 couple of minutes past 10 and so I'm gonna go ahead and ask Christian if he will open us in prayer. Thank you for the opportunity and greetings to you all from Washington DC. I am Christian Watkins, a woman and fellow for faith and justice with the General Board of Church and Society for this year. If you would please position yourself in prayer. Holy and gracious God we give you thanks and praise for another day not promised. We give you thanks and praise for the many blessings and and mercies that you offer us freshly every day. Lord we thank you for this time of gathering, for this time of information sharing, this time of empowerment and conversation building towards your beloved kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. Empower us today. Move in right away in both this conversation and within our families. Bless every household represented here and even those who could not be in attendance. Lord move in a mighty way and touch us each in a way that only you know how and we will continue to give you all the praise and glory. For these things we ask and more in Jesus name and all those who agree please say amen. Amen. Amen. Well I'm glad y'all are all here. It is I want to let you know that it is being recorded and so if you don't want to be recorded just take your camera off but it's everybody we have with us here from Center for Church Development. Liliana Ron Hill she's going to be gathering your your questions. She could put them in chat. We're also going to reserve a lot of time at the end for questions and answers there. Also working with Center for Church Development now is Tracy Everson. She's kind of shared among the centers but she's now taking on some greater responsibilities and duties in the Center for Church Development and so you're going to be hearing from Tracy and so she's going to be recording this and Tracy will go ahead and pull up the PowerPoint and we will start our presentation. If you can see that shake your head yes. All right money money money. So when I was starting at Christ Boundary I went to a grant writing seminar and I remember the the lady getting on stage and opening her speech with the one who has not knows not or asks not and it really struck me as she could tell. Here I am 18 years later and I could still remember her saying that. The one who has not knows not or asks not and there's a lot of truth in that. Those who don't know and then those that do know don't ask and so my goal here is to now you'll at least know some of the grants and then it'll be up to you to ask. When I started here in the Center for Church Development you know I began thinking of when I was at Christ Boundary and I was thinking what could the conference do for me. I said it would have been a huge help if the conference could have done online giving for me. I tried to get that going at the very beginning when I started and and was unsuccessful partly because it was not in my department but when COVID hit the Center for Connectional Resources changed that and so if a church wants didn't have access to online giving then the conference has now set that up for churches. One of the other things that I wish that the conference would have done for me is websites. Well now we've gotten a connection with that and we're helping churches with websites and the third thing was helping with grants. I've been meaning to do this last three years and got started on doing that with Tracy Everson this summer and that is the fruit of this. There was a time at Christ Boundary we hired a development director someone who started accessing grants and to say you hire a grant writer is a misnomer because the I think the easiest part of getting a grant is writing it. The hardest part is identifying the grant, finding the grant, knowing what aligns with the desires of the granting entity and aligns with the ministry that you're that you're involved in and connecting that and then presenting it in a way and having relationships to where your grant will be you'll be considered. And so we'll go to the next slide. And so one of the things I did learn the hard way is I found myself rather than seeking to where the ministry aligns with the granting entity. I found myself in a situation at times at Christ Boundary I was so desperate for money that I was just looking for grants seeing grants and saying okay what can we do to get that money and that fell on a couple of areas. One is oftentimes we would not get the grants other times we get the grants and then be stuck doing a program that we really weren't called to do. Rudy Rasmus shared that with me and and how he started a school because he's like we can raise all this money around schools and even and they were able to launch it able to get it going. He says but they weren't able to sustain it and he said in hindsight we were never called to do it we were just chasing after the money. So just so avoid that I'm just speaking from my experience that will be a temptation and I want to encourage you to avoid that temptation of chasing the money remember we're not called to serve mammon and if you're faithful to God serve the vision that God will God will provide for you provide for your ministry. So we'll go into the next slide. So if establishing a not-for-profit corporation it's not always necessary there's lots of entities that grant to churches and and I will add this more will grant to churches especially when you have a non-church partner. So if you're doing something in the community and you can bring along a partner you know we I remember price boundary getting a grant and we partnered with the Dallas Police Department with our local Police Department in doing some prevention program and things with with with children and youth. If you can find another partner that often helps if you decide that you need to develop a social service arm of your church one way to do that is form a not-for-profit corporation with the state and there's the website there and we can share this link with you and perhaps I'm making sure that link in the chat and you can grab it you can copy it and so forth and again this is being recorded. Once you have an entity formed with the state of Texas and then you applied to the federal government for an employee identification number and then there's two routes you can go. You can go inform your own not-for-profit and go through all of the federal requirements to get that designation or the easier way in the way that we did it through Christ Foundry was to go through the United Methodist group ruling and they and if you establish it is a United Methodist ministry not-for-profit you can get a ruling under the umbrella of the United Methodist Church for a not-for-profit corporation. The benefit of that is it it enables you to reach out to grants and it's not a church applying for it yet it's a social service that is wholly owned and controlled by a church but it is another entity. The drawback to that is it's still a religiously affiliated group and there's most of the most of the granting entities don't prohibit religious affiliated but most of them prohibit religious activities and their granting. Does that make sense that distinguishing? But there are those that will not grant to any religiously affiliated entities and so whereas it's much easier to do it under the United Methodist umbrella you may fit some restrictions there but then again we are who we are you are a church we're called to do ministries and if you are forming a not-for-profit if you say it and if it's not religiously affiliated I wonder why you're doing that because we're we're a religious entity but anyway I digress. Going to the next slide so we started putting together this list Tracy and I we were doing some of what I knew from my experience we were doing Google we were searching websites and our our goal is basically to start developing a crowdsourced list in the North Texas Conference of Grants so asking our churches to say okay if you come across one we want to know we want to add it to our list if some of them are on our list and you discover there's no way any of our church will ever get that don't go for them it's not good they're not granting anymore they're out of business or whatever we want to hear that or you know if you got a grant okay how did you get that grant and so forth so the idea is this can be a community community work and us developing this list and we thought about okay should we spend more time on it should we do more on researching and and Tracy and I decided no let's just get that list out there because some of these are due September and each of you can do your own research on these as we get going and please let us know instead of just us two doing research you know we can get more people researching as we go want to also know we're not endorsing any of these these are just ones we've run across a lot of these grants have various restrictions the CCD as an entity may be going for these some of these same grants and so we we don't want resentment it if you get turned down and we get accepted I can tell you three years ago I applied for a grant for a fantastic program in a church that had a program that was not as good as my program got the grant and we didn't and so I'm sure that church had a different perspective on their program in my program but from my perspective my program was better we didn't get the grant but the church did but I want to celebrate with them and share that and and remember that we are just one body we are one body in Christ and so it's not a competition between the churches and that we were on a we want to work together and help help support one another and celebrate one another so going from there again we're not going to apply on your behalf next slide so with this I'm turning over to Tracy and she's doing our primary research Tracy can you just give me one one second oh and before you jump on I think we had a couple questions about what you were just talking about earlier is it okay for me to just jump on and ask those questions before you get started sure okay so I'm Catherine was asking do we do both recruit a partner and use the un we're pulling or one or the other yeah either or both it may depend on what the ministry is and it may depend on what the granting entity is so for example if you're going for a TMF grant there's no need to have an offer profit there's no need necessarily have another to have another partner because they go they give grants directly to directly to churches on the other hand if you're going for like a communities grant of North Texas you know you may be better off having a church having something separated from the church and having another entity that is formed that does basically your social services or a specific social service that you're doing so okay and then Denise also asked is this number different from our regular 501c3 non-profit yeah and so you have your not you have your your church is under that UM group ruling if you're and that's how your church has it's not the profit status it's under the Nashville group ruling so what I was talking about is there'll be some grants that you'll have greater access to if you have a subsidiary organization under the ownership and control of your church so under the so meaning your church names the names the board the pastor serves on it or however you want to set up your your governance structure but basically the not-for-profit is owned by your church but its umbrella not for profit status falls again also under the umbrella of the United Methodist group ruling okay and then the last question when is it appropriate to form a nonprofit as if you're if you can identify those ministries in your church that are distinct from your your overt and direct religious activity that you believe that they'll be granting entities that would support that that would not support it through your through your church then I would say that would be the appropriate time that you you should explore forming a a not-for- profit okay and those are all the questions thanks okay all right Tracy okay good morning everybody thanks so much for being here as we kind of start to dive into this when Owen and I first started talking about this project as you can imagine there are so many granting entities out there that we tried to do our best to kind of break them into categories so if you knew the focus maybe you could spend a little bit more time on on certain entities and certain grant writer or certain grant providers so I I just kind of have this slide here there are these are some of the big categories that we have obviously we have a number of United Methodist entities that provide grants there are some that focus on education and literacy music youth social justice and then collection drives and I'll get into that a little bit more they are not necessarily going to provide you money for like fill out a piece of paper and send it in and we'll give you a grant from that it's more of a collection drive but I'll get into that in a minute so looking at the United Methodist grants there are some that focus on archival research and writing not sure how many of your churches are passionate about that but wanted to mention that there are several that focus on racial concerns church and society issues relief efforts youth scholarships website development which Owen mentioned we'll get into that in a minute and then some disability ministries too that look pretty interesting all of those are kind of under the United Methodist umbrella as far as the education and literacy grants they really were focusing on obviously education and literacy but primarily adult literacy and then underserved children low-income initiatives and providing actually the the written materials that somebody might need to have a ministry or an outreach in that category then there were there are also a number of faith development grants these were particularly exciting to me because this checks a number of our boxes as far as you know being a church primarily they're focused on and really passionate about discipleship leadership development prayer and scripture evangelism efforts and then just religious causes there are a number of grants that are provided by music music writing grants that were really interesting to me for anybody who has a music ministry at their church some of the grant providers are actually going to provide instruments or the funds to get instruments or equipment like sound equipment amps and all the cords and everything that you would need and then the some of them also provide funding to actually develop the music program any kind of a curriculum or anything along those lines and then there are also a number of the foundations that we discovered that it's hard to put them in a category because each foundation focuses on about five or six different things so those you'll want to spend some time really reading the details that we're going to go over in just a second because the the the areas of focus on these were so wide and broad that was it was even hard to come up with this list for example one of them was the maps foundation and they you know they do focus on literacy and under underprivileged communities but another interesting thing about them is they actually refurbished basketball courts so if you had a you know a gym that was run down and needed a new basketball court the maps foundation is is something you'd want to look at which I thought was really interesting but here's a few of the things that those so I was kind of looking through it was it was these you know children youth and families social services a lot in the medical and health realm if there's you know your churches involved in a you know a vaccination clinic or anything along those lines some of those might be really interesting to look at and then there was a category that I just deemed miscellaneous because it didn't really go with anything else they weren't really literacy or education or anything like that but there's there's one grant provider that focuses on providing support for those that have Alzheimer's you know Alzheimer's initiatives which I thought was really interesting having you know been through that myself with a member of my family you know I know that that that you need a lot of support in that in that season of your life there were some that provide social and environmental justice which I thought was unique and didn't really fit in any of the other categories some that focus on skilled workers rather than you know just giving money for college students but providing support for skilled workers and then also this one didn't really fit under anything else and that's the North Texas Giving Day I'm sure for those of you in the North Texas area you've probably heard this mentioned on the news specifically just about how it's it's one day I believe it's a Tuesday actually now that I say that I'm not sure about that but it is September 17th and it's going to be a day when the idea of giving to a non-profit organization is going to be high on everybody's radar a lot of organizations participate in this it's something that you can register for Owen we'll speak more to this in a minute but I know in my past line of work this was a big day there might be some restrictions is for churches but if you had a food pantry or something along those lines or something that might be more of a social service this might be worth looking into okay so I mentioned this earlier the collection drives these are not necessarily anything that you fill out paperwork and apply for to get many these are to collect things there's I found one that they you you basically do a collection of toner and inject cartridges collect all those and then you contact the organization and tell them what you have they send you what you know self self-addressed stamped envelope or whatever and you mail the toner cartridges into them and then in a certain amount of time they'll send you a check same thing with the shoe drive we've actually our churches two of the churches that we've served have done a shoe drive before I will say it is probably a better idea if you have an associate or an adult volunteer that can really spearhead this this is probably not something you want your the senior pastor to focus on and you need to have an inordinate amount of room because gently worn shoes do start to smell after a while and I say that from experience there's also another collection drive that collects old cell phones same kind of concept you gather them up use they send you something to send them all in and then they'll write you a check as far as the shoe drive is concerned I know that like I said we we have done this twice and I think each time we got about $600 so it might be a good way for a youth group or something like that to just raise a little bit of money okay so we're gonna look at the list of grants right now I apologize because it is a little bit on the small side I'm gonna blow it up as much as I can we're going to email everybody who registered for this the a copy of the PDF but I also want to show you where it is on our website so I'm gonna stop sharing my screen not right now just to be able to go back to our website and share our website with you so this is a home page of the NTC UMC work and if you click here under COVID-19 resources this bright red banner across the top you're gonna scroll down just a bit here we see grants and at the top here where it says new this is gonna be the grants that we're gonna be looking at so I'm gonna try to make this larger so you can see hopefully everybody can read that so we pour again the categories or at the top here as you can see United Methodist grants at the top and then down the side you'll see that we've included the name of the provider and then a little bit about them what they're focusing on the amount of the grant the due date and when the selections are made including a URL where you can go and find more information so I'm gonna just scroll through this quickly just so you can see I have included text in red as you can see here this just says one grant per jurisdiction if there's anything like a something that you're gonna need to know if there's a geographic restriction if it's a focus only on the United States if it's you know something that's outside of the United States there are some that are just specific counties there are a couple that are specific to Dallas County there are there's also one that's specific to Fannin County which we've already sent Jan and Vic the information on that one since their territory includes Fannin County and then I'm just scrolling through and again here's one that says around the world in the state of Texas so in case you were sharing this outside of you know with other pastors outside of our conference they would know that some of these are going to be specific either to North Texas or to certain counties in the state so we've tried to highlight that as best we can as we just sort through here's a list of counties that you know they only provide in okay I did want to mention as we're just continuing to scroll through this there are two that we found that I wanted to include on the list just because I think at some point they're gonna do something again I know COVID has wrecked a lot of us but it really has done a lot to those who are providing funds as you can imagine so there are some there right now we identified but they're like look we're not we're not doing anything right now at all so we put them on the list but we did mention that they are currently on hold so I'm back up at the top now under the United Methodist Grants oh and I believe there were a couple that you wanted to highlight yeah I want to point out that the the racial ethnic local church concerns that is one that I received at Christ Foundry that is one that a number of our churches have received this is new that it's one per jurisdiction and so that is money from the general church is going to be declining has been declining but that is one it's coming up and for some of our churches to consider the Texas Methodist Foundation that is one that's been very generous continues to be generous funds a lot of ministries in our Texas conference and around Texas New Mexico and so their letter of intent is December 1 for their spring cycle grant and so you can go on their grants page and it lines out you know you start out with a letter of intent and then they invite you or don't invite you to apply one of a follow-up that that we could explore doing if there is interest is is bringing the vice president for grants here to share with what they're looking for what they are interested in and so our churches can become more aware of what resources are available for them because they are one of the more generous grants to churches in the North Texas Conference are other granting entities and are the other that I thought about inviting in the future is someone for the Center for not profit management to be able to share more tips on doing grant research it researching and grant writing the third one I was going to mention and perhaps I saw Mike Bogman on here and he might be able to share when I was at Christ Foundry we did apply and we were a part of the North Texas Giving Day I think I read somewhere along the way in the last couple of years North Texas Giving Day has restricted some of the as much as the religious organizations that can apply I think when they first started any church that wanted to be a part of the North Texas Giving Day could be a part of the North Texas Giving Day does anyone know you can put in the chat link if they have gotten stricter on what churches can why or not and I will also share that the good of the North Texas Giving Day is it does spur people often to give that might not give but you also pay more in credit card fees than you do in the bonus you get and so there was a time when we were okay I'm glad your own break son from your kindergarten first day kindergarten I there was a time at Christ Foundry I was encouraging church members to give their tithe on the North Texas Giving Day because we were getting a bonus well that bonus is now declined to such that we lose more in credit card fees than we get then you would get in the bonus on North Texas Giving Day but it is something that is worth considering so those were the three that I wanted to lift up so turn it back over to you Tracy okay Michael did you have something to share with that about North Texas Michael yeah I would just offer that they they actually made a point effort about a year ago to intentionally include and expand the reach over the disorganizations that can participate in our Texas Giving Day so it shouldn't be a challenge so long as you can establish your 501c3 status and even if it's just under the umbrella ruling of the United Methodist Church and yeah the the bonus funds are close to the credit card fees but not all the way I'm happy to talk about the advantages disadvantages of it it's been a huge thing for us over time and this particular to our donor base that makes it I think particularly successful but I'm always happy to chat about with folks or help with strategy on some of the things that have made it successful does anybody have a question for for Michael with that North Texas Giving Day right now hearing none here's what the Center for Church Development is offering you five things one continue to provide and improve this list of granting opportunities to send out periodic emails on grants and like when they're coming available or what we're learning and then due dates that may be up number three there I as I mentioned having Texas Methodist Foundation or another organization provide a zoom call or even get a I think a getting a professional grant writer or someone to come in here and to share what they're doing or get Kathy Sweeney I know she is she is being certified in that in this type of work maybe getting her to help us out on how to present grants and how to seek out grants and actually Kathy I'm gonna call on you in a minute to kind of share what you've been learning through your work at SMU and then the fourth is if you want us to review your applications Tracy's time is limited but we want to try to help and do that and so if you got an application that you want hey as Tracy hey can you look over this she she is offering that at this time again we're gonna see how much that affects how much we are able to do that but that's something I want to do and then the fifth thing I found it really hard as a local pastor trying to get the district superintendents and the bishops signature and and not and chasing them down so something I we can do is if you email it to our office well we office with the bishop so we can get the bishop signature and hopefully help you get your district superintendent signature for you so that's the that's the fifth thing that those are the five things that we feel that that we can offer at this at this time to help and support you and so with that I'm gonna ask Kathy she'll share a little bit about what she's learning and then we'll we'll come to questions and then wrap things up Kathy guys I'm really glad to see all this all this great work thank you Owen it's it's fabulous and it does show a lot of the intentionality that needs to go through with with Grant I'll break it into two two different areas Grant finding and Grant writing you mentioned that at the beginning that it's an equally skilled set and so what what I did when when I was assistant executive director at Agape I I enrolled in a grant certification course that covered both of these things I'm still in the process of finishing that up it should be done in the next month and that's offered through SMU and what I've what I've learned about the writing process is that obviously there are professional writers but there are for lack of a better term jargon or understood objectives of each of the sections of a grant if they're more complicated and so the the question being when do you need to hire a grant writer I think when you start getting into some some very detailed show me what your plan is show me what your long-term budget is how is the sustainable what kind of data are you going to give us the more reportable stuff over time instead of I'm I'm I'm applying for a grant for a thousand dollars to help support our XYZ and they they provide the grant because of how you've pitched them up front but there's not a whole lot of follow-up after that and I can talk much more in more to it but I do think that having someone Owen you mentioned someone from TMF coming in and talking about what they're looking for in the grants and even maybe maybe having something that goes through a grant proposal process and how you know like the cycle of a grant so that people know what they're what they're what they're moving towards the timing of applying and and the expectation of when answers will or or acceptances will will come back all of that is information that's important but very grant specific so that's what's going on on my side thanks Kathy we may call on you in the future and if happy to do it I know and I'll say this as well I know Kathy is getting her certification in this and if if you're looking to hire somebody you can explore that with her so we'll share that with you and and what questions do we well I'll finish this out if you do get a grant main thing is just the last thing there don't run it for the rest of us follow up with your grant do what you say you're gonna do do what they ask you to do follow up do the reports and and be faithful for what they're they're providing and again let us enter in this with them being mindful that we have a generous God who provides for our churches provides for our ministry provides for us and and you know they and I and I'll go ahead and share this when we first made the list and I had a little personal confession time there was a couple of them that I didn't put on the list because I said the Center for Church Developments we're gonna go after that grant for that and then I thought Owen shame on you this is not what the Lord is calling you to do you need to be faithful be generous and the Lord will provide for you as well and so I repented of that and I and so we put them all on the list and put them out there and seeking to work just open transparency so with that spirit we're gonna let's help one another develop this list and develop this resource and then and help our help one another in this process so with this y'all have our contact informations Ross at NTC emcee or Tracy if y'all can give a virtual round of applause to Tracy for her research and her work on all that she did on this that is been a great blessing and so with that Lilliana what questions do we have and we can turn off the screen sharing I think we only had one question that was a little done a little bit earlier and that was about it was for Tracy about cartridges I believe they were I'm looking for it right now for the old cell phones does that company include other electronics like second generation Apple TV and or printers that's a great question I remember seeing a note on there about phones and possibly tablets and maybe computers I don't remember seeing anything about TVs on it but if you go to the website that's on that document I'm sure they'll give you more information I don't recall seeing anything about bigger electronics although that would be fantastic okay and then I believe that is it yeah I saw one about Denise was asking about about property and I do remember seeing some of those it was the mustard seed one but there are some on there that are building related and property related and that'll be listed on the description of it do you remember offhand Tracy which one might be I think it was the mustard seed I know that there were a couple let's see if I can scroll back to that section Samantha can you share more sure so we applied for a grant through the conference I can't remember the name of it but we are putting in a community garden one of the requests and recommendations was to see a look for further financing from other entities in order to increase longevity and sustainability and so Andrew gave us the NRCS opportunity and I looked into it and wrote it up and began the procedure and the challenge with federal grants it's possible it's doable but if I had known all this at the get-go before starting I would have we would have gotten the grant and it would not have been an issue but to apply and receive funding from the government you have to have what is called a cage number and it's a number assigned to any entity doing business with the federal government even though we're not doing business we're receiving money which is doing business to get a cage number you have to have a dense number a dense number DUNS is assigned by this this corporation anybody can apply for a dense number as long as you have certain required materials showing that you are who you are this is where specificity is incredibly important when we applied for the DUNS number they took our name down as First United Methodist Church there are thousands of First United Methodist Churches even though we wrote the First United Methodist Church of Jacksonville, Texas in the DUNS application they shortened it so we had to go through this layer of trying to figure that out then you have to have supporting evidence from the state that you are not for profit in the state that you are in and so we had to go to the state and get information from the Department of State certifying that we were in good standing with the state to be non-profit tax exempt okay the challenge there was we were incorporated so long ago and who knew about the specificity that the federal government can require later the agent of representative for the church was the is the administrative assistant but her address somehow got listed as the office address for our church so that had to get fixed now between all of the fixing basically and the bouncing back and forth and the thing is is that when you interact with it's called the SAM system you have three days to accomplish the changes that they required or you're out you're kicked out of the system and you have to go back to the beginning and start all over again maddening so I got kicked out it was at least four different times because of all of these requirements they don't come up at the beginning only after you reach a certain point do you realize oh my goodness that is coming so I missed this grant I had received an acceptance letter saying oh yeah you got the grant good job and then I got a phone call saying oh sorry you got kicked out of the system because of your cage application process and you won't get the grant so just letting you know this is hard but I would be happy to help anybody who wanted to do this so that you don't have to go through the HG double hockey six that we did for the last three and a half months and I know what to do the next time and if I get the gets up again to to hit this mixed master of detailed craziness then I will do it but I don't want anyone have to suffer in dealing with the government in that way so just a cautionary tale for all of you who might choose to pursue the NRCS or any federal grant yeah and we didn't have any federal grants on our list for that reason also some of them that I was running across talked about how they would not allow basically a church to be a church you couldn't talk about faith you couldn't talk about you basically could not be a church you could not evangelize or talk about Christ or any of those things so again back to Ellen's point as we started you know don't try to be something that you're not that was the reason and Owen about your construction question it's the maybe foundation M A B E E it's under various it's under various areas of focus second one down on our list and that's the one that I think somebody was mentioning earlier all right well I'm seeing some interest about about about all this I had a volunteer pro bono lawyer that helped Christ foundry through all our formation and all this work that we did and so it sounds like this may be good and we can have you know Kathy back have Samantha back some others have navigated this and you know perhaps Mike Bob Lincoln share a little bit about how doing what kind of structure you need if you're gonna do some for-profit activity as well and so I can see this being a very helpful zoom for churches in the future so thank y'all God bless you it's good to see all of you