there are reporting requirements there are accounting requirements that are associated with grants that you need to be prepared for especially I'm just going to say this again especially if it's a government grant and if you are getting a government grant please read the fine print I am talking from experience here y'all please read the fine print and know the expectations and know what you're able to do and not able to do with the government money there are often restrictions on what you can spend and how much you can spend on certain activities so you just need to know that for yourself before you go too deep into spending money we get so excited because the money is coming it's great but with those government grants it's more than meets the eye so you need to be prepared for that so you should have a system that you're using to track how you spend the money and to track like which account ounce you're pulling from to pay for expenses and when I say accounts I mean not bank accounts necessarily I mean like account set up in your accounting system so if you have a bookkeeping system you have a chart of accounts typically and there are different accounts associated with different expenses depends on how you've organized yourself internally and so if you're receiving a restricted Grant then you need to be able to show that you're only spending money from that Grant on certain activities and you got to be able to track that so you need a system to be able to do that you need a bookkeeping system I use QuickBooks it's one of the most popular ones if you are a 501c3 non-profit you can get a discount on QuickBooks Online through techsoup.org it's pretty inexpensive compared to the regular cost but there are other accounting systems out there because some people don't like QuickBooks so there's wave and fresh books I've never used them so just keep that in mind and also keep in mind that accounting for non-profit profits is different than accounting for businesses even the names of the financial reports are different they're very similar but the names are different so when you're doing your accounting you also have to accommodate like the different non-profit terms and the understandings in the non-profit accounting space this is why I always tell people when you're getting started getting accountant to set up your chart of accounts for you and your bookkeeping system so even if you can't pay them on a regular basis to do your bookkeeping you at least understand the structure and how you're supposed to be tracking everything so I said all that to say you need a tool for bookkeeping and for your accounting and preferably it should be something online I'm just going through that out there I'm not an accountant but I'm just going to say it makes sense to have something online that other people can access you also want to have some way to do reporting because there's financial reporting which a bookkeeping system or an accounting system can do for you but there are other types of narrative that you want to right narrative reports like annual reports or quarterly reports or progress reports however they're phrased by the funder that you want to send out so you want to have some kind of system in place to be collecting information collecting stories that you can report out to the funders and especially if you're doing like program evaluation which is a little bit more advanced than what I'm talking about right now but just as an example if you are doing research or tracking outcomes or doing evaluation it's pretty much understood that you need to do a report right but even on a smaller level you should be reporting out what happens with the brand so have some kind of word processing software I know this seems very Elementary but a lot of people don't think about this so make sure you're using word or Google Docs I like Google Docs because again people can access it multiple people can access it in real time and make changes all together have some kind of system or service that you're using to write up your grants and also if you want to make them look nice you can use a system or a service like canva and canva is a graphic design tool that makes graphic designers out of people with the least experience so it's just an easy tool that you can make really pretty designs with if you want to design a nice cover or add photos and have like more flexibility and putting photos and all that kind of stuff you can use canva my suggestion though is to write the report in in word or in docs and then copy and paste you don't want to be changing the words in canva because it could be a headache so finalize your narrative first and then put it drop it into canva to design it was that helpful y'all let me know in the comments also let me know if you like to hear other information about grants I don't talk a whole lot about grants but this month I wanted to focus on it uh as a part of what I talk about with Boston a budget but if you need other types of help let me know in the comments what kind of videos you would like to see also if you need help remember that I have a bunch of resources there are some that are free and there are some that are at cost and yes I do consultations because people ask me that all the time yes I do one-on-one consultations so I will put that information in the description box but you can always visit me at bostonumbudget.com just to learn more about starting a non-profit I have information on that website and also links to my resources there thank you so much for watching y'all and I will see you in the next video thank you