A New Way to Support CBOs - Part 3

5 reasons why CBOs fail at grants:
Grants are the lifeblood of many community-based organizations (CBOs). The few resources CBOs have are often devoted to actively pursuing new funding to augment donor support. Yet your CBOs may be underperforming—most likely for the following 5 reasons:

1. Lack of Research Capability – CBOs waste valuable time and resources trying to find the best grant opportunities for their projects. Many nonprofit organizations spend up to 60% of their grant-related time researching in a manual, inefficient manner. Your CBOs may just not have access to good information on government grants.
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3. Inability to Write Proposals – Many CBO staff have little formal training or experience in writing effective proposals, particularly for government grants. Securing high-quality training is often too expensive and, therefore, staff remains untrained or poorly trained.
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5. Lack of Project Definition – Many CBOs are not able to define and plan their projects enough to make them fundable. Nonprofits often have difficulty clearly articulating the need for a project and designing it so that it will achieve desired goals.
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7. Ineffective Partnering – Collaborative partnerships are becoming increasingly important in the scoring of grant applications. Unfortunately, many of your CBOs may not have the right relationships to effectively partner, or they may see your government’s departments as unapproachable.
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9. Grants Intimidation – Many of your CBOs may decide not to pursue grant funding because of the intimidating nature of certain programs. This is especially true of federal and state agencies that typically have stricter compliance rules than foundations. CBOs may be concerned that their financial systems will not measure up or that they will be not be able to show the efficacy of their programs.
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If you are concerned about how these problems may be affecting your community-based organizations and would like to do something about it, please contact us at (877) 232-4847 or contact us by email.

Part 4: How to Help Your CBOs overcome these 5 Problems:
CBO problems are local government problems because the hard work of your nonprofits provides services that address areas of societal concern. Thus, if their problems go unsolved, you will feel a ripple effect in your community. But, the strength of your government puts you in the best position to help. Next week, we will explore ways that governments are helping their CBOs overcome these obstacles and achieve greater grants success.

About eCivis:
Headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., eCivis is the leader in improving city and county grant performance nationwide. Through the highest quality research, training, and web-based systems, eCivis has helped over 500 local governments improve their grants performance.

If you are interested in improving your grants performance, implement these solutions where needed and you will notice a dramatic difference.