What a wonderful opportunity for your chorus: a charitable foundation or government entity is offering grants to nonprofits. Just submit a quick proposal, and surely the money will start flowing in!
If only it were that easy. Labyrinthine application procedures, unclear or incomplete websites, inscrutable grant qualifications, wonky online submission forms… There are so many barriers to researching, writing, and successfully winning grants for your chorus!
Here are some things to keep in mind—and a few tips—that will hopefully make the grant writing process a bit more manageable.
You probably know the usual suspects for arts funding in your community, so start there. Focus on the funders most likely to be interested in your organization or project, based on your own history and knowledge of the local scene. If you’re ready to move beyond that circle, you might need to do some research. Make sure other good prospects haven’t slipped your notice. Collect program books from other organizations, visit websites, or check out 990 forms (Guidestar is the best source for those) for peer arts organizations in your area.
Don’t limit your research to choruses—include orchestras, theaters, dance companies, visual arts, and museums. If you see the same foundation listed in two or three places, it’s definitely worth investigating. To go further, there are a number of online research tools available, but most come at a price. Some of the most popular platforms are Foundation Directory Online (FDO), Instrumentl, GrantStation, and GrantWatch. You might get free access to FDO at your local library, or you could get their “Essential” plan for about $50/month. Also, check out your local and state arts agencies for newsletters or online directories that list grantors.
You could spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars researching funders, so do a reality check. Is this really the best use of your time? While basic grant research is a great practice for most choruses, we all know that the majority of our contributed income comes from individuals, not institutions. Are you spending so much time chasing grants that you’re cheating the vital work of making new and deeper relationships with individual donors? There’s no magic formula here, but if you’re a staff of one (or one of a handful), you already have your hands full. Focus on the current and most obvious funders and give them a great proposal every time. Beyond that, balance the desire for new grants with the reality that individual donors are your bread and butter.
As you look at prospective funders, you want to understand their approach and take their criteria really seriously. Larger professional foundations are generally tightly focused, so a great proposal for something even slightly outside of their main interest will not fly. In most cases, the program officers are merely the administrators and advocates – they need to get their board’s approval for the grants they recommend. It’s our job to make it as easy as possible for the foundation’s staff to “sell” us to their board. Yes, sometimes a personal relationship or interest from a funder’s board member can help. But in general, they’re restricted to funding decisions based strictly on their criteria.
You read the criteria, and you feel like your organization or program almost fits…“Maybe if we just do this one additional thing we hadn’t planned, they’d go for it.” Be careful. If it makes sense for your project or mission, your budget can accommodate it, and you have the capacity, maybe it’s fine. But we really shouldn’t invent programs (or even aspects of programs) just to fit some random funder’s criteria. We know our organization and what is doable for us. We know what our institutional goals and capacities are. Inventing new stuff in response to the prospect of big bucks is generally a warning sign that you’re barking up the wrong tree (hello, mission creep).
OK, it’s time to write! Here’s a job where multitasking is not helpful. When you work on a grant application, you’ll need time without interruptions, so block out a day (or even a few hours) on your calendar. Turn off email, silence your cell phone, and don’t schedule any meetings. Walk around the block to think about your approach, or scribble notes in a café where you won’t be interrupted. Give yourself the luxury of headspace so you can focus effectively and write clearly.
You can tell by the specific questions the funder asks what they’re after. Do your best. It’s a balancing act, for sure. Address the underlying concept if you can’t hit a home run with every question by trying to address their criteria as directly as possible. But don’t stretch it too far just to say what you think they want to hear. Instead, find opportunities to tell the story you want to tell. Even if they don’t ask you directly about a particular aspect of your history, your current strategies, or your future goals, you should find a way to state them if they are compelling and relevant.
Yes, you can (and should) plagiarize yourself! Recycle language you used on other grants to avoid the dreaded blank screen staring you in the face. Make sure to update and refresh as needed, and be careful about cutting and pasting too many times for the same funder year after year. Maybe you have a blurb from a recent email campaign, board report, or marketing piece that will fit the bill. After all, you talk about your organization all the time, so you shouldn’t have to find a brand new way to describe yourself.
When I served on our city’s arts council grants panel, this was one of my biggest peeves. So many applications used overly formal and frilly language to make themselves sound grand. Almost always, simpler is clearer. If you can say something in 20 words, don’t use 30 to try to make it seem more important or serious. Also, remember these are people reading your grant, and they have a lot of proposals to read! Be straightforward and avoid jargon or catchphrases.
On the other hand, strict attention to proper grammar, capitalization, and punctuation is very important. You want to fill the reader with confidence that you know exactly what you’re talking about (P.S., you do!), and that you are the ultimate expert on your organization’s needs and goals (you are!). High-quality writing that is simple, incisive, and correct will convey all that.
Keep your audience in mind. Yes, we hope that the funder is a sophisticated arts pro. But honestly, they might never have heard of your chorus, much less attended a performance. By reading your application, will they understand exactly what you do? You’d be surprised at what people might not get. My own organization is an a cappella vocal ensemble, but it took me years before I realized I needed to state “we sing without instruments.”
Hopefully, you’ve done enough up-front research that justifies all this work. But if you get into the writing and it starts feeling like a super stretch, don’t be afraid to bail. Here’s how to know if you should cut bait: maybe you’re trying to answer a question and begin to realize they are looking for projects unlike yours, or they’re asking questions that are very challenging to answer compellingly. Don’t tie yourself into knots to prove that your project or organization could fit their criteria. Forget it. Your time is too valuable. Move on!
Hey, is anyone on your board a really good writer? For smaller, working boards (and even some more advanced boards), grant writing might be a great assignment for a dedicated volunteer. If you have some successful applications to use as a starting point, a talented volunteer can use those as the basis for new applications or letters of inquiry. Or maybe a board member or volunteer could do some landscape research on other arts organizations’ funders (see #1 above). You might want to take the lead on the complex government grant or the long-time foundation supporter, but take advantage of any opportunity to share this workload in ways that might increase your overall output.
What are some grant writing tips that have worked for you? What could you use some help with? Chime in to let us know your challenges and your winning strategies.