fundraising

If I could give you one piece of advice on fundraising, it would be this: go to the For Impact Web site and absorb everything they offer.

• Attend a free teleseminar.
• Read all of their nuggets.
• Invest in a training camp.

The folks who lead For Impact have over 30 years of social sector experience, and they’ve fundraised more than $1 billion (yes, that’s billion with a “B”). They are the experts; I’m just a messenger. But the message I have today is simple and powerful, so start here and then check out the resources mentioned in this post.

So here's my #1 suggestion to transform your fundraising results: CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK. Change the way you think about yourself, your organization, and funding your vision.

On the flight to the For Impact training camp, I read a book that could have easily been written by one of the For Impact guys. It is called The Soul of Money. The author, Lynne Twist - another powerhouse fundraiser, agrees with For Impact on a crucial point: fundraising is not about asking for money, it’s about presenting the opportunity for others to save, impact, or transform lives.

Too often we think that we are better off not "bothering" people with fundraising. What does this attitude say about our organizations? That our work isn’t worthy? What does it say about us? That we don’t need other people’s help? What does it say about them? That they don’t care about social change?

One of the best gifts we can give others is the opportunity to live meaningful lives by investing time, money, or energy in our meaningful causes. So learn from For Impact and The Soul of Money, but don’t spend too much time with your head in a book. Go out and start presenting the opportunity today!

Before I started the CLYV Social Innovator program, I committed to providing up to $1,000 in seed money to each venture that we launched. There was only one problem: Conscious Lifestyle didn't have any money to give. We were a new organization and had done almost no fundraising at all. Nonetheless, I knew that if I were going to do this program, I had to give it my all. So I committed to providing seed grants of up to $1,000. There were two things that prevented this ambitious goal from becoming a disaster. First, Conscious Lifestyle formed a partnership with Youth Venture, which co-funds each venture. Second,

I learned how to make $5,000 by writing two pages.

Here are the takeaways from that experience that you can apply to your grant writing:

1. Go big – Get started today and ask for more than you think you need.
2. Make sure your project is a good fit - sometimes you can bend language to make it work, but that only goes so far. Don't waste your time on grant opportunities that are not geared to your project.
3. Enroll the best writers on campus – go to the English dept. or school newspaper, find out who had an internship as a grant writer. These people are crucial.
4. Create your template – once you've got this, you're gold.
5. Follow-up - make sure to thank your funders and send them updates. This will lead to more help down the road.

Here's how it worked:

I stumbled upon a grant opportunity that asked for a two-page overview of a summer research project (I was a graduate student at the time). Now, I wasn't planning on working in a lab or spending the summer in the library, but by launching the CLYV Social Innovator program I would learn about social entrepreneurship and could establish best practices for the future, so I called that "research." (Note: grant writing is about aligning the goals of the grantor with that of the grantee, so you've got to make sure it's a good fit. Sometimes that includes getting creative with language.)

When I finished my rough draft, I made a decision that was the secret to my success: I sent the proposal to writers who are much more talented than I am. These are people who won awards in the English department, wrote for their school newspapers, or have grant writing experience (professors have a lot of this!). We emailed drafts back-and-forth, until it was time to submit the proposal. I asked for $6,000 and won $4,000. (It's rare to get the full amount that you request, so keep that in mind!)

The next night, around 9pm, I saw another grant opportunity. This one was for $1,000. At first I thought I didn't have enough time. Doubt kicked in and I told myself, "There's no way I'm going to get this, I shouldn't even try." When I realized that if I didn't work on the grant proposal I'd have to do my homework, I started typing. Then I realized I had a perfectly good proposal saved on my computer, so I pulled up the winning proposal, changed the name at the top, adjusted my budget, and emailed it in. That hour of effort won me the grant, and earned $1,000 for Conscious Lifestyle.