Problem

Solution

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.

Extend Grants Network™: Research (GN: R) – With GN:R, CBOs can quickly and efficiently find the best grant opportunities for their projects and have the time to create winning proposals. Setting up an extended license for your CBOs via your agency’s GN: R subscription is a simple yet powerful solution that will improve their grant success.

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.

Provide grant writing training –Invite your CBOs to your own professional grant development training. You may have excellent staff in your organization that can do the training, or alternatively, you may bring in high-quality training, like eCivis’ Professional Grants Training, that has extensive experience working with community nonprofits.

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.

Be a resource – Dedicate a person to become a resource for your CBOs. Ideally this person is someone with a project management background or a grants background. This resource will enable CBOs to think about a project in its entirety and better define it.

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 governments’ departments as unapproachable.

Make Communication Routine – Invite your CBOs to regular grant strategy sessions to promote partnering opportunities. Utilize Grants Network™: Research to route grant opportunities and discuss them between organizations. Governments should identify the most capable nonprofits and collaborate with them on major projects that have the highest impact and greatest likelihood of success.

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 not be able to show the efficacy of their programs.

Embrace Collaboration – Many funding sources are beginning to favor collaborative proposals. Through collaborative efforts, your organization and its CBO partner leverage each other’s strengths and present competitive proposals for federal, state, and foundation grants. Through collaboration, CBOs can focus on program execution and service rather than compliance.