On March 15th and 16th I attended the National Arts Marketing Conference held in NYC. Arts Reach organizes the conference twice a year, once on each coast. The Conference includes an opening and closing speaker, “break out” season’s, “one on ones”, sponsor showcases, and “lunch with the experts”. Overall I felt the Conference was relatively weak although there were a few key standouts. read more…
How framing your work in a positive light can make a world of difference.
By Ryan Takemiya
About a month ago I was in a Grantwriting workshop in San Francisco hosted by Compasspoint Nonprofit Services (Formerly the Support Center for Nonprofit Management www.compasspoint.org) along with about 25 other seasoned grantwriters all looking to learn some extra tricks of the trade. Most of the workshop was taught from the perspective of the grant writer until at one point we were split up into groups and asked to pretend for a moment that we were actually grant makers ourselves, reading fake grant proposals sent to us by fictional nonprofits. In the role-playing exercise, we were given a certain amount of money to dole out, and 3 proposals asking us for this money. We had to read them and discuss with our fellow ‘board members’ who to give the money to. We could give all the money to one nonprofit, or we could split it in any way we saw fit.
All three proposals were extensive and thorough and explained the nature of their services very well. Each proposal gave detailed explanations of their organization’s mission and vision, as well as how they carried out their programs. Each organization had incredibly benevolent goals that were equally as worthy of our money as the other. However, each group framed their proposals in very different narrative tones, and there was one proposal that received an overwhelming approval from all of the groups in the workshop.
The difference was positivity. The first proposal given read more…
As someone who began writing grants on the job, with a creative writing background, I found myself looking up template after template on proposal formatting alone. After four years working in Arts fundraising and development, I realize that what was for me first a desperate search for guidance in a growing organization, is a frequent and needed part of any professional writer’s job. We always need to take a look at what else is out there.
As I struggled through my first grant, structure was the first and foremost need on my list. Once I have a layout, I can usually easily infuse some passionate statements about the fundraising need at hand into a document with neatly laid out bold faced, underlined sections.
In general, my grant-writing advice is as follows:
1. Have a project summary ready. This includes knowing your project need, the amount of money for which you are asking, the mission of your organization and a prominent reason why said project is valuable.
2. If possible, begin with an outline. It’s the best way to lay succinct thoughts into a structure. It also allows a writer visual space to prove out a point by way of a list.
3. Be ready to cut and paste. Unless you are writing the first grant for an organization, make certain that you have access to prior grants and the image that the nonprofit is trying to create.
In most other nonfiction writing, we tend to write a long introduction. I have found that the tighter you package your sections, the better. Narrative grants usually begin with the REQUEST paragraph, followed by the MISSION AND HISTORY OF THE ORGANIZATION.
Several other sources I’ve checked suggest that mission, history and executive summary information can be nicely laid out in the cover letter written to present an overview of the organization. While that’s an excellent idea, I almost never put important information solely in the cover letter. Instead, I use the cover letter as a place to emphasize the organization’s need for funding, as well as its alignment with said Foundation’s mission in a creative and personal manner.
The request should be formal, but should still remain colorful and overall encouraging to the funder/foundation trustees that their funding will make a difference in a truly quality program.
As simple as it sounds, the request paragraph is a set apart section of one or two sentences. The paragraph below, a loosely adapted piece of one of my previously funded grants, is a good example of a formal request of a specific amount of funding from the foundation for a named project. It is helpful if a colorful description of the project follows.
[Insert name of organization here] respectfully requests $50,000 over two years in project support from the XYZ Foundation for its longest running commissioning and performance series. We are grateful to the XYZ Foundation for its past and continued support of the program, which was created in the mid 90s and still celebrates such a distinct quality in dancemakers and remains true to its founding ideals to this day. A two-year grant of $50,000 will allow our organization to continue to present, produce and support two more years of dynamic and original dance.
Here I took care of business first (requesting the hefty sum of $50K over 2 years), and then launched right into praising the long-running program for which we were requesting funding. Development writing is kind of a loop. You always want to make it about the other person, but in the end – make it about you. Here’s another, different approach I’ve taken:
[Organization name] requests support from the Cultural Council for the X concert series – a new performance series that fulfills many of our smission-based goals. X exemplifies our objective to support emerging artists in the dance field, facilitate the exchange of ideas between artists, and draw new audiences into the heart of downtown Manhattan. A generous grant of $20,000 will assist us in presenting the work of six choreographers, featuring approximately 20 dancers in three thematic split bill concerts.
It’s more casual, but it gets the job done. What you see here is the difference between applying to a run-of-the-mill Foundation with a project they’ve been funding for a decade, and sending a proposal to a hip cultural council. In this case, relationships with both funders were quite positive. The essential difference was that one relationship was open enough to bear more conversational writing, given the presence of facts and figures, where the other one was all decorum. Given that, “Know your funders” might as well be another number on my list of advice above.
In my next post, I’ll continue on my pathway through a grant, and post a few of my favorite mission statements.
Emerging Leaders of New York Arts recently held a competition for a new logo. I decided to try my hand at it. The only requirement ELNYA gave was that the full name had to be in the logo. I used a site called wordle that takes text that you give it and randomly lay’s them out. Here are my two entries:
I tried my the same program using my bio as the base text and came up with this:
Its a very cool website, so check it out.
David Seah (www.davidseah.com) runs an amazing website that houses his time management philosophies under the name “Printable CEO”. Although most of the tools are conceived for freelancers they are amazingly well designed and an incredibly useful for anyone.
One of my favorite forms is the Task Order Up (http://davidseah.com/blog/comments/task-order-up-updates/). Mr. Seah based this on a check rail from restaurants.
I’ve wanted one of these things for years, thinking it would be useful for prioritizing my own tasks. I got the idea by watching a worker at McDonald’s manage a priority queue during a busy lunch period. She put the priority items (for cars) on the left, scanning the tickets constantly to stay on top of what food needed to go in which bag . I was impressed; apparently I am not alone in this observation.
I really like the concept of a visual anchor for my projects. When stressed it helps to take a breath and look up at these order forms. In addition its a great way for the office as a whole to see what is going on.
The check rail was the continual point of reference, allowing everyone not only to see what was in each order, but also providing a visual sense of just how backed up they were.
Please check out his site and try some of his forms. In addition I’ll be writing about ways to use his tools in future posts.
