How to Work with a Grant Writer Consultant
More often than not, we have many people starting in nonprofits that seek consulting services for board recruitment. Everyone wants to know how to engage and get community leaders to back their agenda. While of course, this is the obvious first step for board cultivation, what often goes unnoticed is board training after they have signed on. After recruitment, how can you take your board beyond their basic responsibilities and into roles that are established with clear expectations and open communication?
What Your Grantwriter Will Need from you to Start:
Mission statement
Vision statement
Financial statements
Staff bios
Board Member bios
Program information
History of your nonprofit
Demographics of those you serve
This information is crucial for them to have a clear picture of what you do and translate your story into words. Make sure to let know your Grantwriter that they have and what needs to be developed.
How grant writing consultants work?
Most grant writing consultants will offer either to help with one specific grant or monthly services to support your ongoing fundraising endeavors and charge a flat monthly fee or an hourly rate. A grant writing package can include prospect researching, writing proposals, debriefs, foundation relationship cultivation. How you divide up dedicated hours towards each topic is up to your organization. Grants consultants are a great resource for getting started with grant writing before you are ready to hire a full time staff writer. Often grant writing consultants have a diverse set of skill sets including budget development, copywriting for your website, existing relationships with funders, as well as templates for strategic planning and board information that will streamline the process.
What if our nonprofit is just starting out and we are not competitive for grants or ready for proposals?
Stop right there. There are a variety of grants for all sizes and stages of nonprofits. You likely can find grants out there to get you started no matter where you're at. Secondly, even if you are not ready you can hire a consultant to come in and build data systems so you can collect information to share with funders, prepare one-sheets on your work, and set up processes for future fundraising endeavors. They can also educate you on potential grant writing myths and truths that you might not be aware of. Remember that grant writing is a marketing tactic as much as it is about fundraising. The more people you get your work in front of the better, just because a foundation declined to fund your project doesn’t mean that application was a waste of time! Every application is the beginning of a relationship and an opportunity to find a kindred foundation that will be the right fit for you. Foundations also communicate with each other and it has happened in the past that an application was passed from one funder to another because they thought the organization would be a better fit. In our experience, this kind of recommendation often will lead to funding through a secondary foundation. You never know how your efforts will come back to you.
If you are totally new to this process or want to learn more about the world of grant writing make sure to check out our course: Grant's Anatomy: Every thing you need to know to write you first grant.
We are sure this course will help you get started!
When hiring for grant writing services it is important that you give clear expectations on what services you are looking for. Grant writing consultant services could be services such as research, writing, editing, and training. A clearly defined contract is going to help mitigate any confusion and also helps the grant writer to understand their workflow. As a nonprofit leader, you need to decide on your budget, your immediate needs for funding and how to be consistent with your efforts while you diversify your fundraising efforts to include grants. We always recommend that our clients make sure they’re pursuing multiple fundraising avenues and don’t become too grant dependent. Grants are a long term investment and not a quick fix so if you’re hiring a consultant you will get the best results from someone that submits as many applications as possible for you throughout the year.
A question that does come up in hiring is whether you pay your consultant upon successful funding- a commission-based approach- or if you pay them contractually. Please be aware that professional grant writers will not accept a commission-based payment. This is strongly frowned upon in professional grant writing societies and agencies as an unethical practice. Also, that’s not how grants work! Grants are restricted funding where you have to use the funds in ways approved by the funder for the services you described in your application. Funders are not interested in paying your commission-based incentive.
Again, while it is easy to think of a grant writer consultant as someone simply coming in to write grants, the services they offer are expansive and stepping stones for building a strong development fundraising team. In many ways, they can be champions of professional development and data organization. The key to working with a consultant is simply to be flexible and understand that foundations are looking at the whole picture of your work, not just a single application, so it’s important to make sure your grant writer has a bunch of great resources like a well-designed website, active social media, up to date and transparent financials to point funders toward.
As grant writing consultants, we have worked with numerous clients who are new to the grant writing process. This can be confusing and it can be difficult to have expectations when you do not even know what questions you should be asking during the process. Our Mockingbird Analytics team has experienced this many times. That’s why we do consultation calls and in-depth strategy and planning with checklists to help you develop your goals and also to give our experts an idea of where you want to be with your fundraising.
