Grant Writing For Dummies, 5th Edition

Chapter 2

Thinking Strategically to Improve Your Odds of Success

In This Chapter

Creating a funding plan

Using your plan to connect with potential funders

Sitting down at a table with your leadership team — chief executive officer (CEO), executive director, and so on — key program administrators, and your board of directors is the best way to flesh out your organization’s priorities and the anticipated costs for each of those priorities. After the dust has cleared and brainstorming has subsided, what you have left is great information to start building your funding plan, a strategic plan that drives the program priorities and provides direction on how the programs will be funded. In this chapter, I show you the typical outline for what goes in the funding plan and then help you figure out how to start applying it.

Building the All-Important Funding Plan

Your funding plan is a strategic written document that drives the organization’s direction and decision-making process over a set period of time. Just a few years ago, organizations created three- to five-year long-range funding plans. Today, if an organization wants to be on the cutting edge and able to roll with the economic punches, its strategy needs to focus on 12 months. Yes, that’s it — 12 months.

If nonprofits, who are ...