 So let me start off by first welcoming each and every one of you for joining us today, either live or perhaps you're tuning in to one of our archive and the recording version of the live episode. We are thrilled to have you joining us for another national live broadcast of the nonprofit show and today we are talking about tapping into grant funding and we are doing this with our very special guest market, Brasda Poirier and I'm hoping that I'm saying that properly. I'd like to out about it. Can I do it? Margaret is with Grants for Good and we will be hearing and learning from her in regards to this topic as we move forward in today's episode. If you have not met us yet, we are the co-host. Julia Patrick joins us and CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. Thank you Julia for creating this platform and keeping this platform going strong. I'm Jarrett Ransom, super proud to serve as your co-host, also known as the non-profit nerd because I do like to get nerdy with it. It's a lot of fun and this is a topic that I shared with you, Margaret. In fact, what started my business, the Raven Group, 13 years ago and that is in fact, I believe when you started your business. We also want to give a shout out and thank you to all of our amazing presenting sponsors. Without you, we cannot keep this broadcast alive and going and growing as strong as we have. So very grateful to have your support and your investment. Not just here in these episodes, but truly in our communities around the country, around the globe because you help all of our organizations achieve and exceed truly our mission. So thank you for our support from our presenting sponsors. And back to you, Margaret, because again, today's episode is right here, your wheelhouse talking to you about grant funding and we would like to say welcome and thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thank you. Thanks for having me here. I love to talk about all things related to grant funding. Not so much because it thrills me to be writing all the time, which I do. But what I really love about grant funding is what it does for the non-profits. It'll keep your company afloat. It can help you expand your work. It can do so many things. So we'll talk more about that today and how you can access grant funding. I love that. Well, let's back this trek up just a little bit and have you give us a quick primer on what is a grant and do you pay it back? Is it a loan? Like, how does it function? And because I think we're going to be talking more and more about this given all of the things that have occurred in the last three years, grants are really coming, especially those federal grants, coming more to us in a more forward way. So give us some perspective on this. Yeah, sure. This is a really common question in all of the training sessions and webinars that I teach. People need to first be on the same page and understand what really is a grant and does it have to be paid back? And are there any strings attached? So a grant is simply money that you receive and you don't have to pay back. So in that respect, it's very different from obtaining a line of credit from a bank or a loan where you perhaps pay interest and definitely have to pay it back. So that's the wonderful thing about grants. The other thing to know about grant funding is that it's for a very specific purpose that you have to articulate when you prepare your grant application. And that's where the grant writing comes in. So it's really a matter of persuasive writing that's backed up by data. And that is what helps you get the grant. And there's, of course, more to it. But essentially, the third key thing about grants is they are competitive. So yep, it's money you don't have to pay back. It's for a specific purpose. And thirdly, it is competitive. So most of the grant opportunities out there, there is a limited amount of funding and there are hundreds or thousands of people applying for that funding. So you want to make sure you're at the top of your game and you make the best possible case for support so that you get that funding that you need. Great. And I'm curious if you would be willing to share with us the variety of grants that exist because as we were talking in our Green Room chatter, you also help with federal grants. And so if you could, as we are back in the truck up and I can still hear the beeps, right? That we can define and categorize the variety of grants that might be available to us. Yeah, I mean, that's simple. I like to put them into really four categories. First of all, there's those private foundation grants. Those are the big ones. You've all heard of the Gates Foundation, Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. That's the biggest one in the US. Everybody knows that one. And then there's smaller ones in your own community. So those are private foundations. Private, don't let that word discourage you. Many of them issue public money, they issue grants. There are about a hundred thousand of these foundations in the US alone. So if anybody says to you, oh, Jared, Julia, there's just no grant money out there. What are we going to do? It's simply not true. There are so many foundations out there. Secondly, there are government grants that would be the federal grants you just mentioned, or grants at the state level. Now there are thousands of opportunities every year. You think about our federal government, there are 26 grant making agencies within the federal government that have opportunities. These include things like Department of Education, Department of Energy, Environmental Protection Fund, you name it. They have open grant opportunities throughout the year. I wasn't aware of that. Wow. Yes, it's a lot. I know because I've spent many nights up writing a lot of those. There are many. And then the third category is your community foundations. And community foundations are throughout the US, some of them issue grants, some don't, but they're a great local resource. And the fourth is your corporate grants. So think, what are some of the big companies in your area and do they have a giving charitable program? So right away, think, well, Walmart, right? Target. Think about some of the banks that service your region. Do they have a charitable foundation? Most likely, yes. So yeah, there's a lot of opportunities out there. Well, thank you for that. And I feel that the funding strategy for grants is one piece of our revenue source. And if you could educate and inform us on how exactly as we move into the new year, should we consider our grant funding as part of our funding strategy? Yeah. I see a lot of nonprofits that are struggling right now for funding. And this is nothing new. It's been going on for a while. But last year, actually in 2020, I saw predictions that said up to a third of nonprofits could go out of business as a direct result of this pandemic. Now, for me, even if that's an exaggerated statistic, that's still, even if it's less than that, let's say it's 10%, that's still more than 100,000 nonprofits in the U.S. We can't afford to lose that many. And so grant funding is something that I really, really, really recommend nonprofits do because it literally helped keep the door open for many of the nonprofits that are our clients here at Grants for Good. And so grant funding has to be part of your bigger funding strategy. Yep, you can still have your chicken barbecues. You can have your massive fundraising events. Definitely get individual donors, year-end appeals. You name it, do all those things. But make sure that grant funding is somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to 30% of your overall funding strategy. For some of my clients, for some of the people I work with, it's less than that. And for some, it's more. But that's kind of a ballpark, is let that fill in part of that strategy. Yeah, super important. That is very important. Let's talk about what the grants might cover, right? Are we talking, it's paying salaries, is it going strictly to programs, which I know has always been one of those elephant in the rooms, is that there is no grant funding for X, Y, and Z. It's only there for the programs. So could you address that and kind of what are you seeing nowadays? I would love to. And let's spend another hour together, by the way. Just kidding. Honestly, this is a huge question is how do we get grant funding for general operating funds, right? Because here you have an organization doing 100 different important things, or maybe they have one focus, but they need to fund their staffing. They need to keep the lights on, the heat, as you heard, we're in New York, and there's a lot of snow. So all of those monies are important. How do you get funding for that? Well, yes, you can get it because grants will fund general operating costs, they'll fund program costs, they'll fund capital costs, which is things like that would include maybe purchasing land, a new building, making renovations to an existing building, purchasing equipment. But I want to talk about those general operating costs because I think most of our listeners will say, you know what, that's what we need. So you can either apply for general operating or what we often do at grants for good and what I advise my customers to do is construct your budget in a way that really encapsulates a program well, maybe your program is mentoring youth after school to keep them from dropping out of high school. Now that's a program that requires people to do it. Somebody has to find the volunteer or paid mentor, somebody has to train the mentor, someone has to match them with the youth from the school, maybe even transport them. Those are all costs and that's one way that you can get your staff covered in costs because everybody on your staff is doing something important. Everyone on your staff is doing something that makes your programs run and that staff time should be in your program budgets at all times and eventually you get that covered. I'm glad you said that. I've heard that on numerous occasions and too often see program budgets or just budgets in general that have really not encapsulated those costs. So it might even be the operational cost of the office or the office supplies that are necessary to fulfill the mission of the program and to implement and execute the mission of the program. Now I'm going to throw a curve ball at you because I am genuinely curious because I've seen this trend in my career. What about program evaluation? Is that something that we can put into our grants to find funding for? Well it depends on the funder and this is what I wanted to mention when we talked about maybe having costs like your insurance covered or your occupancy, your rent, all of that can be paid for by grants and even what you just mentioned, evaluation can be paid for by grants but here's the caveat. When you start to research which funders are the best fit for your organization before you even start writing your grant, you've got to find really good funders. Once you find those, their mission aligns with exactly what you're doing, once you find those you've got to look at the fine print and see what they're willing to fund and what they aren't because once in a while we'll see requests for proposals from foundations that say we do not fund staff training for example, just throwing that out there. Now on the flip side, Jared to address what you just asked about, federal grants very often do contain money that is set aside for evaluation of your program. Why? Because they require it. So if you're getting a federal grant that's $100,000, half a million dollars, a million plus, which is not unheard of, there's a pretty good chance that you might be able to put about 10 to 15% of your project budget strictly to a professional evaluator whose role is to help you develop your goals and outcomes at the forefront but also make sure that you've actually met those measurable changes or objectives. I'm going to throw out some terms here that you've met those measurable changes. So that's a real gift when you see that kind of opportunity. That's where I picked up my pen. So 10 to 15% on average, is that correct? It depends on the federal grant opportunity but my experience has been there's often 10 to 15% that you can reserve for evaluation. Now let me ask you this question. I'm going to back up again. That track in my mind is still backing up and beeping. Is this a healthy process to start small and go large? I mean, it seems to me that once you get into that, I'll use the word mojo, but the process of what this takes, it's not just free money. You have to report and you have to perform and you have to measure. I mean, whatever those things are going to be, it seems to me like maybe there's a safety in process where you can navigate these things and then understand really what time and talent your organization is going to need in order to fulfill this. And I'm wondering if you could give us some guidance on that because it's a lot more investment it seems like than just doing what you're going to do once you get the money. There is. And I have to tell you, in terms of planning out your projects and writing the grant applications, I don't want to make this sound like it's a quick and easy fix because it really isn't. It does take a lot of investment on the time of staff at the nonprofit. Some people work with us at Grants for Good, but what I like to do even more so is actually have people do this for themselves. So I created a course which I can talk about in a moment that literally walks you through step by step how to get started in grant writing. And, you know, non-profit, staff at non-profits are overwhelmed right now. They have so much on their plate that the thing I hear most when we talk about grant writing is, oh my goodness, we don't have the time to do this. We just don't have the time. Secondly, we don't have the staff who is going to, who wants to take on more work, right? And thirdly, they worry what if we put in all this effort and we don't see the results? Then what happens? So I address those this way. Yes, it will take some time up front. And the thing is you most likely are halfway to finishing your grant application. I'll tell you why. If you're here listening from a non-profit, you already know what it is you do. You know who you serve. You know what you want to have happen, right? You know what change you want to see in the community. You know the specific problems that you're facing in your community. And I bet you anything you have data to back it up. So I think you've got a lot of what it takes to start your grant writing. But the online course that I've developed actually, and what I'd like to do with my customers is give them a structured approach because I wouldn't want to take on learning something new without having any kind of steps or structure in place because I don't like disorganization personally. And I need to know a step-by-step process. So that's what I created. And it will take some time initially. There are staff, usually a team of people that could work together. But once you get it going, here's the strategy I use. I'm going to share my super secret strategy. All right. Here's what it is. Once you get a standard project grant template written up, you cut and paste it to different funders. And what that means is every month, you could potentially send out one, two, or three grant applications per month so that even if some of those get denied because there's a lot of competition, you're still getting regular income coming in from the grant awards that you do receive. And if that happens year-round, and it kind of has to, it could be every quarter, every month. If it happens steadily year-round, you get a pipeline of funding coming in. And then grants start to do a lot for your work. Because I'll tell you the bad news about grants. You get a whole bunch of money and it runs out in 12 months. And then what do you do? Right? Nonprofits know how this goes. Every 12 months, they're trying to stay alive. So really the key is that pipeline, getting those out the door. That's great. If you're a certain award or win rate that we're striving for, as we set metrics and key performance indicators moving into the year, if I'm part of that grants writing team, is there a certain number that we are, like, target we want to hit? Good question. You know, it's interesting. There's been a lot of research out there. There's been surveys. And I can tell you among grant professionals that are highly experienced, I think the most recent number I saw from a 2021 survey was somewhere in the rate of about 60, I think it was 64%, that number sticks in my mind. And that, that means six out of 10 grants, right? That doesn't sound like a lot. Don't you want 10 out of 10? And 10 out of 10 just isn't feasible. But I'll tell you what is. And I can tell you, I can tell you a lot of fun stories. So we're going to have to chat again sometime, but I've had a client that we applied for a pretty big grant to a foundation. It got denied. First thing we do is we call them up. We say, thank you for reviewing our grant. Can you offer us any feedback as to why we didn't get the funding this time? Sure enough, they got great feedback. We applied a second time, denied, got a little more feedback. Third time, not only did my client get the grant, they got more than we asked for. So I'll tell you, sometimes you get the grants right away. First time you apply, sometimes it's a little bit of persistence, but so are fundraising events. So are looking for major donors. You know, none of that happens overnight. No, not, not with a blink of an eye. Now, what, thank you for answering that by the way, Margaret. Now, one of the mentioned is this 5% role. And I am really curious to know more about this. All right, so this 5% rule is extremely important when it comes to foundation grants, private foundation corporate grants. And federal, let me take one step back for a moment. Federal and state grants, they shift every year. And I can tell you in the last year, federal and state grants bumped up tremendously. I had clients that received so much money in COVID relief funding, especially arts and culture organizations. Some of them had to shut down and there was so much money out there. I predict something in 2022, but I'm going to hold off for a second. Let's talk about this 5% rule. What this means is that every single private foundation is required by the IRS to give five, a minimum of 5% of its assets to charities every year. Now that 5% is based on how they finished their finances the year prior. So guess what? If we look at the stock market and how it performed in 2021, because most foundations had their assets in some blend of stocks and bonds, but they want to see growth. So I'm not going to geek out on finance right now, but I can tell you that 2021 was a phenomenally strong year. Foundations made money, they certainly didn't lose it, and they have more money this year in 2022 to give out. They have to give out 5% of how they finished 2021. What that means for us is loads of grant dollars that need to be dispersed. Perfect. Perfect. So you said minimum of 5%, right? And so we can look at the numbers and kind of see where that trends. I'm curious, because I heard you drop this nugget, and I think it's one worth repeating, is many, many some, I don't know, you can quantify it, of your customers have really seen a growth in grant funding. Now, I've heard and I'm sure all of us have heard many people say, there's no money out there. We're really struggling. We're part of that third that may have to close our doors. We know that to not be true. There is a lot of funding out there, and it's a matter of asking, submitting, make sure that we are building these relationships. Talk to us about what that looks like now, because some of these organizations have seen exorbitant 1.5 million, as you referenced earlier. Lots. Yeah. So I mentioned earlier too, there are over 100,000 foundations out there in the US alone, and tens of thousands in Canada, if we have any folks tuning in from over the border. But if you want to see how much money a foundation has to give out, if there's one of interest to you that you want to pursue further, you can look at the IRS 990, which is their tax return. It's public information. You can just Google it. Look at their IRS 990 to see what the total assets are and take 5% of that. And chances are they're giving out more than that. On average last year, foundations gave any, I think it was about 7% to 8%. Some more, some are hugging that 5% limit more. But either way, it gives you a dollar figure of what that foundation might be able to give. Now, Jera, I think you were talking about, what are some steps in terms of funder cultivation? In other words, how do you start to reach out to foundations? It's more than just writing the application. And there's such an art and a science between working with funders. And really, if I was to boil it down, it's really, it's people helping people. Okay, so you're not talking to a foundation. You're talking to a person at a foundation who's one motivation, at least one of their many motivations is making a big difference in the community. So you're reaching each other on that level. So that's how you want to talk about your projects and what they mean for change in your community. Yeah, there's a lot of money out there for sure. Thanks, Julia, about Rita Sornan with Dave Thompson for adoption. She's been on as a guest. In fact, we did a power week with her and her team last year. We've had on Semiconductor, we've had PetSmart Charities, we've had a lot of amazing foundations, and you spoke to the fact of they are here to partner with you to help provide solutions to your community problem. And they want to be of help, they want to support, they have this funding to give and to grant. And I love, you know, having a strategy of building those relationships, having this is the phone, by the way, for those of you that might not recognize it. It's an old fashioned thing. I've heard of it. You know, and really building those relationships. And I would imagine that helps with the probability of your award rate. So if that 64% is now our national standard of an award rate, which I remember when it was 30%, you know, so it's definitely increased. This is really, really insightful information. I'm curious as we wrap up and we don't have too much time left on today's national broadcast, but if you could tell us a little bit about your company and this course that you've offered, and I think you even have a very generous offer for those of us listening here, but tell us a little bit more about Grants for Good Market and what we might be able to work and partner with you this year. Yeah, great. I started Grants for Good back in 2009, another one of those times in history where we had some financial crisis. We were in a deeper session at the time. And since then we've worked with hundreds of clients throughout the U.S. And you can check out grantsforgood.com. And if you go to that website, there's a free guide I want to tell you about. You can just download. It's called Seven Steps to Grant Success. I know we have a short time here. So check out that guide. It allows you to opt into my newsletter and you'll find out what upcoming webinars are happening as well. But we work with clients all throughout the country. And really my passion is helping people do this for themselves. People sometimes say, Margaret, can you write the grants for us? And I say, I would love to, but you know, there's only, we have a very potent team of professionals here in Grants for Good, but we can't meet the demand that's there and it's massive. So instead I created a course that is called All About Grant Writing and it's a self-paced online course. In other words, you sign up for this course and you can start the course next week. Today you can binge watch it like Netflix or you can start it a few months from now when you've got maybe a little bit of lead time, a little bit of time to work on it. But it's essentially everything A to Z grant writing. It's like having me sit right next to you and I'm holding Jared's hand. I'm like, Jared, guess what we have to do first? We got to select the project. We got to find the funders. We have to do all of our planning. We have to know how to evaluate the project. What are we going to measure how? And we're going to learn how to do the program budgets, which is one of the biggest sticking points. And there's even a module. There's eight modules. One of them covers what do you do after you get the grant? Because it's wonderful to get a grant, but now you're faced with all this money and you think, uh-oh, how do I do the reporting? What do I have to track? So definitely check out that course. Just go to allaboutgrantwriting.com and because I am a new big fan of the show, I want to offer a discount for your viewers and it's 20% off of the course, which I almost never do. So just put in the code NPSHOW20 and it's yours. So I'm going to keep that discount code up for about a week. And, uh, boy, I hope I see you in the course because I'd love to work with you all. Wonderful. Thank you. Very generous. NPSHOW20. Take a look at that. Allaboutgrantwriting.com. I wish I had had this, you know, 13 years in my business. And again, it's so grateful to have this as a compliment, but nerds like you out in our world. So thank you. Absolutely. Julia Patrick, thanks for being here today. Always great to have you alongside. I'm Jared Ransom, your non-profit nerd, which is why I say it's a compliment. I take it as such. Thank you. As always, here's all the places you can find us in and out around the internet and the interwebs. It's almost, you know, if you have a smart TV and you say non-profit show, I joke. And it's like Julia and I show up in hologram form and we sit right next to you just as Margaret holds your hand through the course. We will just about sit on your couch and watch these courses and programs with you. So please do check us out online and please do also give so much love and attention to our sponsors that keep these amazing conversations going and growing just like this one that we've had today with Margaret. So thank you again to our sponsors that are here to help you solve and eradicate your community's problems. So thank you. Thank you to all of you and to all of you watching. Many of you joining us today, again, episode 451. And there is over 800 broadcast segments on those various platforms that I just shared with you. So Julia, I'm thrilled to be back in the hot seat with you and alongside is your co-host. And I presume we're keeping up our same mantra. So I'll let you take us out. You know, we really believe this and we started saying this from the get go. And that is stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here everyone tomorrow. Thanks so much.