 Well, this is exciting today. The reason I say this because this is the first of its kind here at TechSoup. Today we're going to be talking about how to use a grant scorecard to create your winning proposal. So I'm excited about this. I always learn when you guys learn too. So today we're going to talk about how you can submit your strengths proposals and increase your grant seeking success. My name is Irvita Simons. I'm the webinar producer here. I know many of you know all the drill, all the housekeeping, but I'm going to share it with you just in case it's your first time. This is being recorded. So you will get the recording, excuse me, and the video replay in about 40 hours, maybe tomorrow. And I got a little finger happy there. And you will get the slides along with the video replay. If you need to close caption, go ahead and tap on that CC button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Somebody has already done that. We love it when you come back and you know exactly the drill. I'm going to move out of the way because there's a lot to cover today. I'm going to introduce our speaker. She is no stranger to TechSoup. She is the president of GrantStation. And today is going to be an exciting day because today is the GrantStation sale. You'll hear more about that as she goes through the presentation. But we'll also be putting the links in the chat room. Alice, she has done multiple things. She's raised over $45 million and worked with hundreds of nonprofits to help them increase their capacity to raise funds. She is the grant guru. And she's going to talk about how you can use your grant scorecard to win more grants or even understand how they scored your grant. So Alice, welcome back. I'm going to turn it over to you. Thank you so much, Aretha. And thank you all for being here. I'm so excited today. We have a large crowd. So I'm excited that so many people are here to learn about using a grant scorecard. Just a little bit of information about how this particular topic came about was that GrantStation, every other year, along with the Grant Professionals Association, hosts a winning grant proposal competition. And through that competition, if you have won an award in the previous two years, you can submit your proposals to us. And we go through an extensive process with a lot of different screeners and judges. And we select the best of the best. And then what we're able to do is share that with the nonprofit community and our members, the different proposals that you can read that are just outstanding proposals. So we just went through this year's proposal competition. And you can go to GrantStation and check out those winners if you'd like. But when we were going through the process, it was the first time for me as the newer president of managing this competition. And as we were going through our scorecards, if you will, how we asked our reviewers to look at the different proposals and score them was rather generic. It was a little bit more like, was the need compelling? Or these are not exact words, but things like, was the approach sufficient or was the work plan sufficient? Those kinds of things. But they weren't really they were hard for reviewers to kind of wrap their head around because what is sufficient? What does that mean? Or what does a compelling statement of need mean? So we went through our scorecard and we put more details and information on exactly what makes it very, very strong. What makes it kind of in the middle and what makes it weak? And in that process, our founder who was also a judge said, oh, Alice, this has to be a webinar to teach people how to use this tool. And I was only thinking of it from the grant reviewer perspective and not how a grant writer could use it. So I'm so excited that we're going to be going through this today and how you can take this tool, you'll get a copy and use it to kind of grade your own applications and then work to enhance them. So that's exactly what we're going to do today. We're going to look at the different major components of the grant application and kind of what can make them stronger and weaker. I'm also going to talk a little bit about synonymous terms in the grant writing world, because that's always very confusing as grant when we're writing our proposals. So I'll kind of touch on that as we go through and then kind of look at each section after we've looked at the scorecard and just talk about different things that you can do to enhance that particular section, kind of what the best practices are in that area. And then you can go back and make fabulous winning grant proposals. So we'll do that for about 45 minutes, and then we'll save time for questions and answers since I know that we have a big crowd. And you guys might have some specific questions. So we're going to get right started with the organizational background section. So here on the slide, you can kind of see what I've done is taken the different components and what makes it from a strong application to a weak application. And so one of the things that Funder is always looking for as kind of a cheat sheet, if you will, is that your organization has had that experience in working with the target population or working with in your community and operating your programs and doing it in a really strong and compelling way with a good structure to your organization. But they really like to see that you have done the work in the past. So in your organizational background, that's really that section where you're really making your organization shine. You're incorporating your strengths and you're really putting your best foot forward for that funder to kind of see that you've had that that success in the past and that they can see how strong your organization is. You can kind of see how as you move down to the weaker side of an organizational background where they just don't see that alignment with the work that you're doing or that, you know, they kind of see that you're what they call chasing the money that you've not provided different programs that you're trying to offer in this grant application. And they really view that as you kind of trying to fit that grant opportunity into your organization instead of that really good connection. So those are some of the kinds of things that really play on how high of a score you get in the different sections and what the funder is thinking of as they're reviewing that section. I'm not going to go through this on every single slide, but I did just put the synonymous terms. And that's what can really make grant writing confusing, is that if you lined up ten different application instructions or request for proposals or funding opportunity announcements, whatever word the funder uses to say that they have that these are their guidelines. If you line them up and you line ten up on your desk, it's going to look like funders want ten completely different things because one funder calls it an organizational background and another funder calls it an organizational profile or an organization description. And so, you know, through this workshop and through what we teach a lot at Grand Station is teaching you how to kind of translate that because really funders are looking for the same things kind of over and over again. They're just doing it in a way that sometimes gets the reviewer, the writer confused because you're like, well, what is this section called? And is it the same as this other thing? So I've kind of listed the synonymous terms on here just as part of your overall learning to kind of understand that even though I'm calling it an organizational background, another funder might call this section of a grant application the profile of the applicant. So just so you can kind of see those differences. So how can we really work to ensure that our organizational backgrounds are really strong? The first one is to make sure that you have that alignment with the funder and that you are, you know, providing services and that align with what the funder wants to provide. So for those of you that aren't members of Grand Station, I'm going to tell you about our sale that's going on today and tomorrow through TechSoup. But in our charitable database, here's just an example of just a complete random one that I chose, where you can see that from the charitable database, it tells you exactly what that funder wants to fund, what areas of interest they're interested in. And so if you come up to this particular funder and you don't align with what they're doing, it doesn't matter if you write the best application in the whole world, you're still not going to be funded because you have to align with what the funder is trying to do in their own charitable purposes that the funder has. So the first step is just to make sure when you're doing your research that you're lining up with your funders really specifically. The second ways that you can change is to be able to really demonstrate that what you've done in the past that you've had an impact on your target population or on your community or both and really be able to show that with numbers and percentages and things like that to show that you have that track record in the past. So if you haven't collected this information, this is stuff that you really want to make sure that you go to go back and collect in retrospect or that you really enhance and really work with the data that you have about what you've done so that you can share that information in your background section. And like I said earlier, it's really your time to shine and show your organization strengths. We did just do a webinar with TechSoup a couple of weeks ago on developing your strengths and incorporating them into proposals. So you could go back and watch that one to find out more information on how to really drill down on those strengths and how you can do that within your organization. And then sometimes you might be serving a target population and have served them for years, but perhaps you are expanding your offerings by doing a pilot program in maybe a new and different area. So let's say you've always worked in helping people with managing their finances and maybe you want to move into now how they can use that information to help with housing or something like that. So you've had that experience with the target population but not necessarily in that one program. So just make sure if it's a pilot program that you're offering that you share that information of how you've at least worked with the target population in the past and then just show how you're growing to meet demands in the community that are unmet. And show at least that you've worked with your community, your target population, if you're trying to expand to new areas. And really just kind of as an overall thing, funders don't like that kind of if we build it, they will come sort of mantra. They want to see that they're already there, that you've built that program with your target population in mind and that there's that need and that they're part of the development and design of your program. So they really like to see that true record. So those are some things that you can do to enhance that organizational background section. The next section that we're going to move to is the need or the problem statement section. And some of the things that really stand out to me when I look at the grant scorecard, and just so you know, this is the grant scorecard, but you will get it all in one page, or two pages so that you can again use it for editing your own applications. But some of the things, you know, having that data that's very local to what you're doing, that your data is relevant to what you're doing and up to date. And so I'll talk a little bit more about these components and how we can improve them. But really if a funder is looking at an application and they're seeing data that's old, that's a real turn off to a funder to see really old data. My rule of thumb is like three years. I try not to have any data older than three years. And then also making sure that you're telling the funder where this data came from and you're citing those sources and not just kind of willy-nilly throwing out information that they can't then kind of track, you know, in case they had any questions on it. The other kind of component is just the relevance of the data that you're providing and making sure that the information that you're providing is connected to the project that you're proposing in your grant application. Again, down here, you can see all the different synonymous terms. I'm using the term need, but someone might just say, what's the situation analysis or what's the needs assessment? So funders can use different terms for this section. So again, what we're always teaching at GrantStation when writing that compelling statement and of need is making sure that your data is as local to your geographic area as possible. So what that means is if you serve a county and let's say you serve homeless veterans in your county, then you want to be able to communicate how many homeless veterans are in your county. If you serve a city or a region or a neighborhood, you want to drill down to as local as what you're serving as possible. Because if a funder, if you serve, let's say, a county and you provide white data, it doesn't really show that you have a local need. It shows that the state has a need, but it doesn't kind of connect down to the local level. So always drilling that information down to as local to your geographic area as possible is really a best practice in putting together a need section. And then the relevance again is a little bit of a judgment call up to you as to what demographics or indicators that you're using to describe your target population, but you do want it to be relevant to the proposal. Meaning you don't just want to throw in every bad thing that you can think of about your community. Thinking if I just kind of hitch and sink this section, I'll look like I'm just pitiful and I have all this need. If it's not relevant to the project, it really just kind of confuses the reader as to why were you talking about, you know, children born prematurely when you're, you know, addressing individuals with, you know, maybe substance abuse issues or something is like it doesn't connect. So why did you do it? Then I already kind of talked about the up to date part as, you know, three years being my kind of my cutoff whenever possible. And as more sources go online and are, you know, accessible to us on our computers, that's becoming easier. The information is more updated. So, you know, there really isn't a lot of reason to have something that's older than three years. And then citing your sources I already spoke about as well. So making sure that in a, you're, you know, new to the process and you're applying to say a local United Way or a community foundation on your local level, you can just write in, write in the narrative, you know, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, you know, then share your data or according to the US Census Bureau, then your data, but always making sure that you've identified where that came from. And then kind of as you move up the food chain of grants and move from more of your local stuff up to say government grants, then your sources cited pages will become more of an actual source of cited page as opposed to just written in the narrative. And then also with just visuals, I like to use visuals when I can, when it's available to me and when I feel that, that picture is going to prevent, present, you know, the story of that need in a way that's really engaging to the reviewer. So I will use visuals, pie charts and graphs and different things to really demonstrate, you know, what our need is in our particular situation. But as more applications go online, we have less of a chance to use those visuals. I do want to share with you that Grant Station has a Pathfinder library and in our library, we don't, it's not a all encompassing thing of data sources, but we have a lot of good reputable data sources in that library. So you can go right to Pathfinder and find different sources if you need them to enhance that need section. Okay, so now we're going to move on to the project design and approach. This is actually going to be three slides of the, of the scorecard because these three sections kind of go together a lot of times in a grant application. So the first part here is just kind of your, your approach or your design. Again, the words that keep popping out to me are, you know, is it a logical approach? Does it make sense, you know, to the average person as to how you're doing this? And will it, you know, build on what already exists in your community? And so that's about working again, the part of that strength, you know, based thing that we were talking about in the organizational background section, but building on what other people are doing in the community, just add strengths to your own approach into what you're doing so that you're more holistically addressing the issues with other partners. So really looking at, you know, does this, you know, does this just sound logical of the steps this organization is going to take to have that impact on the target population? And then, you know, is it, is it scalable? That's also a thing that funders will sometimes look at. You know, is this something that, again, probably at a local level isn't, you know, if you're just starting at a community foundation level, maybe not completely necessary, but they do like to see programs, you know, that can be ramped up and used in other communities. So if you, you know, offered this program here, could another community then take it and have the same kind of results as what you're doing and can you kind of scale that program up, you know, over time to make it a really, really impactful program across a region or an area or a state or across the nation, depending on what you're doing. So again, just anonymous terms. Another group might call it your plan of operation or your activities or process or whatever. The second part that's usually part of an approach section is your partnerships. And I did speak to that a little bit a moment ago, but really, you know, working with those partners and are you really, you know, collaborating and creating a shared vision that as, you know, entities, you're working together to solve different issues, root causes of the things that you're addressing in your communities, if it's homelessness or, you know, addictions or housing issues or, you know, all sorts of different things. So are you really collaborating together or are you, you know, just sharing resources, which isn't a bad thing, but, you know, it's a little bit different of, you know, you can have one and not the other, right, that you at least are sharing, that's a real positive. And really, you know, or are you really on that edge of you're trying to do that solo thing and going out there all by yourself and funders really don't like to see that, you know, that you're kind of trying to be the lone ranger in an area. They want you to build on what already exists. It just adds to the community and adds to their own investments that they've given over time or other funders or just owners in your community. So always looking for those strong partnerships. And then the third section that is usually in an approach section is that timeline or work plan. So kind of again, not all applications ask for a timeline or a formal, you know, work plan chart type of thing, but are they really able to see that the work that you're proposing number one, does it, you know, we already kind of discussed if it makes sense, but is it, you know, is it really, you know, sufficient to get the work done? Are you overestimating what you can do in this time or is it a reasonable assumption that these things can be accomplished in that time? Because when you write your approach section, you know, that's what the funder is really expecting you to do when you get the grant. So if you're awarded, you know, they're expecting that you're going to be following the schedule that you put out or timeline, that you are following this approach that you laid out and you're going to do this thing first and that thing second and this thing through. And so when looking at that timeline again, you know, is there a timeline and is it a reasonable timeline? Because you don't want to overpromise things that you can't deliver. That's not going to help you at the end of the grant cycle when you come back to report and then you couldn't do everything that you said you were going to do. That's not going to be to your advantage because you might get a reputation of not doing the work or, you know, that you didn't pay enough attention to this funder and do what you were supposed to do and things like that. So some ways looking at all three of these, just kind of the design, the work plan and the partnerships. Again, you know, what you want to do is make sure that what you are doing when you're developing this is creating this logical approach that works with other partners to address the root causes of the need that you're addressing. And so that's where bringing those partners in to help you in, you know, truly collaborating to address these root causes. An example would be like, let's say you do a, let's say you have a job training program and one of the barriers to people getting jobs is that there's no training and that's what you do. And maybe there's two other barriers. Maybe one of them is childcare as a barrier or transportation as a barrier to those job training things. So you could bring in the resources of organizations that provide that childcare or provide that transportation and then you're better addressing it. You're really bringing people in together to address the root causes. You want to provide, you know, the amount of detail. You want to be pretty detailed, really, you know, in saying who's going to do what and where and when and why and how and all those kinds of things so that if somebody, you know, brand new to your organization picked up your application, they would be able to look at that and kind of know this is what I'm supposed to be doing. This is kind of my role in this project and I kind of know the steps I need to take to do my job. So that's when, you know, the sufficient details. And then, you know, these other ones about, you know, really connect with partnerships again but really showing how that you're engaged in the community while you are a partner to others and that, you know, your organization or your project is part of a larger, you know, operation, if you will, or making a difference in the community and that you're a part of that community. And so make sure that those partners are meaningful. Don't just, you know, try to find a partner just to have a partner and say, yeah, we're partners. Like you really want to develop them. They take time and they take energy but they are really impactful, especially when those different partners can really bring assets to the table to help you in your projects. So they may be bringing expertise or they may be bringing other funds or they may be bringing part of your target population or all sorts of things they could be bringing to the table. So always making sure that you've outlined what they're bringing specifically to the table. My husband just got home with our dog from the vet so you're seeing him on the TV but he's out. Okay. The next section is about the goals and objectives again, this is a can be confusing because of the terminology. We could be using the terms, you know, impact or what does success look like to you or what are your outcomes and indicators. All these words we could be using interchangeably with goals and objectives. But really looking at, you know, those goals being, you know, that visionary look at the work that you're doing and then those objectives being that really concrete specific measurable things that you're going to go out and evaluate at the end of your project. I think that this is a part that a lot of nonprofits do tend to have a little bit of confusion about. We, you know, do a lot of work at Grand Station to do different trainings on this particular issue. But it's really important that you have established, you know, what that, what that, what is success to you? You know, what's the end game? What is the funder really paying for, if you will, with the investment that they're providing to you? And those are defined through your goals and objectives, what you want to achieve in your projects. So again, some of the tips about how to improve those sections is to really establish that system that identifies and measures how your participants are going to change over time. And that might also be called an outcome measurement system. And it might also kind of tie to what's called a logic model. And a logic model is that visual look of the things in your, that you need in your program and what you're going to do and then what you want to achieve with it. What ultimately, how do you see participants changing from one outcome to a better outcome? So looking at information on how you can develop that outcome measurement system for yourself, or again, you could synonymously use the term logic model. You can go out and Google logic models for whatever it is that you do, you know, domestic violence programs, logic models for youth camp programs, logic models for, you know, transitional housing programs, those kinds of things and find out how other people are measuring, you know, the changes in their participants and see what kind of works for you or doesn't, you know, that it'd be a really good learning experience. And then always making sure that when we were talking about the needs section, we were talking about keeping that data local about the people that we're serving. Then our goals and our objectives are going to be about the people that we're serving and how we want to see them changed. So you want to make sure that that's really clear in your application that that need that you've identified is what you're connecting to what you want to see changed in the long term, right? So making sure that there's a kind of a direct line and that's where that relevance comes in, where if you just throw everything in the needs section and you get to this section and you're like, well, why were they talking about all of that? That doesn't make any sense to me. They're not doing anything about it. And so this is kind of where that comes really clear to the reviewer or the funder that, you know, a lot of that data was irrelevant to the project. The next section, I feel like I'm talking really fast, but I do want to get us through for questions and answers. But the next is evaluation. So, you know, funders are always interested and then how are you going to evaluate those outcomes and indicators or those goals and objectives and those sorts of things. So really looking at evaluation from two areas, you know, how are you, what's your plan to measure those goals and objectives? And then what's the plan to measure what you did? Okay. And I'll talk a little bit more about that on the next slide as well. But really being able to see that you're measuring both what you do and then what your participants achieved throughout your different projects. And is that that plan clear? You know, does it, again, is it logical? Does it make sense as to how you're going to do this? And, you know, is it going to be, are you going to be able to collect useful information through that process in order to make your programs better over time, right? And I think that that's really important. So again, down here, you can see a lot of different terms that might be around an evaluation section, which again is what makes grant writing a little confusing sometimes. But some of the things that you can do then to make this section better is to, again, develop that outcome measurement process and how you're going to measure the changes in the people that you serve and then that process to measure what you did. And I think as nonprofits in general, we're pretty good at measuring what we did because we're counting up how many people came to our programs, how many people were satisfied with, you know, our different sessions, how many hours of services did we provide to people, those kinds of things. So I don't think that part is as challenging to nonprofits, but we do have to collect both, right? Kind of a measuring that change in our participants and measuring what we did. Because if we come to the end of our projects and we find that we don't have those outcomes that we wanted to achieve, then we want to really look at that process by which we offered services and figure out where the disconnect is or where the bottleneck is or where the problem is and how we can use this information to fix our programs. So, and then the other part to this is to really, you know, I think sometimes, I think sometimes we write these sections and then at least I did and kind of walked away from it and didn't really think about using the data very much. And really if you're going to go through this process of collecting all this data on what you've changed or what you've done, then you want to use this data to tell your story to the community, you know, to tell people how you change lives. It's going to help you with fundraising. It's going to help you with attracting staff and volunteers to come and work at your programs. It's going to help you market your programs. So people want to join your programs because they know that, you know, it's efficient amount of people like really achieve something in your program. So using the data is, you know, really something that you want to consciously think of when you're thinking about what information you want to collect. You know, like what's really going to help us improve our services the best or tell our story the best to our community and get more support and more partnerships and more recognition and all those sorts of things. So that's a really key part as to how you're going to use that data. And then the last section of just a grant application is usually your budget and your budget narrative. And so you really want to make sure when you're writing your budgets that you're lining them up with your approach section. And everything that you, you know, you could just take your approach, you could go on a virtual shopping trip through that approach section, right? Of everything that you need to run those programs that you're proposing in your grant application and making sure that there's, you know, a cost or a resource available to assume that cost. So it doesn't mean that you necessarily need the funder for every single cost. It could be that some of it's provided through your own organizational funds or through partners or through other grants that you have and things like that. But you want to make sure that all the costs that are needed are lined up in that budget and budget narrative. For those of you that are really new, a budget is just, you know, the numbers where you're asking for. I need this much for the executive director. I need this much money for the program coordinator. I need this much money for supplies. Budget narrative is another document where you're talking about how you calculated those budget numbers and providing any of that justification for the costs of those. So you really want to make sure, again, that your costs are reasonable. You know, does your staff really need a Tesla to go out and do, you know, casework in the community or will afford Fiesta work? You know, like those kinds of things. What is reasonable? What's a reasonable cost? Making sure that everything's covered, right? Because you don't want to get out there and then get, you know, part of the money you need, but you need it all to run your programs. And then if you didn't get all the money you need, you can't operate the programs. And are you really, you know, justifying the different costs of what you're asking for? And so that's what that, again, that budget narrative is there to justify, you know, why you need cell phones for your staff. Because they're out in the field and it's a safety issue. You know, why you need supplies, you know, because the students don't have these resources and we're providing them in our after-school program or whatever. So that's your time to justify any different costs or anything that you find might be viewed as unreasonable. So if there's a reason why your cost might be a little bit higher than somebody else's, you know, you justify why that is. So again, some things that you can do is, like I already said, make sure everything's aligned. Those two things should be seamless. And a lot of reviewers, just so that you know, look at the budget first, and then they start to read that narrative and start looking for those particular things that you asked for in the budget. And so you want to make sure that everything that you've, that's in your budget, how it's going to be implemented and played out is detailed in your approach section. And then the budget narrative helps with those calculations. So how did you, you know, calculate the need for $10,000 of travel? And it could have been at, you know, 50 cents a mile for travel for what was my math? For 20,000 miles or something, which that's what made $10,000. And, you know, then again, is that reasonable that your staff would need to travel for 20,000 miles in your community kind of thing. So it all really ties together. And then providing any sort of justifications that you would need. All right. So we're getting on to our last section. And then we will open it up for questions and answers. So go ahead and throw those in the Q&A box while we're talking. So another section that, well, we got two more sections. So this is kind of a section of an application. It can either be its own section. Sometimes it's tied in with the budget, but just with sustainability, you know, do you have a plan to sustain your programs into the future? And so sometimes you might have a great sustainability plan. You know, you only need these dollars for X amount of time. Once you get this program up and running, you know, you'll have other sources of income based off of some maybe earned income streams that you have or something like that. Other times we're going to continue to be looking for funds, you know, that kind of problem is really not anticipated to go away. And once this grant is over, we're going to be looking for other grants or other funding opportunities to sustain our projects into the future. So some of the things that I would encourage you to do in this section is to talk about, again, how you plan to sustain the program. It could also be I've had a lot of good luck of working with an organization. They go to a funder and they get 50% of the project costs. The next year and they come back and they only ask for 40% of the project costs. Next year they come back to ask for 30% of the project costs. And so a funder seeing that you are getting monies from somewhere else and that you're not always relying 100% on all their dollars really helps to build that sustainability. And just what is your plan to keep your programs running. Again, I think that a lot of times we don't have that plan and we're going to have to continue to generate funds if it's through fundraising or through grant seeking or whatever. And so in those kinds of cases, I will also talk about sustainability of the organization, how the organization has been a part of the community, how they have a really dedicated Board of Directors that is working to guide the organization and they have a well thought out strategic plan that's helping them address community needs and different things like that about the organization to help the funder see that even if I'm going to kind of still have to be seeking additional grant dollars that I have the organizational structure behind me and our organization is certainly not going away. We're going to continue to work to make the different projects and initiatives happen. So those can be some ways to work with that sustainability question, which is often very challenging. And then the last part of this, it was just kind of in the writing style of the grant writer and the actual application. So was it full of grammar and spelling mistakes or was it written in a really clear way and with a clear understanding of the organization and you could tell that it's been edited and there was time put into making the application kind of polished. These are not usually something that a funder grades on directly if you will. It's usually those other sections that kind of have more of a grade, but how you write is really important for how the funder or the reviewer understands your project. And so to write in that really clear and concise way is really important because usually what a funder does is either, or let's just go with a grant reviewer. A grant reviewer is trying to understand your project and then telling a funder why they think your project has merit, what its strengths were, why you think it should be funded. And then the funder listens to you. And then the funder sometimes goes to the board of directors and then makes their recommendation. Then it's usually the board of directors who gives their ultimate blessing, but it kind of goes up that chain. And so the clearer that you are in that writing, the more that the reader, if it's a grant reviewer in an organization or a volunteer, the clearer they are in really sharing that information up the pane of command, if you will. So this is really about being able to tell your story in a way that's not distracting and in a way that shows that you put the time and energy into doing it. So some ways of doing this, and I promise this is the last slide, is really to keep it simple. I mean, sometimes I would find that I would find some great, really creative words that I wanted to use or sentences or partial parts of a sentence. And I would get down to the end of it and I would just say, like, Alice, what do you want to say? I want to say that our community is really struggling with high unemployment, you know, like instead of using a lot of fancy jargon or acronyms and stuff, it's just like, what was I trying to communicate? So just kind of keep it simple, keep it conversational, keep it so that people understand what you're doing without a bunch of jargon or anything that's kind of, you know, heavy acronyms, make sure that you're spelling those things out and that you're really, you know, making it easy for the reader and the funder to understand, you know, your application. Put in time in your planning to have independent people proofread your applications. You know, you can certainly do it within your organization, but even having people outside of your organization can be really helpful because they're not in your daily jargon. And so if something doesn't make sense to them, then they would be able to tell you. You can also use things like, you know, Grammarly and, you know, chat GBT to put information in and they, you know, provide you with those kind of edits or, you know, clear, you know, clear, concise descriptions and things like that. So I think, you know, using AI for different editing purposes can be very helpful. And then just in your writing, you know, in your style, you just want to kind of engage both the minds of the reader and provide them with the data and the information and the things that they need. But you also want to write in a way that kind of engages their tugs on their heartstrings and makes them want to engage with your organization and with your application and, you know, that it's interesting and those kinds of things. So I think that that overall writing style, while again, it usually doesn't get a grade. I think it has, it makes an impact on your overall application and how people are brought into your story or not. So with all of that in mind, I'm going to get a drink, but I do want to share with you that today and tomorrow is the TechSoup promotion that only happens twice a year. And so today and tomorrow, you can get a Grant Station membership for $99, which is the cheapest that you can get it in these next other woods. So we really encourage you to hop over and participate in our Grant Station TechSoup promo. So I'm going to get a drink and then I will have Jeremy ask, look at some of those questions for us. Yeah, we've had quite a few good ones. Some of them crossover, some of them will combine. Of course, we can't answer all of them because we'd be here forever. And I'm sure you have many, many questions. Michelle, you just got Grant Station high five. And if you do have Grant Station, you have any questions. You can always email us directly at Grant Station info at GrantStation.com or give us a call toll free all the information's on our website at GrantStation.com. If you have questions about how to use Grant Station, I actually give a lot of tours on Grant Station and walk people through all the features of what you can do there. But for our questions, a little bit less focus on Grant Station and more focused on what to do once you've used Grant Station and you have some grants in place ready to take that next step. Quick reminder, Grant Station helps you find all that stuff. So this is what you do once you have the information. So these are the questions that we've got for today, Alice and a couple of them are combined. And one thing I wanted to talk about, which came up a couple of times is talking about pivot. When you need to pivot from what you normally do due to COVID, due to changes in the population, due to, you know, modifications in your availability of volunteers or even staff members. A lot of people have ran into that recently just trying to find people to do specific things that are just not available. How do you portray and show that pivot as not a bad thing in your proposal stuff? Yeah, that's a great question. And so, you know, I think that when you're really looking, you know, that what you want to do is still reflect on your, on your history, on the, you know, what you've done previously and bring the best of what you've done in the past into the future. So talking about, you know, the things that you have done well and how those lessons that you learned or those processes that you've set up or the systems that you've developed or whatever it is, whatever capacity area it is within your organization, how you're bringing that forward to address the new realities. And so it could be, you know, again, you know, that you had a strategic plan before COVID started and that kind of plan went away. But you still have, you know, all the resources that you need. And so you might just have to make a change in how you do it. But, you know, that plan could maybe still come with you. Or, you know, if you have, you know, if you are looking to provide a new service that, you know, something new is going on in your community or a new issue is being, you know, brought to the forefront. What are you bringing from your organization's solid history and experience to then play out in the future? So I think that that's the way I would look at it as to just using that capacity that you have and how it's going to help you to address something new into the future. Speaking of that, and this is definitely not, was not planned in any way. How do you take that capacity that you have and apply it towards looking for new partners? Many people talked about, how do I find partners? How do I scale? How do I get larger if I'm going to use a partner? And another interesting question related to that, if I want to partner, but the project isn't in place yet, how would I approach that? So a couple of different questions here. I'll start with the first one. What's the best way to approach finding partners? So there's two ways that I really like to do it. And one way is to do that analysis of your need. And the first part is to say, you know, you get the data on the need that you're addressing. So you find out how many people, let's just do, let's just do homelessness as an example. You know, how many people are without homes? You know, how many people are, you know, one paycheck away from being without a home, all those kinds of things. And you get that data. And so you have the numbers and you have the statistics. Now, the next step is to really analyze that data and work with people that you will be serving to kind of say, why is that? And there's going to be, you know, in a situation, I probably should have chosen something easier. Because in a situation like homelessness, there's a lot of different, you know, reasons behind the need. You know, but it could be that, you know, that there's no housing. It could be that people have substance use issues. It could be that people have mental health issues. You know, there's going to be a lot of reasons why. So when you look at all those reasons why, like then start thinking, well, who's addressing the substance abuse issue? You know, I'm kind of working on the housing issue to help make housing more affordable, right? But who's working on some of these other issues and then start to partner with them? So it's really that root cause analysis of the issue that you're addressing is one of the best ways to find partners to bring in. We also have some tools on Grant Stations site about, like, a partnership tool that we use a lot. And it can just help you look more broadly at, you know, just different categories of partners. You know, looking at your community in a really, you know, really wide. So looking at your funders, your media, your hospitals, your medical centers, your institutions of higher education, your communities of faith, you know, really looking broadly at other people who would have resources that you could bring into your projects. So that's another example. And then with the part that, you know, if you don't have a project in place and you want a partner to be honest, that's the time to partner before the project's in place, right? So kind of having those discovery sessions of what you're trying to do and where you're trying to go with your projects and what are they doing and where are they trying to go? And is there an alignment? Is there a way, you know, a way to, again, share resources or create a more collective vision between your organizations and others? So scaling up a lot of times does have to do with the partners that you're bringing in because it's just helping you develop farther and farther out into the community and address things in a bigger way. So if you, you know, don't have the partners yet and you don't have the project, you're not too late. You know, it's time to start, you know, digging into what other people are doing and how you could collaborate to address those root causes. I can't believe you took my discombobulated question and made it sound like it was planned. So good job, Alice. That's a testament to the professionalism you can find. We must have maybe once or twice and you can find lots of information like this also on Granitation.com. So again, encourage you if you enjoyed what you learned today and you want to learn more about Granitation, head over to our website. But this is the last, this is the promotion only has one more day, I think. It ends on the 20th, is that right? So not much time to pick this up. Yeah, tomorrow. So just keep that in mind. So here's a question. This is a good question. I suppose the question we all wish we had is a nonprofit. If we are applying to a funder, do we have to let them know that we are getting money from other funders as well? So my answer to that is probably yes. That a funder usually is going to ask that question. And in your budgets, it's going to be reflected in that. And they're going to ask what your income sources are and what your expenses are. So it's pretty typical that you would submit. And then it's also pretty typical. You'll submit two budgets with your applications. One being an overall organizational budget for all of your programs. And then a project budget just based on this grant application that you're completing right now. Just the costs, you know, in that smaller subset. So there it's a positive to you to show them that you have monies coming from somewhere else. It's not a negative. They like to see that you have other funds coming in and that you're not asking them for 100% of the project costs. So it's actually to your advantage to tell them because that makes them more apt to support your application than if you come to them saying, hey, I need $10,000 and I want it all from you. Maybe like, well, what, you don't have anything from anybody? You know, no other support from anywhere else. It all has to come from me. And so they don't like that as much. They like to see that you've got diverse income streams. It just helps with your organization's sustainability. So long answer. Yes, you do want to show them that. So let's take that and flip it. How do you answer what other founders are pending if the one you're on is the first request for your project? So that's a great question too. So in your budget narrative, then that's where you would explain, you know, those different income streams and or, you know, what applications that you, you know, what components are secured in, you know, in your, in your dollars, if it's in kind support, which are more of those donations and volunteers and things like that versus what you've, I can't remember what I just said, but what is secured and then what is pending. So, you know, it's fine to put that, you know, where we've asked this funder for, you know, this to buy the technology for our program, that application is pending, but we've asked you for this and that. And then this other funders already given us this. So just, I would just use the terms like secured. Pending and then maybe even in progress. If you haven't yet submitted it, but you're going to really soon. And that really makes it look like you have your ducks in a row. You're going forward. They are a part of this great work you're on. They are not the only mountain you're standing upon. They are providing the infrastructure of the too many analogies. Okay. So next question. I think it's probably the last one we can fit in. And a couple people asked this in the chat. And a few people asked this also in Q and A. How do we translate our online organizations work to a local or regional context? There's lots of different scenarios here in their case. Their chaplains serve locally all across the U.S. and beyond, but they've gone again. They pivoted from due to COVID to 99% online education. Even though they're legally based on one location, how do they show that connection? Yep. And so, you know, that that's going to be a face of first, I'm going to say when you are on Grant station, you get a membership to us. And then when you're searching for funds, you're not necessarily searching for funds based on where you're physically located. You're basing your funds on a national basis. Or if you're, you know, let's say you serve five or six states, you know, you could choose the funders that fund those states. So it's not necessarily about where you serve or where you physically are, but who you serve. And so when you're doing those searches for funders, then you want to look at a national level or, you know, at other states where you have a presence. And then the other part where you're going to be just, so that's like the first step, but then when you're describing it in your applications, you're going to be telling, you know, based on what you, you know, what you've done in the sense COVID and how you've expanded nationally. And now you serve, you know, people in 49 states and, you know, this or that, and kind of you'll be telling them the successes that you've had in that expansion. And then you'll be telling them in the approach how you're serving all of the different states. So that it kind of is a two-fold answer there, but, but that's, you know, what you want to look at. Excellent. And I think with that we've reached the end of our time for today. We still have a lot of people on today's webinar. And again, I just want to encourage you to visit TechSoup site and take advantage of the $99 grant station membership promotion. Of course, a couple of people have asked this grant station, what is this grant station? We have a full tour on our website. You can learn more about us hosted by myself along with our high-powered research team, which breaks down everything you can do on grant station and how it could benefit you. And also how you can find answers to questions like the ones you've been asking today. They're all available in our various sections that are based on building up your capacity and writing your actual applications. So you can find all that on our website, grantstation.com, as well as a link to the TechSoup promotion. And final, final, final, final thing I want to say, you will be receiving access to today's recording, as well as a copy of all of Alice's notes. So you're not going to miss anything. And of course you can always find this information on TechSoup.org. That's where Aretha will definitely let everybody know where you can find that information when she mails out everyone's access to what they've attended today. So again, thank you so much for joining us. Any further questions, you can go to grantstation.com. You can go to infograntstation.com. You can even email Alice, our president, directly at Alice at grantstation.com.