 Welcome back to another episode of the nonprofit show. I'm delighted that you're here, and I think you're gonna be delighted that you're here with us. Today we have a really interesting and important conversation. And it's talking about equity in the nonprofit grant writing world, applications and understanding some things. And we have an expert with us, Stephanie Summerman, senior director at Elevate. Stephanie, everybody in the green room chat, we're like, wow, branding on your shirt. So you're starting off great, right? You don't have to do anything else. Well, Stephanie's gonna talk to us about some really important things. A lot of us in the grant space, when we're looking to review and grant submitting them, we don't always think about, and so this is gonna be an absolute fascinating conversation to have. And we are delighted that our sponsors can join us on this journey. They include Blumerang, American nonprofit academy, nonprofit thought leader, staffing boutique, your part time controller, 180 management group, fundraising academy at National University, JMT consulting, nonprofit nerd, and nonprofit tech talk. You know, I was telling Stephanie, and even when I say it, it's hard to believe, but we've done more than a thousand shows. And what was gonna be a two week gig because of the pandemic has turned into like a four year adventure. And so you have an opportunity to get so much information from so many thought leaders so you can download our app, which is like super cool and super easy. You can stream us on all these broadcast platforms as well as in podcast format. So Stephanie, you are so gracious to sit through this intro with Meredith Terian and I as we get into this conversation. You've seen your director at Elevate. Talk to us about what Elevate does. Absolutely. Well, thanks so much for having me first of all. I am just in love with the idea of a place and a platform to talk all things nonprofit. Nonprofits are my passion. My background is in public policy and I specifically chose to go into the nonprofit space because I think it's just such an important place to talk about these type of issues. And so I'm just glad to be here in a space where we are all nonprofits all the time. As you said, I'm a senior director at Elevate. Elevate is an institutional fundraising firm based out of Washington DC. We have staff all over the country. We work with over 100 different nonprofit organizations in all different locations, all different sizes, all different issue areas and we support them on their journey between finding foundation support, reaching out to foundation support, researching and making the best pitch to those foundations and then eventually getting to the grant application which is not the first place where we start with all of this which is just a little tip and trick here. And then we help you steward those relationships and continue to build on those so that you can, so our nonprofit clients can bring in more resources for the really important and valuable work for their communities. I love that. And so that's even more meaningful of a lens to look through when we talk about this concept because I think that you and your team and your website's amazing. The amount of people and resources that are up of the Elevate team, it's remarkable. And so I can't wait to hear what you have to say. Let's do the first question that we have and that is what is centering equity? What does that even mean? Absolutely. Well, the most important thing is equity, centering equity just means putting people at the center of your writing, people. Interesting. Every nonprofit in one way or another has a mission that is supporting people, community, animals. How do we take those people, community, animals and put them at the center of our work? And when we're writing about our work, and I think that sometimes when we think there's, obviously this wonderful graphic that most people have seen where we're talking about the difference between equality and equity, right? And equality is evenly distributed tools and assistance for people. Equity is custom tools that identify and address a specific inequity or inequality that that person is experiencing. And oftentimes in grant writing, we're trying to very simply convey to our foundation, our funder, how our work is meeting our mutual goals, our mutual shared vision, our mutual mission for the world and how our organization is unique in making that impact that us and the foundation have. And in order to do that, we have to talk about the people that are at the solution, not just how we're gonna do it, not how our work is gonna go about it, but how does the end result of our work help impact a person? And so by centering equity in our grant writing, we are always putting people first and using people first language. And the second most important trick is using people-centered language, all those people would want to describe themselves, not how you see it, now how a funder sees it, but how communities talk about themselves and putting that direct perspective, that historical context first, that cultural context first. Okay, so I gotta ask this question and this like you gotta get up your pitchers mitt because this might be a curveball. Do folks that are reading and reviewing grant applications, do you think they understand this? Cause this is kind of a pit. And I'm wondering if they're like, what, you know, if they get it, it's one of the things, how do you even know if they get it? That's such a great question. In my opinion, having worked with the dozens of clients across hundreds of different funders, I would say there's a very small percentage of funders who actually get it. I was afraid you were gonna say that. Sure. And what they on top of that don't necessarily understand is how the impact of their power imbalance that comes from philanthropy really skews how nonprofits talk about this work and then how it shows up in their community. And as you said, first and foremost, before we jumped on here, you know, you're branded, you got your, you have your headshot, everything. A lot of our grant writing is just branding our work and in turn brands our community. So we also as nonprofit grant writers contribute to the education of our foundation. So the more we can center equity in our grant writing, the more we are able to create that education opportunity for funders who are reading our work. So that maybe they can evolve our understanding of this. You know, Meredith, it's almost like they're doing the work for other nonprofits down the road. You know, so Stephanie said something in the beginning that I thought was really insightful. And she said, you know, when we work with folks or clients, you said, Stephanie, we don't start with the grant, right? There's so much that goes on before that and the relationship building and the research. And I feel like that's really important because, you know, you had mentioned when you were talking and said, big part of this is not only to what we need as the grant seeking organization, but like what is the grant funder looking for, right? So, you know, how can we help them accomplish their goals? So I think that's, you know, part of that goes into that research process, right? Absolutely. And I think that's a really important part to pick up on. One of the most important things that I can do in my research is I can go and I look on their website. I look at who else they're funding. I look at how their strategy and how they're describing this work, describing the vision they see, describing the communities they wanna work with. And does that match what the communities I'm working with? Does their language, does their words, are they aware of the historical context? Are they aware of the historical context of an issue in my community? And I think that that is where we can, you know, one of the important tips that I always say with grant writing is, you do wanna match the funder's language. You want them to see themselves in your grant proposal, right? However, what if you come across a funder and they're not using terminology that is authentic, they're not using ideas that are culturally competent to your community? What do you do, right? How do you challenge respectfully and appropriately a funder's understanding of equity in your grant that not one, allows you to be authentic to yourself? Two, allows you to convey your work and three, doesn't create conflict with the funder you're asking for money for, right? So I think that there are a few different opportunities that that research gives you to reframe how you're, or provide those two extra pieces of education in your grant writing by centering equity that you probably wouldn't normally include if a funder wasn't on the same level as you, but by making an assumption that a funder understands a topic or an issue or a community need more than you do, because you were on the ground, you were in their space, you were doing this work all the time. It'll gives you some tips and tricks to add a little extra explainer that does that, that can go a long way in terms of educating whoever's reading your grant application. Because remember, it's not just the program officer, it's not just the president of the foundation, it's the board, right? Think about how sometimes those board members who might be the family where the money is coming from or it might be a board member who has been doing this work forever, how you can give those people more information than you might not otherwise in let's be honest here, like what, like 5,000 characters, you know? Well, that kind of leads me into this next thing because you kind of gave me like a chill for a moment because I'm like, oh my God, that's so risky because you could turn off a viewer, I say viewer, but a reader is judging you. So I'll just stand as part and part of this, the issue of symptoms and root causes and trying to educate or at least highlight maybe is another word, what this actually means. Absolutely. So when we think about talking about our community, I really like to use this example in thinking through symptoms and root causes. So a lot of the time, you know, if we're thinking about disempowering language in our grant proposals, it's language or context that describes our communities as perceived as being incapable or somehow unable to affect change or lacking power. And how can we, and as a result, we as a nonprofit need to come into this space and help in some way. Whereas how can we talk about what the root causes are of why that program is needed in the first place? Because remember, as a nonprofit organization, we are coming into the space where government has failed and private business has failed. And so what are those failures from a systems perspective and how is that creating barriers for people to overcome in ways that were probably unintended or maybe they were intended. I'm not gonna go there. Structure. However, how do we fix the system to offer equal access to both tools and opportunities for people customized to their particular needs? Not just providing the same tools across the board because that's equality. But when we think about equity, some people need different things than others. And how is our nonprofit identifying what those root causes are, being clear about the systems that have created the environment for people to live in and adapt in ways that might not, that might have created this need or the problem. And what is our nonprofit solution providing and using to not only create the immediate solution to what people might need, but also looking at those bigger systems that have created the context and the root cause for where we are today. Okay, so you've said some magical things. And now I'm asking you to put up your catcher's mitt a second time in one episode. But do you find that nonprofits understand this themselves, that they can articulate this and that they've asked questions of themselves? Because I'm gonna be honest, I'm really shocked by the number of boards that I've been on or I advise or I work with. And I'm like, oh my God, you don't get it. Absolutely. So one of the hardest parts of my job in working with nonprofit organizations all the time is how do we engage our board? With our fundraising and making those connections to the foundation, right? Because we all know that a warm connection is better than a cold connection. And if you didn't know that, you know it now. So welcome to the nonprofit show, right? So here we are. But the number one thing that I hear sometimes from executive directors, directors of development is I would love to do that, but I would have to do some serious board education. Yeah. And that to me, because I have worked on, I've done some board governance work in the past and that to me is a huge red flag. Not something that you can overcome, but if your board member is not able to describe the needs and describe any grant proposal boils down to two things, the problem and the solution. What's the problem in the community? Which we're talking about writing about people and what they face. And then what's the solution? How do we overcome some of these systems? And also it's naming those systems, right? And that's where in our grant writing, more centering equity, we can think about a few different things. We can think about context, the historical context, the cultural context, and also collecting those direct perspectives from people that we work with so that we can put those things, put our work and our grant applications into the appropriate context about how people would wanna talk about themselves, how people would wanna talk about their problems themselves. Those contextual points are critical for a board member. And so I think that like one of the pieces of any good board onboarding is having board members read a grant proposal, read a general operating proposal, read about how we describe the problems and the solutions and how our writing then is centering equity and drawing that forward. And so I think it's just critical to think about this. I've seen lots of different things, but there are some, one of some of the best organizations that I've worked with have committees of their board that include people with direct experience, lived experience, directly impacted. I mean, one of the most impactful grants that I ever wrote was for a organization that works with unhoused populations in California. And one of the people that I worked with on this grant proposal was someone who was part of the program that they had had and went through the program, came out and sat down with me and we spent an hour together writing a proposal for a new program that they wanted to start. And so thinking about how you can gather those direct perspectives of the people you're working with, putting that into your grant writing and then having the extra knowledge to say, I really want to make sure that I'm centering equity here. Tell me how you would describe the problem for yourself and then using that to guide your writing. I love that. Well, that kind of leads us to our next topic. And I love your approach because it's more work, it's more work, but I love this kind of redefining, recontextualizing people and understanding a couple of things, which I don't think we do a good job of in the nonprofit sector. Some of these things that your community is capable that they're self-actualized, that they're effective, that they're knowledgeable. It goes back to what you first said, equity versus equality, they need more equity, right? It's talked to us about this, because again, I think this goes beyond the scope of just grant writing. I think this is like a systemic issue that we need to be addressing in our nonprofit sector. Well, I think it's really interesting that you say that part, because it's something that we should be identifying in our organizations. Yeah. How staff have agency in their work, right? So the idea just quickly to say about this, but I think it's a great through line to draw here. So in thinking about how you're describing a general, very common grant application, it asks you to describe the problem, tell us what the need is of the community, and then provide what your solution is, what are your goals, how you're gonna achieve that. So it might seem counterintuitive, because you're like, oh, I need to describe the need, what's the problem? But in many ways, we need to not just say how people are experiencing the problem, but we need to talk about how the problem came about. And it's not because of me as an individual, it's because of the system that I was, and the environment that I was brought up in. And so talking about how people have the agency, or the power to address their need, but there's a few custom tools, remember our definition of equity, a few custom tools and custom opportunities that we need to help people be able to have a plan, create a solution for themselves, right? And so there are opportunities to say by using empowering language, how are the people in the communities that you're working with capable? How do they have a plan? What knowledge they possess, and how do they use and leverage their agency and power to create change? And this is some of the ways that we can tell a compelling story to uplift groups and communities that have dignity and respect for them as human beings and putting those people first. And then what is our organization coming in to take those plans and the knowledge and the rich experience that they have to uplift and create the solutions to the problems that we're looking at? Now, if you will indulge me for one second, if you take that concept and you put it into you inside of our nonprofit organizations, think about it from a strategic planning perspective, right? Maybe the strategic planning doesn't start at the top. Maybe the strategic planning starts with the staff who are closest to the work and they can come in and they can say, you have power, you have agency and how you are running your programs, iterating upon your programs, and how does that then build up? We are staff that have more capable. We are self-actualized. We have our own power and agency. And I think that could really help a lot of our nonprofit leadership to develop and create really compelling programs, be really honest with funders about what's working and what's not working and help to, again, all the way up to the top, educate those board members about why we need different resources and different shifts at different times. Meredith, have you ever seen this? Strategic? Yeah, so one of the things I love about what you're saying, Stephanie, is just the focus on how it's not a one-size-fits-all approach, right? Like when you're writing a grant application, what the funder is really looking for is that unique take or perspective on how to solve the issue, right? If it were easy to solve, I mean, you said something earlier in the broadcast and you said, we're here writing this grant right now because industry and government has likely failed at addressing this problem. So it's that really unique approach. And Julia, to your point, with strategic planning, I love what you said about starting with the staff, right? So let's get some stakeholder feedback from folks who are like boots on the ground, right? Who are living and working with these people or working in the, with a particular demographic, whatever it might be that you're trying to solve. And I think that's a really effective way to do your strategic planning is to start with the folks who are closest to the problem. Yeah, I love it. I mean, this is like, we need to have you back on. I'm just saying because, yeah, you've like lit a fire under me for some things and it's really been powerful. But unfortunately, we don't have a lot of time and I don't wanna leave this behind because you advise us to have some context in writing our narratives for grants. And this is one of those things that given what you've been talking about, for me it changes the way I would approach this. Absolutely. So as I mentioned before, there's three main types of contexts that you wanna include in your writing. And I forget who said this, but it does take, I think Julia was you, it takes time. It's gonna take you a little extra time to collect this information. And we all know that the funder asked for the proposal yesterday, even though you've been meeting with them for about six months to convince them to give you the grant, right? So once we've overcome those timelines, which again are part of a power and balance that everybody should be talking back to the funders about, is taking the time during your regular work and preparing some of these answers ahead of time, looking at historical context in your communities, talking to your communities about the historical context that they've overcome or they've seen, cultural context and then also that direct perspective context that we've talked about, because if you think about the juxtaposition between historical context of what did happen, but where we are now and how maybe solutions have come and gone, but we're a new generation and there's a new barrier in place. Like I'm thinking about AI technology where I'm working with one of my clients right now and how we need to maybe take that historical context and go back to the drawing board and reiterate. So those are a few different types of ways that you can help to illuminate equity in your grant writing and be really thoughtful about centering people and their lived experiences in your writing and how your programs are addressing those different types of context and taking that into account in your work. Wow, this has really been cool because I think a lot of times, Stephanie and it's really a dreadful comment and it's even more dreadful concept, but I think a lot of times we put like, oh, that's the grant writers issue. That's back over there. And they're in that circle back over there, kind of next to accounting, right? And some of the things that you've talked about here really should be a part of our overall philosophy and discussion. It was very powerful for me to hear you today. I really loved this conversation. And Mary, I think we got to get her on, don't you think? Absolutely, I think there, you know, Stephanie, one things you said I feel like we can all relate to with grant writing is the characters, right? You said, how are we supposed to squeeze this all into 5,000 characters? When I'm writing a grant, I'm staring at the little ticker that's like, you're down to a hundred characters left. Yeah, it's brutal. Yeah, it's brutal. Stephanie Summerman, senior director at Elevate, he got to go out, go to ElevatedEffect.com and check out their website. It's remarkable the amount of thought leadership they have, what they're doing, who they work with. Fascinating discussion. This goes, Stephanie, for me, this has gone so far beyond grant writing. It's really gone, it's spoken to me at the heart of how we have structure and how we have meaning and then we go out into our communities. I mean, some of your concepts today have really been poignant. And I think, I don't know about you ladies, but I feel like we're in a new dawn of philanthropy in our country, that this will rival some of the things that are going on in the Industrial Revolution period of our country. So these are the conversations that we need to be having. And Stephanie, this has been cool. I'm really appreciative that you would bring this forward. And then another thing that's things forward for us are our sponsors. And they are amazing. Bloomerang, American Nonprofit Academy, Nonprofit Thought Leader, Staffing Boutique, Your Part-Time Controller, 180 Management Group, Fundraising Academy at National University, JMT Consulting, Nonprofit Nerd, and Nonprofit Tech Talk. You know, as I remind our viewers and our guests, our sponsors don't dictate our editorial content. We've done more than a thousand shows and that's a pretty powerful partnership that they trust us enough and they trust the industry to be talking about this, which Stephanie kind of leads what you were sharing with us today that we kind of change our mindset or so. Really powerful conversation. Ladies, it's been amazing. Meredith, this is only your second time co-hosting the Nonprofit Show. We're excited. We're gonna get you going even more. And so thank you for joining us episode that we signed off with this feature. And it means different things each time we say it. And so I want you to think about it because the message is this, to stay well, so you can do well. We'll see.