STAGE THREE

There are a limited number of causes out there. There’s a very high likelihood that whatever it is you’ve decided to champion, there are already a number of organizations doing the same thing. As a grant writer, a huge part of my success is that I write to the funding agency. I write the proposal answering the question I know the Program Officer is going to ask, “So What?”

I know because I was a Program Officer and that’s exactly what I did.

I read hundreds of proposals competing for the same pot of money. They all say the same thing. After the second or third application, you can’t help but say, “Ok, and?”

Why? Well because generally, grantees don’t say much that’s different from each other. If you’re a researcher, proposing to do research to cure cancer, you’re likely to say, “I’m going to use XYZ process to discover LMNOP, which we hope will tell us why this protein did or did not cause this cell to replicate.”

The same can be said for a tutoring program. “We will tutor youth after school to help them achieve better grades and realize their dreams of college.”

Blah, blah, blah. They all say the same thing.

What I want to encourage each of you to do moving forward, whether that’s starting a new nonprofit, funding an old one, or somewhere in between, is to be clear to demonstrate your Competitive Advantage over your competitors. That is what is going to make the difference in your organization being funded, every time.

The largest grant I’ve been awarded was for $3.2 million dollars from the county of Los Angeles to develop a youth development program for hard-to-place youth throughout the Unified School District. I won that award because I went in knowing that 80% of Los Angeles was going after that money.

I knew the Program Officers would be reading thousands of applications, so I made sure my narrative stood out. I made sure to highlight the organization’s Competitive Advantage. We were a nonprofit with programs that focused on providing youth development programs to the most economically-challenged communities in Los Angeles already. We served five of the county’s housing projects, so we knew that community.

I said, “The reason why most programs are unsuccessful is that people who are not from that community decide what that community needs. We will conduct in-person focus groups to ask our constituents what they need, how they need it to be delivered, and how frequently so that we do the things these hard-to-place individuals will likely respond to (because they told us they would).”

Then I shared our connection to UCLA research. I shared that the programs we would deliver would be based on data-driven research (we threw in a couple of quotes from a few PhDs to add credibility). All of this made my application, my organization, stand out. I know when the Program Officer read my application she didn’t say “So What?” — she said, “Damn this is sexy!”

It’s not enough to just explain your programs and services. It’s not enough to just list your staff. You’ve got to point out and highlight everything that makes your organization/programs uniquely different than your competitors. You have to spell out what type of outcomes they can expect to see because of the way it is designed or because of who is delivering the programs.

So, ask yourself: does your nonprofit pass the “So What?” test?

Still starting out? Begin with selecting your cause.