Building a Grants Program: Phase 2 Strategy Development and Cultivation
Welcome back to our three-part series on building a grants program for your organization! We began with Phase 1: Research and Ranking, in which we discussed how the current philanthropic climate, which has pivoted in response to the Covid-19 pandemic, has created several opportunities to build a robust grants program. Investing time in researching mission-aligned funders and grant programs, and then ranking them based on affinity, affluence, and access, results in a curated list of high, medium, and low priority prospects. This leads us to Phase 2: Strategy Development and Cultivation.
Here are some tips on how to get started with phase 2:
Prioritize Mission-aligned Funding Pipelines
Before beginning with developing the strategy, align your funding and prospect pipeline with your mission. Prioritize applying to grants that enhance your vision and achieve your mission, so that your mission, not your budget, drives the impact you have in the community.
“Prioritize applying to grants that enhance your vision and achieve your mission, so that your mission, not your budget, drives the impact you have in the community.”
Seek funding that aligns most closely with the core of your mission. The most common types of funding in the education space include some of the categories below. Begin by answering the question: where within these categories does your school fit?
Here are some examples of funding categories in the education space:
Programmatic Focus: It’s likely that your school has a programmatic focus such as, STEM education, racial equity, literacy, classical education, language-immersion, wraparound supports, etc. It is important to clearly identify your programmatic focus areas before engaging with prospective funders.
Growth: If your school is growing, explore capital or growth opportunities that would enable you to start or expand facilities, build virtual programming, or build professional development programs for leadership and teachers. Be sure to check out funders like the Charter School Growth Fund, if growth is in the near future.
Sub-groups: If you serve specific sub-groups of the community such as at-risk students, and have programming for special education, social emotional learning, mental and behavioral health services, and English language learners, prioritize funders that clearly state their support of the sub-groups you serve as a funding priority.
Build a Comprehensive Prospect Profile
Once you’ve ranked your prospects as a high, medium, and low priority, start building a comprehensive profile of each high priority prospect. A comprehensive profile includes both an organizational and stakeholder overview. Each organizational overview should include: a summary of the prospect, its geographical focus, funding priorities, and logistical information such as grant deadlines and details, along with the average range of grants awarded to similar organizations in the past. Look for published Covid-19 response statements and articles in the news or on the funder’s website to glean more about their most current and relevant priorities.
Having completed the first part of building the prospect profile, the next step is to build a stakeholder overview. Research and profile key stakeholders and staff at the organization. This list should include board chairs, board members, executive leaders, and any other key stakeholders. Next, present the organization and stakeholder overviews to your board and staff to find any connections and avenues for introductions. This will lead to the next step, developing a cultivation strategy.
Develop a Cultivation Strategy
A cultivation strategy outlines how your organization can leverage relationships, build a new relationship, and ultimately secure funding for your program or project. You will build a cultivation strategy for each one of your high priority prospects. Each prospect’s cultivation strategy will include:
A general overview of your existing relationship with the prospective funder,
Actionable steps to strengthen your relationship,
A timeline for implementing those actionable steps,
Any relationship connectors that you will need to engage or include in the conversation, and,
A measurable outcome (target request, purpose of the request, timing of the request, etc.)
To get started, use a probability matrix and cultivation calendar to outline your thoughts, identify next steps, and further prioritize opportunities.
Build a Probability Matrix
Building a probability matrix can help you further prioritize your opportunities, estimate grant-award success, and clearly detail next steps to improve your probability. We recommend building a probability matrix for your highest rank prospects. Each matrix should include the planned request amount, the purpose for applying, your estimated probability of success, and actionable next steps you can take to improve your probability.
When developing your probability matrix we suggest assigning each prospect a probability of 25%, 50%, 75% or 100%, based on the likelihood of a conversion. Below is a table to help you determine where on the continuum your prospect may land.
Here is a sample probability matrix to get you started:
Download our free probability matrix template, here.
Create a Cultivation Calendar
The outreach must be tracked and managed with a project management outlook. We will discuss this in more detail in the next phase of building a successful grants program, Phase 3: Proposal Writing and Stewardship.
In the interim, prepare for the next phase by building a 6-12 month-long cultivation calendar, including outreach activities, prospect touchpoints, and deadlines such as letters of Inquiry (LOI) and grant proposal due dates. While there are many tools for such planning projects, a simple excel or google sheet can be an easy way to get started.
Here is a sample cultivation calendar to get you started:
Download our free cultivation calendar template, here.
Focus on Cultivating Relationships
Cultivation is critical to increasing your grant win-rate. By cultivating prospects, you are developing and building relationships with funders, grantmakers, program officers, and corporate social responsibility teams to ultimately secure support for your school or organization. Growing these relationships requires time, effort, and a step-by-step cultivation plan for each prospect. This enables you to connect personally with funders, learn more about their funding priorities, and define avenues for alignment.
Ideally, the development team takes the lead on building relationships with prospects, including heads of schools and other stakeholders in the relationship-building stage, as necessary. For the most part, heads of schools, board chairs, and board members should be leveraged to share more about the mission as visionary leaders that are passionate and care deeply about the impact of the work.
Each prospect's cultivation strategy will be different depending on whether there is an existing connection with the funder or a stakeholder at the organization, or whether the outreach and relationship-building will be cold (outreach with funders with whom there is no prior relationship of any kind).
Leverage Connections to Make Introductions
When building your cultivation strategy, a relationship connector is critical. Having a relationship connector make an introduction significantly improves the chances that the prospect will respond to outreach, making the relationship-building process easier and more successful. In our article 5 Steps to Identify Prospects & Cultivate New Donors, we delve into the details of relationship mapping and even include a sample email for board members to send to a prospect.
Conduct Cold Outreach
If you’re unable to identify a relationship connector, there are still ways you can get that invitation to apply to improve your chances of securing grant funding. While cold outreach takes longer and requires more touchpoints, it can also be a successful way to build connections with prospects. When planning cold outreach, map out the touchpoints, the content and goal of each touchpoint, and the frequency. This will all become a part of the cultivation calendar. Ideally, plan to reach out at least three times, with a gap of two weeks between each touchpoint. Persistence is key, but in a strategic and thoughtful manner!
Reach out to funders with meeting requests no more than three times. When there is interest, take the initiative to schedule meetings and plan out all logistics. Ensure that you get the most out of meetings by planning an agenda, sharing highlights of your programming, and asking well thought-out questions about their vision and funding priorities. Plan a call to action for the end of each conversation, even if it is simply to schedule a follow up conversation. Finally, be respectful of their time by sticking to your agenda and setting expectations (30 minutes, 45 minutes, etc.).
Here is a cold outreach sample email to a prospect:
Initial Outreach Sample Email
Hi Brian,
I hope this email finds you well as we enter the last two months of what has been an unprecedented year, to say the least. By way of introduction, my name is John and I represent ABC Organization, a DC-based nonprofit with a national focus on empowering diverse future leaders to create a just and equitable planet. I am reaching out to you today because I believe our work aligns closely with Richard King Mellon’s conservation portfolio. I have included more about our organization and project goals below, and I welcome the opportunity to share more with you and explore areas of alignment with the Foundation’s mission. Thank you for your consideration of my request and I look forward to hearing from you soon.
Follow-up Email
Hi Brian,
I’m reaching out to follow up on my email below. We’d love to schedule some time with you or someone from your team to introduce our work and explain how we support Richard King Mellon’s conservation goals. Do you have 30 minutes to chat over the next two weeks?
Best Practices for Email Subject Lines
It is important to create clear and easy-to-understand subject lines that tell the receiver what they might expect to see when they open the email. This can often mean the difference between whether emails, from an unknown source, are opened or not, and is especially important with cold outreach.
Introducing ABC School - 123 Foundation (include the name of your school and the funder’s name in the subject line for best results)
RE: Introduction ABC School - 123 Foundation (use for follow up emails, reply to your initial/previous email)
Sam Smith asked me to reach out
Do you have 30 minutes to connect?
QQ: RE Education Focus Area
Even if funding applications are open (not by invitation only), it is still vital to build a relationship first, since this significantly improves the odds of being awarded funding and building a long-term relationship with the funder.
As always, in the outreach, focus on including information about how your program aligns with the prospect’s funding priorities.
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Reach out to our team (John@FundEDStrategies.com), if you have additional questions on improving your success rate with grant funding. Join us on Twitter and LinkedIn for more tips, strategies, and resources, and stay tuned for our article on Phase 3: Proposal Writing and Stewardship, and a book on this subject ready later in 2021!
About John Campbell and FundEd Strategies
John Campbell is a Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) who brings passion, energy, and innovative thinking from over 10 years of development and organizational management experience in the social sector.
John founded FundEd Strategies, LLC in 2018 to support schools, education nonprofits, and small to midsize organizations to start, scale, and sustain their fundraising programs. Prior to forming FundEd Strategies, John served as Director of Advancement for Eagle Academy Public Charter School. At Eagle Academy, John was responsible for the cultivation of over $5 million in strategic resources and partnerships which were designed to improve student success as well as organizational strategy. While at Eagle, John was instrumental in the formation of the Cassandra S. Pinkney Foundation, a private foundation formed after the passing of Eagle Academy’s founder with the mission of making space for opportunity. John served as the Foundation’s first Executive Director.
Previously, John held roles that include development director and executive director, where he was responsible for producing and implementing multimillion-dollar development and cultivation strategies.
John graduated from Lebanon Valley College with a Bachelor degree in Business Administration and Economics, and earned his Master in Business Administration from the Kogod School of Business at American University.
Connect with John on LinkedIn and Twitter!
About Peggy Downs and Granting Your Vision
Peggy Downs is on a mission. She wants to help 100 school leaders write successful grants in the next 5 years. In addition to writing grants for charter schools, she provides training and support for school leaders to learn how to write grants and develop grants programs.
Peggy Downs holds a Master’s degree in Educational Leadership and a Colorado Principal License. With 20 years of experience in charter schools, she has served as a founding parent, teacher, director, and board member. She has supported state and national charter school associations, and has served on the Peer Review Team for Charter School Program (CSP) Grants. She has given presentations at state and national conferences, and was rated a Top 20 Presenter at #NCSC19.
Peggy Downs writes a weekly blog for school leaders called Granting Your Vision, and is the author of the series, Grant Writing for School Leaders. She is currently working on an online training series for school leaders called Get Results with Grants.
Learn more at www.peggydowns.com, and connect with Peggy on LinkedIn and Twitter!