Shift Your Focus to Funders, Not Funding Opportunities

September 28, 2020

It's always a good idea to look weekly, if not daily, for funding opportunity announcements that might be a good fit for your organization. However, if you are not careful, you can end up putting too much emphasis on finding funding opportunity announcements (FOAs) over other grant-seeking activities.  While FOAs are important, many (if not most) organizations would be better served by prioritizing in-depth research of specific funding sources—that is, the foundations, associations, and government agencies behind the opportunity postings—than focusing on FOAs.

In this post, we explore why researching funders can deliver a greater payoff than searching for FOAs.

The Problem with Focusing on Funding Opportunity Announcements

Finding funding opportunities you can apply to is an essential part of the grant-seeking process, so what's the problem with focusing on FOAs? 

The problem is this: If your main focus is on FOAs, you'll always be in a reactive mode rather than a proactive one. When you are in reactionary mode, it means that when you spot an FOA of potential interest, you usually have to decide ASAP whether to apply to the opportunity because the majority of FOAs are released a few weeks before the application deadline. Because of the time pressure, you won't have much time to evaluate the opportunity to determine how well it fits your organization, assess whether your organization would be a competitive applicant, or research the funder's programmatic priorities, history, or past grantees. If your grant funding approach is ad hoc and depends on finding FOAs to apply for each month, you need to be ready to spring into action at a moment's notice as opportunities arise. With each proposal, you'll have to hope you have the resources to produce a decent proposal that might stand a chance of winning.

Does this dive-in approach sometimes work? Yes, sometimes it does, which is why people do it. However, even when this approach works and results in a grant award, it doesn't always yield happy outcomes. Over the years, we've noticed that when a grant is awarded in response to one of these reactionary-mode proposals, the subsequent project is often a disaster. These disasters occur because, in the rush to write and submit the proposal, the applicant organization lacks the time to research and design a realistic, feasible project, leaving it unable to deliver what was promised for the money received. 

The only time we've seen reactionary proposals result in successful awards is when the team preparing the proposal has:

• Experience working on grant proposals as well as experience working together (i.e., no unknown, external consultant grant writer is thrown into the mix).

• Some familiarity with the funder.

• Access to relevant materials, such as recent proposals and boilerplate that can be quickly adapted for the purpose. 

If you don't have an experienced team, lack familiarity with the funder, and will create the application largely from scratch, the odds are low that you'll be able to produce a winning grant proposal in response to an FOA you just spotted. Not impossible, but unlikely. The reason is that the vast majority of grant proposals are not funded, even those that are perfectly planned and executed. A proposal prepared in response to a funding opportunity you know little about and have not anticipated will have an even lower chance of success.

Another issue with focusing on FOAs is that, unless the application is very simple and requires few details, you won't know enough about the funder's interests, goals, and evaluation criteria to prepare a truly responsive and competitive proposal. 

Lastly, if your funding strategy revolves around finding new calls for proposals, you may be tempted to pursue opportunities that are not a great fit and could pull you away from your mission. If you don't have a 12-to-18-month plan that outlines the funders and funding opportunities you're going to pursue, you're going to feel pressure to apply to whatever comes along.

Researching funding opportunities is an important task, but that's all it is. It's a task, not a strategy. To create a funding strategy, you need to take a step back and look at the funders behind the opportunities.

Are You Overly Focused on Funding Opportunity Announcements? Here Are Some Signs:

• You do not spend any time researching funders.

• You do not have a shortlist of funders that you actively watch (i.e., subscribe to their newsletter, visit their website regularly, etc.) that you know offer grants in your programmatic area.

• You do not have a grant strategy that identifies the funders you plan to pursue over the next 12–18 months. 

The Importance of Shifting Your Focus to Funders

If your focus is on FOAs, you will be in reactionary mode and may lack the time needed to prepare high-quality, competitive proposals. If you focus on funders rather than FOAs, you're taking a different approach. By making it a regular habit to research funders and creating a shortlist of the funders you intend to apply to on an annual basis, you're positioning yourself to be a more competitive applicant. The more competitive you are, the more likely you are to win a grant.

Instead of hoping to find an FOA to apply to, be strategic and watch for FOAs released by funders you’ve already vetted and determined to be a good fit for your organization.

Why Funder Research Should Be Your Priority over Looking for FOAs

Even if you have developed an annual grant strategy that identifies specific funders and grant opportunities to apply to, there may be (and perhaps always will be) an FOA that pops up unexpectedly that is too good to pass up. If the FOA is a good fit for your organization, you understand what the funder wants, and you have the resources to apply, we would encourage you to do so. We are not saying to never respond to an FOA you did not anticipate, only that applying to an FOA you didn’t anticipate should be the exception, not the rule. 

Understanding funders is key to being a successful grant seeker. Here are a few of the reasons why researching funders in advance of responding to an FOA is important:

• Funding Trends: Understanding funding trends takes time. Has the funder you are interested in funded organizations like yours recently? Has the funder ever funded projects like the one you want to propose? Are there other organizations out there already doing the work you want to do, in the place you want to do it, and achieving good results? If so, would any funder be interested in funding you to do this same work? 

• Funding Cycles: Most funders release their funding opportunities on a predictable schedule or have established programs that release funding opportunities periodically (i.e., you might not know when an opportunity will come out, but you can find out what their programmatic interests are and track the program to look for clues for when an FOA will come out).

• Funding Guidelines: Funders are not static entities. It's not unusual for funders to change their funding priorities, funding timelines, funding mechanisms, and application processes. If you have identified a funder of interest and have been following them, you'll know when they make changes to their application process, which will allow you to study the new application procedures in preparation for responding to an FOA. A change in application procedures may seem like a small thing. However, if the funder has moved from a simple process (applications submitted via email) to a more complicated one (applications submitted through a third-party online portal), you could lose valuable time trying to figure out how to apply.

• Competitiveness: A fourth reason why understanding funders is important concerns competitiveness. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, there are 1.5 million registered nonprofits in the United States alone. All funders—from small family foundations to government agencies—are inundated with grant applications when they post an FOA. When you submit a grant application, unless it is a sole-source situation (i.e., only your organization has been invited to apply), you will face competition. To stand out from the pack and deliver the most responsive proposal possible, you need to understand the funder, its mission, and the problem it seeks to solve. Funders use grants to advance their missions. In most cases, foundations are not capable of implementing projects directly (the same is true of government funders), so they use grants to recruit others to do the work they believe is needed to achieve their goals (note: not yours). If you do not understand the problem a funder is trying to solve, why they want to solve this problem, or what they've already done in an attempt to solve the problem, you are going to be at a disadvantage when you prepare your grant proposal. 

Implementing a Funder-Focused Grant Strategy

So perhaps we've convinced you that you need to prioritize funders over FOAs. But what does this look like in practice? Here are our suggestions of what to do (and not do) to establish a funder-focused grant strategy:

Summary

If you need grant money, finding funding opportunities to apply to is an essential part of the grant-seeking process. We’re not advocating that you stop looking for funding opportunities. In fact, just the opposite: We always advise organizations to submit proposals in response to funders’ open call for proposals (i.e., the funders are actively soliciting applications). What we’re suggesting is an adjustment to your grant-seeking activities: spend more time researching a targeted list of funders and less time scrolling through generic lists of funding opportunities, hoping to find something to apply to.

Learning who funds organizations like yours and doing in-depth research on each of the funders you uncover—this should be your priority. Make it a goal to create a shortlist of funders that are a good match for your organization, identify the funders’ funding programs and cycles, and then do what you can to prepare for the proposal writing process while waiting for the funders to release FOAs.

The approach we’re advocating may not be as exciting as rushing to respond to an FOA you just spotted from a funder you’ve never heard of before. However, if your goal is to win grants consistently, researching funders and identifying those that align with your programs will yield better long-term results.