I've Changed My Mind About Grant Writing

I recently began collecting old globes. A good friend of mine, who knows that I like to travel, gave me the first one as a gift about a year ago. Since then, I’ve collected several more.

My favorite right now is from the early 1980s, before the Berlin Wall fell. There are countries on it that no longer exist. Borders that have moved. Names that have changed. It's a beautiful object, but it's also a reminder that a map only ever reflects our best understanding of reality at a specific moment in time. It was never the territory itself.

I've been thinking about that a lot in relation to my own work. Grant writing is a lot like that globe.

When I started Common Cause, I thought I would be helping organizations find the right opportunities, craft the right narrative, and align the right data; funding would follow. That wasn't wrong. But it’s not what a lot of small nonprofits need. What they need is support in creating the infrastructure needed to be competitive in the grant space.

The organizations that consistently get funded know who they're serving. They know what change they're trying to create and how it happens, and they have the data to support their impact. They have strong leadership and the infrastructure and capacity in place to grow.

Without that foundation, even a beautifully written grant can only do so much.

I still love helping organizations write great grants, which hasn't changed. But I find myself increasingly drawn to the work that happens before the application gets written. How an organization defines its programs and demonstrates impact. How it tracks and tells its story. Whether it's structurally ready for the funding it's pursuing.

The question I used to be interested in was "What grant should we apply for?"

Now I'm more interested in: "What are we actually building, and is the organization ready for what we're asking funders to invest in?"

I'll still be offering project-based grant writing and fractional grant support; that's not going away. I've been building something new, and next week I'm going to share it with you. I think it might be useful for exactly where a lot of you are right now.

More soon.

Warmly,

Laura

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