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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Lessons for Grantseekers from USAID’s Closure

If you work for an organization outside of the U.S., or if you are based in the U.S. but rely on grants from private foundations and not federal sources, the closure of USAID may seem like an unfortunate event, but one unrelated to your grantseeking. Although USAID’s dismantling may not affect you directly, some lessons from USAID’s shuttering apply to all grantseekers. In this post, we cover four lessons that we believe are universally applicable.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

What Should You Be Doing: Fundraising or Pursuing Grant Money?

If your organization needs funding (and what organization doesn’t?), you have three primary options for raising funds: 1) you can solicit donations from individuals; 2) you can submit proposals to foundations and government agencies to receive grant funding; or 3) you can hold fundraising campaigns and community events to collect donations.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Updating Your Grant Strategy

Developing a grant strategy involves identifying the funders and funding opportunities you intend to pursue over a certain period of time (usually a 12-month period, although it could be longer). Grant strategies should be updated at least annually. This is not only because the funding environment changes over time but also because an organization’s priorities, resources, and programmatic interests can change as well.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

You’ve Submitted Your Proposal—Now What?

After you submit your grant proposal, you may be tired of thinking about it and relieved the process is behind you. And while the process is mostly over, there are a few remaining things to be done between the time you submit the proposal and the time you hear back about its fate. Below are our suggestions for some post-submission activities to finish up the process.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

Simplify Your Knowledge Management System with Slab

What kinds of software solutions do nonprofits need? Pretty much everything for-profit businesses need, including tools for knowledge management.

This brings us to Slab (www.slab.com), which is the focus of this post. Slab is a browser-based knowledge management tool that companies (and nonprofits and educational institutions) can use to create, organize, store, and share information. You can read about several use cases for Slab on Slab’s website. However, since the use cases are oriented more toward companies, we thought it might be helpful to show how Slab could be used in three scenarios commonly encountered in a nonprofit context.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

How to Secure Grant Money: Three Truths for Grant Seekers

If you’re new to grant writing or have not been consistently successful in securing grant funding, this post is for you. We’re covering three essential truths about grant funding to help you prepare a strong grant strategy.

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Peak Proposals Peak Proposals

How Nonprofits Can Be Innovative without Changing What Works

How can you be innovative enough to keep the grant money flowing without changing your tried 'n true approaches to core services?One approach is to innovate around what's working. If your programs are effective, maybe you can bring innovation to the operations side and how you manage your programs. If your organization has strong service delivery programs and program management infrastructure, perhaps there are opportunities to be innovative in the way you approach the sustainability of your programs and services.

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Writing Without Certainty by Peak Proposals

The pros and cons of prewriting grant proposals

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SUBSTACK POSTS

The Template Dilemma by Peak Proposals

Proposal templates can be invaluable, with some caveats.

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Nonprofits Have a Sustainability Problem by Peak Proposals

A proposal's sustainability section may not be what you think it is.

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