Nonprofit Grant Writing: Successful Proposal Example Reaction!

I have shared tips for successful non-profit  grant writing and grant proposals in past videos, but today I'm going to do something a little bit  different with you, and that is react to an actual real-life successful non-profit grant proposal.  I am really excited to try this out with you! I look forward to hearing what you think about this  format and this type of video, so be sure to let me know in the comments. Welcome or welcome back!  If this is your first time to my channel - Hi, I'm Ambe

r Melanie Smith, and I am a non-profit  founder and executive director of the nonprofit that I started. I make videos here on YouTube  all about everything I've learned about creating a social impact through the nonprofit world,  whether that's starting a nonprofit or fundraising or growing as an organization, creating a social  impact in other ways outside the nonprofit world, and so much more. So I hope that you find  this video helpful, that it helps you raise some money to help change the wo

rld in  your own special way. Be sure to check out my other videos for more tips and strategies, and of  course if you like this video and find it helpful, don't forget to give it a like and subscribe to  my channel for more content like this. If you're looking for more training and resources I also  have a website, FounderToFullTime.com where you can see more of what I do. So as i said in this  video i'm going to show you a real life successful grant proposal i'll talk a little bit about what 

i think made it successful some things i liked about it and maybe a couple things i might  have done differently so let's get into it. so what i'm going to show you here is an  example of a successful grant proposal written by this organization this organization  is called Puppies Behind Bars so here's their website here you can see they work with service  dogs and do a lot of great work with them so they wrote their successful grant proposal to this  organization called the planet dog foundatio

n so already just by the name i can see that there  appears to be some good alignment here between the organization and the grant foundation and just  so you know the example grant proposal that i'm going to show you is part of candid learnings  uh examples of successful grant proposals so if you're interested in studying successful grant  proposals more i encourage you to check out this resource that might help you out they've got you  know example cover letters letters of inquiry proposal budg

ets etc so just another good  resource for you all right let's get into taking a look at the actual grant proposal  i'm going to start by sharing just a couple of observations here um this whole thing is let's  see just a couple of pages long so it's a pretty short proposal and i can see i've landed here on  the budget page i can see from this budget that this is probably a smaller organization this um  does not appear to be the entire organization's budget of course just it looks like this is 

just the budget for the particular program that they are applying for funding for so we'll  get into the budget a little bit more later but like i said this whole thing is just a couple of  pages long and it starts with a cover letter here um you know observationally it looks like they  addressed the foundation um program officer looked like actually this is the executive director  by name so they personalized it that's nice they start by telling their story you know who  are they where have the

y come from you know they talk about starting in in 2005 and they set out to  establish this organization and the program that they're going to be talking about later here  to promote human interaction in the homebound elderly community by bringing our puppies on  socialization visits to their homes all so immediately i'm having an emotional  response to this grant proposal and i actually think that's a really good  strategy um to talk in inspiring terms about your mission right up front because

people  forget that funders are humans too and humans have emotions and are compelled to support  causes based on emotional reasons often hopefully also paired with logic but um you know drawing  someone in with that emotional and compelling story right off the bat is a good strategy a  couple of other things you know i mentioned before um about the names of the organization and  the funder's name and it just so happens that it's very clear by the names that both have to  do with dogs but the p

oint that i want to make is it's very very important when you are employ  applying for grants to make sure that the funder the foundation or the the corporate  foundation or whatever whoever your funder is that they are going to be a good fit for your  organization before you even attempt to apply and if you do not work on making sure that there  is a good alignment and i'll talk in just a second about what i mean by that before you apply then  you might waste your time writing a grant for a fun

der that would never even consider your cause  at all and then they're going to say no and then both of you have wasted your time and it's really  sad so having a good fit is really important and what that means is essentially your values and  their values and the issues and causes that they care about are the same as the issue or cause  that you are addressing through your nonprofit so this is an animal and service organization they  apply to a foundation that wants to help animals so good very

clear very obvious alignment there so just doing that research ahead of time can save  you a lot of time and headache and also save the funder time now going into a little bit more about  this proposal i can tell by looking at it and how they describe um what they're requesting funding  for that this is a program grant so there are lots of different types of grants that you can apply  for you can apply for funding for your capacity building so investing in things that will increase  the capacit

y of your organization making important staffing or infrastructure investments you can  apply for technology grants you can apply for training grants and you can apply for program  grants that is funding that will specifically fund a program one or more programs that your  organization is offering these are among the most common types of grants that are out  there so um i'm not terribly surprised by that those are just a a couple of quick observations  that i have taking a look at this um now i'

m going to get into just some interesting things that i  see and and point out some things that i think were done really well and some things that maybe i  would have done differently of course remembering that this is a successful grant application  proposal so whatever they did worked for that particular funder but you have to you've got to  customize it to your funders needs so reading through this proposal one thing that i really  liked about it and i alluded to this before was the heavy emp

hasis on storytelling but they  also back up that storytelling with stats so i i really appreciate that i think you have to  have both you've got to you know show that you can inspire people and you know draw them  and emotionally but you also have to back that up with the numbers showcasing  your impact so i really appreciated that you know they talk about their their sort of  history their origin story up here at the front then they start talking a little bit about their  progression throughou

t the years it looks like there's they're talking about the growth of one of  their programs here so we have recently increased the number of seniors who receive visits  twice monthly to 13 which translates into 312 visits per year and then they talk about  how they want to increase those numbers even further by the end of the year they start with  that stat so they're laying the groundwork here to justify their their future request for funding  they put those stats forth they put their goals he

re i really really like that and then they back  it up by sharing the story of one woman it looks like her name is Helen here um who's 59 she's been  suffering from multiple sclerosis for 10 years and just talking about how the program has really  impacted her life so that's very powerful you got your stats and you're backing it up with  storytelling the proposal continues to talk about in different ways from different angles the looks  like the types of growth that they're hoping to achieve wit

h more funding support so they  talk about one of their staff members their director of volunteers who's been  really driving the success of this program and how she has been dedicating a lot of her time  to running this particular program and how they expect that staff time to increase because  of the growth and the success of the program but then they talk about the challenge of the  challenges that they're facing with this program and again all of this is you can tell that  they're continuing

to lay the groundwork to explain why they need the money  later so in summary you've got you know the compelling emotional pull the  story in the beginning and then you have the growth and the success of the program and how  impactful it is for the people that it touches and then you're talking about your challenges  because after this they're going to talk about how funding will help them address some of those  challenges so they're building the whole story out another thing that i really appr

eciate here and  i think that a funder would appreciate is this paragraph they're talking about a challenge  that they had as i mentioned you know how it looks like they're talking about some  challenges specifically with recruiting volunteers in a particular way but they don't  stop there they then talk about how they went ahead and addressed that challenge and some of  the solutions they were able to come up with to um to to tackle that that problem that they had  this shows the funder that th

is organization is first transparent because they're talking openly  about the problem that they had but secondly they're innovative and they're problem solvers so  they're they're agile as an organization they're able to handle the challenges that come to them i  think as a funder i would really appreciate that again here in this next paragraph they're talking  about the growth of their program the evolution of their program how they have expanded to  additional facilities with their puppies pr

ogram they also talk a little bit about some of their  values so they say here true to the organization's credo that education is a key component of  our work one of our team members developed a course to teach inmates who they explained  earlier in this proposal are one of the ones are i'm sorry one of the populations training the  puppies teaching these inmates how to uh be the most effective dog trainers and dog handlers that  they can be so they're talking here about not just how they are br

inging puppies to this location  or that location but their process their their quality assurance if you will how they're making  sure that this program is going to not just be a program that has wide reach but a  program that has deep and impactful reach and that is of course because they they put some  intention and thought behind how that program is going to be delivered so they're really  giving the funder a sort of behind the scenes look at all of what they do and how they  do it that's ver

y powerful it really helps the funder create a visual in their mind of  what it's like to be a part of this program now one thing is we don't get to see the  funding request until about page three this is not something i would typically  recommend having your funding request this late in the proposal a rule of thumb that  i tend to follow is put your funding request and that is how much you're asking for and for what  purpose in the very first paragraph of a grant proposal because you want your

funder to know  generally um exactly what you're looking for and why right up front and then you spend the  rest of the proposal backing up your request in this case they have it on page three but  i actually think it's okay and here is why they talk about how this foundation planet dog  foundation's grant of twenty five hundred dollars accounted for fifteen percent of our pause and  reflect expenditures in in the year prior so this is not a new funder to this organization there's  a relationshi

p here this is a foundation that has already funded this organization and so having the  request a little bit later i think is okay because you they already know a little bit about who  you are and there's a little bit of trust there because they funded you previously but the other  thing here is they talk about how they were able to successfully use that money before so with that  money we were able to do x y and z we were able to remain uh secure the remaining financial needs  from other found

ations and then with your money we were able to train more volunteers provide  over 240 puppy trips to seniors homes etc etc then they talk about how they hope this grant  will be a larger grant so you know previously the foundation gave them 2500 now they're asking  for 5 000. and i think that since they were going to increase their ask it was really smart to talk  immediately before that about how they used the previous money and what an impact it made so  in summary they started with a story

they went into the stats they talked about the growth of  the program they talked about the challenges of the program they showcased themselves as an  agile organization capable of handling problems now they've made their ask they talked about what  they were able to do with previous funding and it looks like here they are ending with another  story so they're kind of bringing it around full circle ending with a story and a testimonial  here it says Gordon a 91 year old man who receives his visi

ts from our organization summed up  his experience by saying pause and reflect the program name gives me an interest that i  wouldn't have otherwise and for a man this is very important the wives are always doing things  chatting belonging to an organization but the men are inclined to sit back and wither away oh this  gives me something to get up and look forward to on Saturday so powerful testimonial at the end  here they wrap up the letter portion with a simple thank you and then they get int

o their budget to  showcase um you know how how the program expenses are broken down so if if the funder says yes to  the five thousand dollars that they have requested it will help contribute to some of these  program expenses i want to point out a couple of interesting things here i really  like that it looks like they've considered the true cost of this program here you know  they're taking into account the fact that they have to have a shuttle driver and pay that  person's salary and they're

also accounting for their director of volunteers salary that is i  think so important because that is the person as they stated earlier in their proposal who  is driving and managing most of this initiative so they've got to cover that person's time as a  paid staff person as part of the program expenses they also have some supplies for volunteers  here some recognition events and research events and training events and i'm just, i love  that they included all those things people forget that yo

u know it takes research and you've got to  appreciate your people and acknowledge your people and train your people to have really effective  programs that make a deep impact and that can retain your amazing volunteers so accounting  for all of these things in your program costs is super smart and i highly recommend that people  do that i think a lot of people assume that you know program expenses can only include things like  supplies or the specific technology just used on that program but th

at's not true you have to think  about all of the different expenses that go into effectively running a program and it looks like  they've done that from the gas and the tolls that they're going to have to pay they've got their  insurance here the salary i mentioned already and then not just supplies but also the research  the volunteer and client appreciation and then the training okay so i've talked a bit about you know  a lot of the things that i liked in this proposal it's obviously a succes

sful proposal so the funder  liked it and that's really what matters here um i talked about like i said the things that i think  they did successfully if there's one thing that i think i personally would have done differently is  i tend to like to break down my grant proposals by sections with you know large headers at the top  of each section so mission statement organization history organization budget program details  etc and the reason i like to break up the text like this and of course this

is especially  relevant for longer proposals and like i said this is a shorter one but i like to break  up the text because i find that it makes it easier to read funders have to read dozens  or sometimes even hundreds of grant proposals regularly so making your document just formatted  in a way that is easy for them to read is just a nice courtesy that they will appreciate so that is  probably one thing i would have done differently um of course especially if this were an even  longer proposal

but that's really it you know i think it's got a lot of powerful stuff in here  um like i said storytelling backed up by stats showcasing your team's skill sets your very clear  budget that accounts for all of your true costs good job puppies behind bars all right so there  you have it puppies behind bars super adorable i know let's get your thoughts on this if you were  a funder what would you think of this proposal what did you think in general how has it inspired  you to think about how you

might write your own grant proposals definitely share all that in  the comments below and let's get a conversation going as i mentioned before if you're looking for  some additional training and resources whether it's on starting a non-profit or creating  a sustainable fundraising plan check out my website FounderToFullTime.com where I have my  trainings and some additional free resources there too if you're looking for some additional help  beyond that I also have a newsletter that i send out f

or non-profit leaders and change makers  of all types the link to subscribe to that is in the description as well and you can subscribe  and opt out anytime you would like it's there to help you out so I hope that you find that helpful  too finally if you're on Facebook I have a group, Change the World or Bust; we've got a couple  thousand folks from all around the world having conversations about how they are making an  impact and asking each other questions. Come on by and join us there you ar

e welcome thank  you once again so much for watching i'm still so uh astonished and grateful at how this little  channel has grown with your help um thank you so much for watching and i once again hope you found  this helpful and I hope to see you next time, bye!