All, or a combination of some of the following statements may sound true for your organization:
- “We have not updated our Strategic Plan in 5 years”;
- “We would like to hire a Development Director/grant writer, but we don’t have the funds”
- “Our Executive Director is overwhelmed with day-to-day management, and has no time to write new grants”
- “ We would like to expand our funding base, but we don’t know where to start”
- “I saw this great grant opportunity, but we are just not ready.”
Where to start? The need to build capacity, and the difficulty of devoting the necessary resources, is great among small and moderate budget organizations serving low income or underserved communities. Many community-based organizations operate in a fragile and vulnerable condition. They depend on a charismatic founder, volunteer staff, or a single type of funding, often government grants or reimbursement contracts. With the potential for further reductions in government funding and increased competition for financial resources, community-based organizations are facing ever increasing challenges to their existence.
Resource Development is consistently the highest need expressed by virtually all nonprofit organizations, large or small. Especially the need to expand and diversify sources of income grows more apparent as traditional funding sources become more limited.
In Southwestern NM, geographic isolation, rural high-need populations, and the absence of affordable technical assistance make it even harder for small and medium sized non-profits to build viable organizations.
The use of outside consultants to write proposals is common. Traditionally, many of these proposal writers focus exclusively on writing, and funders have become quite good at detecting the “hired hand” grant writer. The reason is that with this approach, grant writing is handled separately from other aspects of resource development, such as developing strategic plans, assessing needs, developing collaborations or setting up systems enabling agencies to effectively compete for grants.
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