 So before we start, I kind of want to set the stage for all of you to realize that even if you are so low, you are not alone. That being so low, if you could kind of see in the chat is a pretty common thing in nonprofits. And every year GrantStation does a survey called the State of Grant Staking Report. And right now for 2024, the survey is just being completed by nonprofits who give us feedback on what's going on in grant seeking. And one of the questions that we ask every year is what are your biggest challenges in grant seeking? And you can see here that 24% of the people that responded say the lack of time and our staff is their biggest challenge to grant seeking. So again, you may be so low, but you're not alone. A lot of other folks have problems with finding grants and doing that research or writing proposals or needing a grant specialist, which to me a lot of those things kind of go together. So what I want to do today is talk about three things that you can do to increase the amount of grants that your organization is able to apply to. And the first strategy is about creating the efficiencies around your grant seeking so that you're having a process that's set in place that you consistently engage in that doesn't change and morph all of the time. A second strategy that we're going to talk about are ways to engage and get a volunteer team together to support your grant writing efforts and where those volunteers can help you in different parts of the grant seeking process. I am going to talk a little bit as well about some artificial intelligence tools that can be used to help save you some time and energy that can really just help take some of those really repetitive work that you do or sometimes the things that you like to do the least. Those AI tools can really come in handy to help minimize some of the time that those tasks take. And then we will also talk about partnerships and how they might be able to take some of the load off so that you are able to apply for more grant opportunities. So we have a busy hour together. We're going to start with the first strategy of developing that system to keep your grant's pipeline full. And the first step in that research process is what we call at GrantStation primary research. It's where you're generating that list of potential funders that would support the work that you do. And there's a lot of different types of supporters that you might want to think about. From government to family foundations or community foundations to corporate giving and businesses, giving circles, donor advice funds, all those associations like the Lions Club and Roa Tans and group like that that give out money, and then different religious grant makers that give across different areas. And one of the ways to find this first list of potential funders is ding ding ding a subscription to GrantStation, which is only $99 today and tomorrow for a whole year. And within that membership, you are able to look at different areas and start to take this huge amount of grants, you know, but every grant possible out there, then how do you whittle that down into the things that really will support you and give you the best return on investment. And the pre-work here, this primary and secondary research that I'm talking about, that's what helps you really identify which funders are going to be your best bet to invest your energy into doing the work that they're asking for. So we do have a search terms just part of our site for anybody who wants to go look at it. But some of the ways that you can look for grants are through geographic area of your state or Canadian province or national funders that give across the United States. We also have an international database. So there's a lot of geographic areas that you could look at to see who funds in that your particular area. And then within the areas of interest, there's a lot of terms that funders use that you might not use. And so, for example, you might be working with opioid use disorder and people who are struggling with opioid addictions. But chances are, if you look in databases, you're not going to see the word opioid. You're going to see the word substance use disorder. So again, by looking at our search terms, if you have a membership or not, you can kind of start to drill down on those areas and find out the terms that funders are using when they're telling the nonprofit community how to apply for grants and what they're interested in funding. You can also search by target populations, looking at I'm serving, you know, an urban community or a rural community, I'm serving youth, I'm serving the elderly, I'm serving people with low incomes, whatever kind of target population that you're supporting in your work. And then you can also search by types of support. So looking at I'm looking for funding for program support, or I'm looking for funding for to build a building, or I'm looking for funding for equipment. So you can take all of these four things, the geographic areas, areas of interest target populations and types of support, and drill down on a really good first list to do some further investigating. And so with that further investigating, that's what we call secondary research where you're oops, that went too fast, where you're taking the different taking, oh, why is that doing that, taking the funders that you identified first, and then I don't know why that keeps popping up, I'm really sorry, and looking at things like their funding guidelines, looking at things like their annual report, looking at previous people that they awarded so that you know, I have no idea why that's doing that, maybe that did it. Previous people that they've awarded, you can look at that information and just find out which ones would be, you know, your best bets, right, and so really doing that secondary research helps you do that. From that point, you really can move on into making your decisions. And so we're going to talk about creating a decision matrix that's going to help you decide which one's the best one to pursue, which where you should as a small shop invest your time and energy. Another really nice thing about creating this tool is that I bet everyone on this webinar right now could raise their hands at how many people come up to them and hand them a grant opportunity and say, we should apply for this. And somebody else walks in and says, we should apply for this. And when they say we, they mean you. So what the grant decision matrix allows you to do is say, okay, let's run this through our criteria and see if it's something that should be a priority for our organization or not. And when you do that consistently, when you have that system set up, then it's easier to say, you know what, thank you for this opportunity, but it doesn't, you know, didn't score high enough to be on our hot list of funders to pursue. So we're going to have to, you know, look at that in the future for, you know, opportunities, but it just doesn't fit us right now. And it's just a more, what's the word, a more concrete and objective way to tell folks no and that you want to focus on those that are the best fit for your organization, not just the ones that are available, right? So with a decision matrix, there's three major components. The first one is setting up the criteria that fits your organization. So you can do this matrix on your own and set up your own matrix, say in an Excel spreadsheet or something like that. Or if you have a membership to Grant Station, you have access to a matrix on your dashboard. But with either way that you decide to do it, there's three components. So first is the criteria, the things that matter the most to your organization, the things that make it more likely and less likely for your organization to get funded. So obviously the amount of work required is going to be really important with a solo or a very small shop. Looking at the relationship with the funder might be a really good criteria to establish so that you know if that's an important criteria for your organization, does that increase your chances or not? And that's like a different answer for each organization. So this is where you're really building that criteria that matters the most to you. Or perhaps it's your credibility as an organization or the timing of the grant funding that need the funds at a certain time and this particular funder just isn't matching your timing. So you have that criteria first and then you start to assign weights to it. So you can go from a one to five or a one to three, whatever you know kind of weights you want. I wouldn't really probably go over five. Just I would keep it in a smaller number of you know that that at a low number, you know we're not as strong in that area or you know we don't have that relationship with the funder that kind of thing. Something in the middle that's neutral and then a positive score of you know we do have a good relationship with the funder or this is an amount of work that's appropriate for us at this time. And then you get a score that then determines if you should go for it or not. So here's just a quick example of criteria. And you again this is just an organization that you know looked at that it complimented the grant makers goal and it builds on our mission, how competitive is the award or how likely are we to get it and our relationship. And then down here you can see these are a little more subjective as to you know is our relationship good or bad. Down here are a much more objective criteria of do is it enough funding to go for you know is there matching funds required and do we have them do we have the time we can achieve what we're supposed to achieve, do we have the audit and those sorts of things. So you go in and give them a weight and then you adopt a key and then you know you can set your key up however it works for your organization but you know if we score 40 or higher we're going to put that on our calendar to apply for. If we get between this score and that score we're going to either you know look for leadership approval or spend more time discussing it or you know we may need another resource in order to move that up to the apply category. And then that kind of you know the red light though we're not going to go and apply for this one. And so you adopt that key and and then you kind of have again that that criteria that you can run everything through. It's efficient and effective because once you develop it it's just going to you know be a faster system for your organization. You and we're going to talk about developing a team but your volunteers can also help with doing some of that research if it's primary research or secondary research of digging into those funders. Your volunteers can support you in these efforts and again it just helps you decide which opportunities are going to be the best for you so that the effort that you do put in to applying for those grants are going to have the biggest rewards for you. So that's our first kind of efficiency that we're developing and first kind of strategy. The second strategy we're going to talk about today is building a team. You really don't have to go at this alone and I really encourage you to kind of start where you are so to speak. Get your stakeholders together if it's your board of directors. If it's volunteers or people who support your organization or donate to your organization or potentially sometimes the participants themselves are important stakeholders that can help you in this area. So start by bringing those stakeholders together. The people that care about your organization and have a fun activity of just pulling out what people like to do. It doesn't have to be about their job description. So perhaps you have an accountant that works with your organization and is maybe on the board but perhaps that accountant really likes to do research or editing in addition to accounting and the numbers. So have a fun activity of pulling out what people enjoy doing and where are their strengths and then where can you fit that into your process. So if it's researching funders or researching need and working with databases and things like that, you might find people who just enjoy writing and editing that could help you with the work that you're doing. There might be people that really enjoy speaking in front of others that could help at your next fundraising event or the next time the press calls and needs somebody for a quick interview. And so again, it's really pulling what people enjoy doing and then starting to figure out where could they fit in my overall strategy of raising funds for my organization. We'll have a bit more details in a few slides on some of the specific tasks that they can do for you and how we would do that. But start first with just who you know, with just who's already engaged and supporting your organization, again, your board, your participants, your volunteers, et cetera. And one of the things that is kind of a sidebar in all of this as you're developing a team is to really kind of look at people's learning styles or kind of preferred way that they like to operate because there's different kinds of people. And so some people are kind of like the action people. They just like they don't want to sit and talk about it forever. They just want to get the work done. They're just those people that just say, let's do it. All right, let's get to it. Then there's people who are people, people who really like to make sure that everybody in the room's voice is heard, that they like to make sure that people aren't listened to and have meaning in what they're doing. And they're really concerned about the human aspect of everyone that's working. Then you have your great visionary people who like to really have that big meaning component, that they really want to see the big picture and why they're doing this, all this work that they're doing and really can create this great environment for engaging people to join a vision that you have. And then there's people who are structure people. They like lists, they like spreadsheets, they like boxes that they can check. They like calendars and all those kinds of things. And the reason that I bring this up is that as you're developing your team, you do want people who have all of these skills. I mean, not people who have them all, but you want people with different people with these skills on your team. Because if you get a bunch of visionaries together or those meaning person, meaning people, they are wonderful. They're wonderful to listen to. They make you feel good. They really get you energized, but they're not going to be able to sit down and put pen to paper and get the work done. Conversely, you get the structure people together and everything might be just drilled down into tasks and this and that. And you've lost that big meaning of what you're trying to do. So as you develop this team, just think about people with those different skills and how you can kind of find different people in all of those quadrants to work on your team to really help you have the best team to do the work that you're doing. I'm going to go into the details, but I also just want to bring this up. I didn't know quite where to put it, so I just kind of threw it in here. But I really encourage you, especially as a small team, to look into the AmeriCorps VISTA program. AmeriCorps VISTA is Volunteers in Service to America. That's what VISTA stands for. It's an anti-poverty program that was established in the 60s. People join AmeriCorps VISTA and they join for a one year term and they serve in nonprofit organizations and they help build the capacity of those organizations. So they do help with things like grant writing and fundraising and advertising and building your lists and creating a volunteer program and things like that. And so a VISTA member not only could help your organization, it could also help you develop a lot of these systems that you're trying to set up, getting a team together, those sorts of things. And when I was on a board of a literacy program an adult literacy program, it was an all volunteer organization. And we got a VISTA member who was able then, you know, for we got it for three years, a different person every three years, but they were able to help build that capacity, apply for more grants, recruit more volunteers, support the volunteers, all those things. So they do that behind the scenes work. So I just encourage you to look this up as a resource because it's a wonderful program across the U.S. to to really support building the capacity of your organization. OK, so now we're going to get it into the kind of the nitty gritty on building a team. So I would start with kind of establishing your goals and objectives of what you're trying to do in your grant seeking program over the next year, a year and a half to two years. So really looking at how much money are we trying to raise what kinds of support are we looking for? Is it from businesses? Are we looking for support from foundations or local associations? Are we big enough and robust enough to actually look at government funding, that kind of thing? And first start by setting what you're trying to do. So also, if you have a membership to Grand Station, we have what's called an R3 report where you can go in and put different targets of where you'd like to get funding in different areas. And it has strategies to help you kind of develop those areas. How what's the best practices for working with businesses or with foundations and that kind of thing. From this list of goals and objectives, then you want to look at, OK, I said I wanted to submit 11 grant applications over the next 18 months, but I don't have enough time, right? So I need somebody we need to bring in some volunteers to work and help with that writing or that research or whatever it is that where those gaps are for your organization and where those opportunities are to help you grow. I'll go into these a little bit in more detail, but the next step is creating then kind of like job descriptions for your volunteers to make sure that you're very clear on what you're looking to do and setting up the strategies with everybody on the same page and then kind of going out there and looking for new people to do some of that work if you have those gaps. So again, you can start by looking with within your organization and who supports you, but then if you find there's still gaps, then looking at who you might need to recruit to become a part of your organization and help you out. So I'm not saying that you need all of these people. OK, I think that's a little overwhelming, but these are just potential roles that you might find that, you know, I am the executive director and I'm writing all the grants and I can really do this work of finding the grants to apply for, but I don't have time for the actual proposal writing or vice versa. Right. I can do some of the writing, but I don't have time to do all of the research. So we'll talk a little bit in more detail about these potential roles and what you could be out there looking for in these different areas. And here they are. So, you know, you could take with proposal writing, you know, that's the person that takes all the information from everybody and writes that compelling story. So you would want somebody who knows how to write well and would take would be able to synthesize information coming from a lot of different places. A data specialist could be somebody who potentially just works with a lot of data, knows how to do research to find out about the needs in your communities or can find out about, you know, what some best practices are for implementing projects, but just somebody who likes to dig into that research and provide you with some of that information and data. It could be somebody who will help you evaluate. And again, we'll talk about how we can go find some of these people as well. But looking at, you know, what's the evaluation component of your project and people that have that's a different skill a lot of times than the writing skill or the research skill. You can hire somebody to or not hire somebody. You can look for somebody who can do that grants research for you or research into best practices or again, data, that sort of thing and find, you know, researchers who could spend, you know, three hours a month doing this work for you. Editors just help with they can help polish your application and read things and proofread things and check all the grammar and that sort of thing. An accountant or, you know, a bookkeeper doesn't have to be an accountant, but somebody who knows numbers can help you put a budget together. Again, that might be a different skill set from an editor to an accountant, right? So who can kind of help you with those budgets and who's kind of your number person that can help you? As you get more fancy and more formal, you know, looking more at designers, you know, who can help you put together a really sharp chart of account or not chart of accounts. Organizational charge or advertising information or information to share with funders at a glance and things like that, who can kind of help you with those those kinds of making things look nice. And then again, just depending on how big the team is, you might have somebody who's kind of managing all of this, right? Kind of making sure that everything's getting done on time. So there's lots of different tasks that you can again find people to support you in. Then the next step is to kind of create those job descriptions of, you know, what you're looking for in those positions. So they don't have to be wordy and verly long. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't make them wordy and really long, but really, you know, something that talks about your organization and what you value, why, you know, why they would want to support you, you know, the importance of your work and kind of providing that meaning and showing them that if they support your organization, they're really going to support kids who are at risk of dropping out of school or they're really going to support, you know, adults that are suffering from addictions or whatever work you do. And then really talking about specific roles, you know, we're looking for an editor or a researcher, you know, we're looking at this many hours a month or whatever and having those time commitments. Again, sometimes it's easier if you're asking for people for a little bit of time every month just because it's not overwhelming to them and they'll join easier if they know exactly what they're committing to and so kind of having an idea based on what your goals are, how much time you're looking for. Location commitments don't aren't quite as important anymore with as much work as we do visually. But if there are any, you would talk about that. But just keep it short, keep it sweet and keep just the information that a volunteer would want to see. Here's a little part that I wanted to kind of throw in about using artificial intelligence and that's a, you know, it's a tool that can really help you with some of these activities. They can help you in seconds draft job descriptions. They help you in seconds in editing proposals to make sure they're the grammar is proper and the spelling and all that sort of thing. They're fantastic tools to help you brainstorm ideas and how to, you know, how you might want to put your proposals together. They are not as effective as at doing research or looking up data and that sort of thing. It's strength is in that quick drafts of information that you can then edit and mold into your own organization. So you could go into a chat GPT, for example, and you could put information about your organization and say, remember this information and you just put information about who you are. Then you could come back and say, I need a job description for a volunteer researcher who will research funding opportunities for me. Please write me a job description and it's going to come up with a job description in seconds that you can then take, edit and use in the future. Same with just the editing of proposals, that it's a great use of those tools to edit what you're doing or just, again, that brainstorming area. So just a little note, we're doing a lot around AI right now and how it can save time for especially small nonprofits like yourself and how I really do believe that these AI tools are really going to start to level the playing field for organizations like yours that never had the time to develop some of these things whereas more resource organizations did. And so by using these tools, it will just save you time so that you are able to apply for more grants than you were before these tools. So we're doing a whole series at GrantStation on this. So the first three we've already done, but we still have three more that we're going to be doing. But if you want like a copy of the free one, just contact me and be happy to get that to you. And if you want to join any of our future ones, just let us know. But I think that it's kind of a scary thing, right? Everyone's a little hesitant about it. But to me, it's what is going to advance the nonprofit community and especially those small grassroots organizations that are doing such great work like all of you. And really enhance the work that you're able, the kind of the outputs you're able to produce in grant writing. OK, so once you have, again, you have your goals established, how much you want to write for, how much money you want, how many grants you want to write. Then you looked at where your gaps are and you develop those job descriptions. Now it's time to go out and start to look at places. With this work, it's going to be very important to your organization. So I don't think that you just have to take anybody who says yes, right? That I think that you do want to be a little selective, that you know that people have the capacity to do the work that you're asking them to do. But some different places that you can kind of target, you know, looking at colleges and universities in your area, you know, looking at folks in the social work department, looking at individuals in the English department, looking at individuals in the psychology department and those kinds of things and talking with the professors there, the advisors there and seeing if there's students that would be interested in doing some of this work with you. Students really usually, you know, in those fields have to have some kind of practical experiences. So, you know, it helps the universities out and it would help you out as well as in addition to the students. Having opportunities at local job centers, you know, advertising to them that you're, you know, putting up flyers or whatever, that at least even though you're not a paid position, that this is a position that would help somebody enhance their resume, that sort of thing that they could, you know, put this information and gain some skills to help in their job searches. Just talking to local businesses that might have people that especially any business that's kind of in your wheelhouse of area of interest. So, you know, if you do work around substance abuse, going to substance abuse treatment centers and seeing if there are folks who might want to do some of that work with you. And then just advertising for the volunteers and newsletters and websites and your social media accounts and those sorts of things. And then just connecting in with all your networks, you know, that you very likely have lots of groups that you go to meetings that you talk to that you could ask and provide the job descriptions for and let people know that you're out there looking for people to do this work. I have to admit when I first got interested in grant writing, I wanted a job being a grant writer, but I didn't have enough experience that anyone would hire me. So I took a job at a nonprofit and I said, listen, all right, any grant you want me to write, I just want to get that experience so that I can do this and get that, you know, the skills for and do this work full time. And so I did that. I wrote lots of grants for them. You know, we were really successful. And then at one point I was able to break away and start my own business writing grants and doing consulting work with nonprofits. So there's Alice's, you know, in your states, in your communities that are interested in just getting those skills and getting that results so that they can create that career for themselves in the field. So finding those people is an important part of the process. Once you have your team together, there's really key things that you want to do to manage that team. First, just being really clear with each person about what you're asking them to do and that time commitment and sticking to it. So if you ask somebody for 10 hours over two months to do some work for you, keep that at 10 hours over those two months and keep to that time commitment. And and don't overwork them or overburden them. Provide them with the information that they need to do the work that they're doing. So some of your your work might be educating them a little bit about your your organization. It might be educating them a little bit about using Grant Station to find grants or whatever it is that they're doing, providing them with information on where you get your data and showing them how to use the CDC's website or whatever database it is that you use. So part of your job might be a little bit of that education role to help them have the ability to do the work that you're asking them to do. Keeping open communication with them is really important. And making sure that you're not waiting until the day before the grant is due and then saying, hey, did you finish that grant because it's due tomorrow? Keep that communication up with them if they're having any problems, you can support them. And you also just know with that that that that something might not be happening on time or you might need to adjust or things like that. You can support their professional development by sharing things like free webinars like TechSoup offers, like Grant Station offers, like different nonprofit organizations offer. And even if you can't pay for a professional grant writing training or something like that, you can a lot of times find those free resources to help people with their own professional development, which keeps them engaged and keeps them part of the process. Setting realistic deadlines is also really important. You don't want to overstretch them, get them all stressed out, have, you know, big catastrophes or chaos going on. Setting those realistic deadlines that that folks can really adhere to and then celebrate together. I really think it's important to celebrate when those applications are submitted. Sometimes you're going to submit an application and you're not going to get it, but you work together, you worked hard, you did work. And so I say, celebrate when you submit it. You can also celebrate when you get the grant as well. But celebrate when you submit, because if you don't get the grant award, you still are celebrating the work that people are doing and supporting them. And then finally, have a little debrief. It doesn't have to be an intense meeting, but just what worked in our process, what didn't work. It's not a finger pointing type of session, but just having that short debrief. And then, you know, maybe if you have to get additional people or you need to provide additional support to help people along the way. So it's not a pointing fingers at who didn't do what, but really figuring out what worked and what didn't work so that you move forward with better results. Here's just another kind of thing to manage the workflow. And so this is what I did with all of my clients when I had my consulting business. And so with every application, I would first just write out all the things that the funder was asking for. So this funder wanted a project narrative and a budget and a budget narrative and the list of board members. And you can read that list, but I would put all the documents that were required. Then I would come down and say all the activities that went into creating these documents. Some of these documents are as simple as just having access to them, like your 501C3 letter or your most recent audit. But some might take some time in your current organizational budget and perhaps you don't have that handy. So have each activity that you need to do from the beginning of the process till the application is submitted. Who, what you need to do and then who's responsible and then when they need to have that information done. And this just keeps people accountable. It keeps the process moving along and on schedule. And it just keeps the process moving ahead because sometimes, like I said, you might need the budget early in the process, which you usually do. And if somebody submits you the budget at the end of the process, it messes up the whole process. So really looking at the different different steps and activities that need to be researched or be collected or be developed and then how the entire application gets put together. So just a good kind of schedule. You can do it online or do it on paper, whatever works for you. Our last tip is to look at partnerships to help lessen your load. There are lots of different ways to partner across the spectrum. We just had a partnership webinar with TechSoup last week or two weeks ago that you can go back and watch that has a lot more detail on all of these things. But a lot of times working in a different way is a lot easier. Working with a partner or working with a coalition or a group of people can really help you lessen your own load. That working in that collaborative effort, a lot of times, number one, a funder likes to see that anyway. So it does increase the chance of you getting funded by working with partners. But number two, perhaps you can work in this collaborative. Maybe you're going to submit five applications and maybe the five organizations each will spearhead the application process. And so you can share the work, share the load with each other as you're writing your applications. So this is kind of like the easiest, if you will, or the least structured process in just having those associations, partnerships, collaboratives, as you move up the food chain, you get more in depth on how you want to structure it, which again, you could go back to the other webinar, but it could be that you're doing joint programs together or you're sharing support functions where you're sharing office space. Let's say, for example, that's cutting down on your work or your expenses and that kind of thing. Or you're sharing an HR person who's going to cut down on your work and your expensive and the HR person is going to work across several organizations that are sharing support functions. So just or a grant writer, potentially, that's going to work across several organizations and help each organization do that. All the way up to mergers, which are a much bigger deal with legal implications and things like that. But these working with partners can really help you, like I said, just share the work and not have to do it all on your own. So really good ideas there. And just go back and watch that other webinar for more information. There's also just some information that I have on here that that sometimes you might find as a really small organization that maybe a funder has a minimum amount of a budget that you have to have a budget of $100,000 in order to apply something like that. Or they require an audit in order to apply and you're a small organization that doesn't have an audit. So as a small organization, sometimes it can be nice and it could be a small organization. It could be a small project. It doesn't even have to be an organization. You can partner with a fiscal sponsor who then manages the the the project or whatever gets the money themselves. And your project staff could do the work, for example, but they actually submit the application and they have the audit and they have that minimum amount that you would need to apply to that that particular funder. So there's lots of different ways to work with fiscal agents or it's not fiscal agents. It's not the appropriate word anymore. It's fiscal sponsors to help you to just build your own capacity and and again, share the work with an organization that already has the systems established to get those more competitive grants, if you will, or bigger grants or just help you, you know, expand out especially. I know a lot of organizations that do this where they've gotten a lot of foundation support. They want to jump up into government support, but they don't have the audit and they need the audit so they start to work with the fiscal sponsor. So just an idea for your small organization. So you can look at different organizations that do that kind of like for a living at the fiscal director's fiscal sponsor directory. There's different agreements here that you can go look at. There's different organizations that can tell you about best practices and things that you want to consider from the national organization of fiscal sponsors and then just a really good book as well on how to do fiscal sponsors correctly. It's not something that you just do willy nilly. It's something that you really have to think through and develop the systems to make it a good relationship between you and that fiscal sponsor. So I'm going to take a drink of water. We do want to just announce again today and tomorrow is our ninety nine dollar tech suit promo. It's the cheapest that Grant Station offers our memberships. So if you're looking for a Grant Station membership today and tomorrow are the best days to do it. So you can get that membership for ninety nine dollars a year. And if you already have a membership and you just want to layer the ninety nine dollar one on top, you can do that through the tech suit promo as well. So I'm going to get a drink and then we'll look at some questions. You you take a drink. Let me do a little bit of background here. Just like Alice said, we will stack your membership. You can go ahead and purchase this and add it to your existing membership. So then you can get a year from the day you purchase this. So keep that in mind. Secondly, we don't offer various tiers of membership. There is one price for everything. So everything that you've seen, everything we've talked about, everything we've mentioned. In fact, everything we covered today is actually also included as part of your membership. You can find all that in our build section on our website. We have tours that go in depth into all the different features that we offer at Grant Station. And that is one of them and everything that we covered today, how to build your team, even how to get board buy in, how to make your board more active when they are not active. As many of you may have been mentioning in the chat, we have articles about all of that. And that's all included as a part of your membership, along with the grant research, along with all the search terms and even along with a chance to download winning grant proposals and see what's been working with other grant writers. This can save you a lot of time, especially if you're a one person office, you can simply log in, see over 55 different examples of winning grant proposals and then see what they did and maybe incorporate elements of how they approached it into your applications. So the way to sign up for this, and that's why Aretha is here and she just did it, it is in the chat. There's a dash at the end. Make sure to add the dash. That's an issue with Zoom not wanting to show it. So click that link and then add the dash at the end. And that will open up that option to buy Grant Station for the low, low, low price of only $99. Alice, we should make it $99.99. That would be like those ginsu knives. And that'd be great. So lots of questions came in. So I'm going to try to try to do it in some order here. So this is from the Boston Museum. As a nonprofit, it's all about the mission. How would a decision matrix be more efficient than a quick mission assessment? Now, they can usually scan the grant opportunity and quickly make a decision from there. Would that be a better choice or is the decision matrix? Who is it really for, I guess, in this situation? Well, I think that one of the reasons that you would want to adopt a decision matrix, that one of your questions obviously has to be, does it support our mission, right? Does it sit within what we're trying to do as an organization? But there could be other criteria, right? Of, you know, do we have enough time? You know, a federal grant might fit with your mission, but you don't have the time or resources to apply for that federal or state grant. So there's other criteria that you want to consider. If you can quickly look at a grant application and kind of scan it without putting it through a decision matrix, that's fine. You don't have to use it. You know, you may just have that process that just you can do it by just looking at it. Then then you don't need it. I mean, I'm not telling you to add a step if it's something that you don't need. But it's just the reason that it can be nice. It can kind of be that objective thing. If people are constantly coming to you saying, apply for this, apply for this, apply for this, that that you can, you know, have this objective criteria by which you say, yeah, but but we don't have the bandwidth to do this. This doesn't meet what we're trying to do. So no, thank you. So but if you don't need it and you can just look at those, then don't don't add another layer of work onto what you're doing. That's very smart. But also, like you said, it's a good way to show someone, especially if you have executive director who is very gung-ho and may not quite understand the nuances of applying for grants and say, well, here's the decision matrix layout, not just my internal gut feeling based on X. And even though your gut feeling is correct, sometimes they want you to show the work. Decision matrix is a quick way to show the work if you ever need to do that. Yeah. Next question. This is a two-parter, I think, one I'll do and one you can do. Karen asks, relationships under criteria brings to mind the whole thing of, quote, no unsolicited inquiries. So is that something you can speak to here and how do we get past that barrier? So I'll start, I'll do my part and then you can do your part. I think you know how we're going to split this, maybe, maybe not. I do. See if we're on the same wavelength there. So everything we have in Grant Station is allowing for unsolicited inquiries. Everything we have listed, you can, if you fit the parameters, it's very important. And that's why we have our whole database set up this way. If you are a good choice or a good fit for that funder, you can contact them. They are accepting unsolicited inquiries, everything on Grant Station. And that's something that separates us from lots of the competition out there. But how do you get past that barrier, Alice? So, yeah, so like Jeremy said, if you, if you get something out of our database, that funder is accepting unsolicited applications. If you find a funder who does not accept unsolicited applications, it's a harder process. And I think that you put that in a longer term perspective of thinking about maybe a three year plan or something like that, depending on how large the funder is, of starting to develop that relationship with the funder. And it's going to vary from funder to funder and how much they, how porous they are, if you will. Some are never going to read anything you submit, no matter what, because they don't really care. Some will take certain information and, you know, take a meeting or allow you to submit a short concept paper or letter of inquiry that at least tells you about your organization and what you do. And then if they want more information, they'll contact you to start to develop that relationship more. It's it's it's a harder process, not impossible, but it's a much harder process. So I think you put that in a long term strategy and in a short term strategy, you go over, you go after only those that are that are some that allow for unsolicited applications, which is what our database is. Perfect. Now, this question came up a lot. It was chatted about or chattered to chattered. No, that's not. That doesn't sound good. Forget that. Edit that out, that's awful. So many people were asking this specific question and totally valid question. Lisa said, we don't have the bandwidth to apply for grants. How do we put the time into creating a team? And, you know, what do we we're here to do solo? Alice, how dare you give us more work to do? How do we deal with all this extra work you want us to do? What do how do we deal with this? Well, I think that one of the things that you have to think of yourself. So just a couple of things. Think of yourself as as as spending your time kind of managing the team and managing that process as opposed to writing all the proposals that that you're bringing in people to support you and help you in the work that you're doing. And by bringing people in, it's lightening your load instead of just layering another layer on top. That's also where the partnerships can be very helpful of working with partners to lighten your load so that you don't have to do it all yourself. But I do understand that it's like, yeah, this just seems like more work. But the idea here is, again, starting where you're at. Just start by looking at those that already support you and see if you can pull in some support to help you with those applications. Again, if it's editing or researching or whatever, and just start with who you know, who already supports you and then, you know, add another layer, look into that VISTA program. You would you will be so happy that you did because it's an incredibly affordable way to help you build your own capacity to be more effective for four dollars. If it's, again, from building that volunteer pool to doing the the actual legwork of research and grants and data. So just use some of those ideas as they can work for you and don't think that it's something that you're just layering on to yourself. Try to find that, you know, that one support person who can come in and help you to start and then grow it and grow it until you're not doing all the grant writing work yourself. Just to go back to something that Alice said earlier on, you're not alone. That's the key, even though it feels like it. And I know, you know, when it's two o'clock in the morning, you're rewriting that application, you know, to Purina. Purina Foods Company and it's not done yet, and it's all run. You do feel alone, but you're not alone. So keep that in mind. There is a reason you're doing your good work. There are people who like your good work. Now is your chance to reach out to them and let them become a part of your good work. And that's what this is really about. And that's what this groundwork Alice laid out was how to do that. So, yes, it's a little bit more thinking work, but it will actually save you a lot of work in the long run. Those partnerships are, I mean, as you as we've talked about many webinars here at Grand Station, these partnerships are the key to having a successful and strong organization where nobody has overworked to the point of wanting to quit. So the goal is to be able to spread the load, spread the weight around. So it's not just one person carrying all of it. So we've only got a couple of moments left. I don't know if we want to keep going and do some more questions or if we should let's do a couple more. Yeah, yeah, one more. Yep. OK, so well, actually, this one probably fits really well. This is from this was asked in the chat. And I think it's a really good one. What are the three key roles if they can't fill them all? Oh, I think so. I do think that using tools like AI can help with like that editor role. So I would take that one off just because that one I think you can use with the tools and that works really well. I think that you might want, you know, depending on where your skills are at, I'm looking at the writer. I'm looking at the researcher. Who can either do the grants research or the data research and the need and that sort of thing. So the writer, the researcher. Candlestick maker, the baker. The baker and then maybe I don't know. It depends on where your skill set is, but maybe it's, you know, if you need, if you're not just good at budgets, bring in that, you know, somebody to help with finances, if you're not good at an evaluation, bring in somebody to help with the evaluation, that sort of thing. So kind of doing your own assessment of where you just need that extra support for your organization. Perfect. And I think I think that's a good one to go out on right there. Yeah. And if you if you had questions, I know there's a still a few more in the chat, feel free to just email them to me. I'm happy to respond. It's just Alice at grandstation.com and we'll get those questions answered. And with that, I think we'll hand it back to Aretha. I think there's something going on today that's something about a sale, maybe a nine dollar sale. Is that right, Aretha? Absolutely. Absolutely. I'll put it in the chat again. And a lot of people have said they've already gone to buy it. So congratulations. Oh, yeah. Yeah. This is for Canada. And if you go to TechSoup.org, you will definitely see the link to purchase it on TechSoup. This was really good. So thank you all. And a lot of people ask about the previous webinar. You can go to our YouTube channel, just go to YouTube and type in TechSoup or go to TechSoup's website and you'll see the previously recorded webinars. It should be at the top. Thank you all. Have a great day. Wonderful. Thanks, everybody. Have a good day. Bye bye.