You're sitting at your kitchen table sorting through several — or dozens — of letters of request or even full proposals for funding. They all fit your focus area. They all seem like good organizations. But you can't fund them all. How do you make a good decision? In a previous entry I noted that crafting a set of decision-making criteria would enable you to make better, more effective choices. Once you've done that, you can read each appeal with those criteria in mind. You value people learning to help themselves? Then look for an organization offering proven training programs with clear pathways out of poverty. You want to help kids be successful in school and in college? Consider how long an organization tracks its clients and how it determines success. Make sure that the students aren't sent off to college only with great fanfare but also with on-going support. You believe in evidence-based activities? Search for success indicators that indicate the organization uses evidence-based practices. You get the idea.
3 Comments
The poem below is thanks to Vu Le who writes an insightful and often funny blog about managing a nonprofit organization called Nonprofit and Friends (formerly Nonprofit With Balls). Here is his latest: I can write the saddest grant proposal tonight Write, for example, the night is cold, And a family shivers, huddled in the darkness, An old keyboard rattles under fingertips and sings I can write the saddest grant proposal tonight I loved you, and yesterday you loved my org too On a night like this, I held your award letter, Reading it again and again under the infinite sky You loved us at times, and at times we loved you too I can write the saddest grant proposal tonight To think we have failed, to feel we have lost To see the immense hole in the budget, immenser without you And the outcomes fall to the page like hummus to a plate. What does it matter that we are an existing program? What does it matter the illusion of sustainability? In the distance, a program director weeps. In the distance. The night is cold, and my soul is not content. My eyes, exhausted, scan your website My heart, drained and battered, continues hoping. I love you, yet I hate you, yet I love you, yet I hate you. Grants are so small, and the restrictions so large Another. You will fund another. Like you funded us before. Maybe our logic model was not strong enough? Our Appendix A? On a night like this, I think of what we could have done. The night is cold, and my soul is not content Though I wish this be the last pain you make me suffer, I know this will not be the last of your RFPs I’ll respond to. |
AuthorJulia Kittross: Archives
September 2017
Categories
All
|