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Typical Foundation Grant Pursuit, continued
Typical Foundation Grant Pursuit
PHASE II: Turn-Key, Year Round Grant Pursuit Management
A grant pursuit strategy and plan is only as good as the quality and consistency of its implementation. Through the process of building the grant pursuit infrastructure, CSB has become well positioned to manage grant pursuit in an extraordinarily cost-effective manner.
We have a comprehensive understanding of your organization and its key staff. We have spent hours understanding how your organization fits with foundation funding interest. We have been thinking about whom of our Associates fit best with your organization. We are brimming with ideas about how to begin to go after the largest possible grants that are feasible. And we are ready to join with your staff as effective partners in fulfilling your grant funding objectives.
We don’t just provide expert grant writing; we catalyze and coordinate the entire grant pursuit process. We understand that it is your relationship with funders rather than ours that is important; we don’t get in the way – we pave the way and maximize the benefit of your organizational strengths and community relationships augmented by our services.
For a monthly fee that is essentially a retainer, CSB offers dependable, high quality and cost-effective year-round services to achieve your grant funding objectives, including the preparation of signature- and mail-ready applications with all required attachments delivered to the agency for final review and mailing.
Three related areas of CSB Associate expertise are brought to bear to effectively manage grant pursuit:
Expert Grant Writing, prepared by a variety of CSB contractual Associates with specialized expertise to tailor the request to the funder.
Proposal Process Coordination, provided by CSB’s experienced fund development Associates who are skilled at guiding the grant pursuit process.
Proposal Production with Attachments, delivering to you the complete application ready for signature and mailing. Grant requests that must be submitted on-line are handled separately.
Together, our writing, coordination and production services become a turn-key operation for non-profit grant pursuit. With the infrastructure in place and executive and development staff focusing on higher priorities, CSB implements an ongoing turn-key grant pursuit management plan. And these services are affordable to non-profits of all sizes.
Major Competitive Grant Proposals
Major competitive grants are an almost totally different grant pursuit challenge.
These major grants usually have the objective of having an impact on a critical public need. Criteria for these multi-year grants, ranging from $100,000-$2,000,000 per year, apply a more rigorous academic and evidence-based standard. Usually the application must demonstrate the agency’s program sophistication and organizational capacity, reflect adherence to evidence-based best practices, show collaborative relationships indicated by attached memoranda of understanding, and include literature citations, a logic model, and much more.
The basis of competition is the applicant’s organizational capacity and staff competencies to provide the requisite professional services, achieve defined outcomes, or create the infrastructure important to the social purpose or need.
Because RFP/RFAs typically require a two-month or less turn-around, an organization must be ready to move immediately to pursue a large grant opportunity. These large, usually multi-year grants can make a huge difference to a non-profit agency.
Even though agencies cannot “afford” not to pursue these grants, most cannot afford to dedicate the necessary high-level staff time required to meet this mountainous challenge. Major grant applications are much more demanding in their substance and in the amount of detail required.
CSB has prepared scores of major grants. While maintaining respect for their demanding nature and the quality of effort required, we have learned how to prepare them efficiently.
Once notified about the desire to pursue a grant, we can move quickly to set the preparation process in motion. We have relationships with many non-profits in Dallas and can convene key people and generate the kind of community support often essential for a successful major competitive grant application.
CSB not only increases your likelihood of receiving foundation gifts, we also give you back the time you’ve been spending trying to pursue grants.
Grant pursuit
Grant pursuit is the process of strategically going after grant funding
The services offered by Community Service Builders center around our powerful FunderFitTM proprietary database.
Loaded with intelligence about every foundation in the country that funds in North Texas, FunderFit can match the right foundations to your organization.
We utilize that information to build a 12-month strategic grant pursuit plan.
Our experienced grant writers prepare clear, compelling proposals.
Our savvy professionals manage the grant pursuit plan.
We deliver to you mail-ready applications.
And we provide these turn-key services at an affordable cost for any size organization.
All Grants Are Not The Same
Typical foundation grant pursuit and major competitive grant applications require two totally different approaches.
Typical foundation grants require evidence of a well-run non-profit serving an important community need and achieving measurable outcomes.
Competitive grants are offered by governmental entities and some large private foundations through requests for proposals (RFP) or requests for applications (RFA).
Success in obtaining these two very different types of grants requires different specialized services and skills. CSB has developed a streamlined approach to typical grant pursuit. CSB also has mastered the daunting process of responding to a request for major competitive grant proposals.
Because CSB has expertise in both areas, we offer non-profit organizations a solution to every grant funding dilemma.
Fee information
Our cost structure is based on the complexity of each organization’s programming and its grant funding goals. Based on an initial review at no cost to the organization, CSB will develop a proposal with options of services and related costs.
We prefer to provide most services on a fixed fee basis, which usually provides organizations more value and there are no surprises about costs.
Fees for services to prepare applications in response to specialized requests for proposals, such as governmental grants, are quoted separately.
Please contact us for a free customized estimate of your cost or click here to read more about our pricing.
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Typical Private and Corporate Foundation Grant Pursuit
There are two distinct phases of CSB’s comprehensive services for typical foundation grant funding: 1) Building the Infrastructure and 2) Turn-Key Management of the Grant Pursuit Plan. Combined, these two discrete services create the potential for success.
Typical Foundation Grant Pursuit
PHASE I: Build the Customized Grant Pursuit Infrastructure
Our critical infrastructure-building process takes approximately 30 days, and lays the internal groundwork for grant pursuit. The infrastructure-building process continues over an additional period of a month or more while grant solicitation moves forward.
After immersing ourselves in your organizational culture, we input the data into our FunderFit system. The resulting product is a thorough and thoughtful infrastructure that assures a high quality, effective grant funding effort.
Click here for additional information about FunderFit or contact us now to discuss the details with us.
