By Kelsey Boudin
President and Founder, Southern Tier Communications Strategies, LLC
Here’s a little trick I’ve learned. Write a “blanket proposal” before going crazy seeking individual grant opportunities. It’ll organize ALL of the information pertinent to your nonprofit mission and projects. Most importantly, it’ll prepare you to deliver the narrative in whatever form funders require.
It may seem like time is of the essence. In some cases, you may be right. You may need the money now! But slow down and think for a moment. How well can you express your nonprofit and the initiatives for which you seek funding?
How to Build a Strong Blanket Grant Proposal
A great grant-writing strategy ripe for funding requires you “be in it to win it.” You’re likely researching a variety of grant opportunities from:
- Governments
- Private foundations
- Charitable trusts
- Community benefactors
Are you prepared to tell your organization’s story — in whole, in part, in a repeatable way fitting the volume of grant proposals required to win serious funding? The goal here is not to prepare specific proposals, but to build a comprehensive background and framework for the grants you write later.
This should not be confused with a generic grant ask to dozens or even hundreds of potential funders. Grantmakers easily spot — and dismiss — such lackluster efforts. Your blanket proposal should paint a broad, yet detailed, picture of your organization and its activities for easy reference.
Compile ‘Boilerplate’ Info
Most grant processes require the same general overview of the organization. This boilerplate info may include:
- Mission and vision statements
- Organization history
- Leadership bios, qualifications and professional accomplishments (curriculum vitae, or CVs)
- Key staff bios and resumes
- Contact person
In general, boilerplate refers to an “about us” section, of sorts. It could be just a paragraph condensing the who, what, when, where, why and how of an organization. But I file the extra items, which remain the same with each proposal, under this category.
Complete Organizational Overview
Ready to write? Here’s where your blanket proposal truly becomes a blanket grant proposal. You tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth — about your organization.
No, you don’t need to write 250 pages of material. A recent blanket proposal I compiled for a grant writing client was 12 full pages and about 4,500 words. In that space, I weaved an in-depth storyline summarizing the organization’s reason for existing, key accomplishments, programs, people served, facilities and more.
Here’s an effective layout:
Executive Summary
Sum up what you do and why. Preview and justify your mission with realities that will be later explained with data in more detail. Expand the narrative with an overview of activities that serve your people. Note how lives and systems are improved by your organization’s services and/or products.
These summary details can be great introductory elements to narrative paragraphs and sections.
Location(s)
You may have a single office where you serve clients and tackle administrative duties. Or perhaps you have a network of locations for a variety of functions.
Some funders want to verify you have a stable headquarters to do business and service. Most grant applications will not require anything more than a physical address. But you never know when you’ll need a thorough description of your facility and how it suits your mission.
Programs and Initiatives
Showcase what you do. Break down your programs and initiatives into distinct sections detailing how they work and reach your target audience. Likewise, note the demographics each program serves and how those activities are pertinent to their needs. If your program provides afterschool activities for inner-city youth, for instance, detail those each activity and how they’re both engaging and beneficial.
Which segues nicely to our next section.
The Faces of Your Mission
A great grant proposal should be outwardly focused. Meaning? It’s not about how funding will help you to fulfill your mission, but rather how funding will help your mission to serve communities.
You serve real people with names, faces and fascinating tales of overcoming adversity. If possible, tell their stories. Provide their testimonials. Give them a voice. Write on their behalf. Who better to illustrate your community impact than the people whose lives have been improved? Let them speak for themselves and, in effect, thank your organization for breaking down barriers and providing community improvements.
Working Together
We’re all stronger together. Collaborations speak loudly to funders. They say you don’t stand alone. They prove other people in your community or sphere of influence not only stand behind the cause, but also work in lockstep with your efforts toward a common goal. I’ll borrow the often-used cliché: your collaborators “have skin in the game.”
Quite often, collaborations represent steps in a continuum of services or care. For example, your organization may provide medical services to survivors of domestic violence and later direct them to a partner that provides counseling.
Cite these relationships in your blanket proposal. Relationships at all levels are worth noting, whether they’re part of nonofficial affiliations, memoranda of understanding or partnership, or legally binding service contracts.
Methodology and Supporting Data
Now, let’s get into how your organization operates and justify actions with data. Grant reviewers appreciate getting to know you and your community of beneficiaries. But they value verifiable proof that what you do works and serves needs backed by data.
The methodology guiding your mission tells an important story. The funder weighs heavily how you plan and implement your programs — but, more importantly, the data explaining why and how you measure impact. Say, for instance, you coordinate a prison-to-work training program to lower local recidivism rates and bolster the economy with skilled labor.
You should include information like:
- Local data verifying repeat offenses by former inmates.
- Data proving employment lowers recidivism rates.
- Overviews of training modules and curriculum materials.
- Proof that training fulfills local employment needs.
Providing proof your proposal works (or will work) helps grant officers to understand and believe your organization’s path to success.
Future Vision
Effective grant proposals shepherd reviewers along a path from current needs to future solutions. Essentially, how will your mission today lead to your vision for a better tomorrow, or lay the framework for a better tomorrow?
Your blanket grant proposal must tie your mission to that future through action.
Your organization may offer training to bolster the regional workforce pipeline. It may provide direct treatment services for individuals in addiction recovery. Or it may educate children about the importance of brushing and flossing. No matter your nonprofit mission, it always envisions a future where these individuals get what they need — be it employment, sobriety or oral hygiene.
But you’ve already addressed how you move, now it’s time to express what you’ll do in the future to keep moving.
A Step Ahead
Grants ask for deliverables. They’re numbers you shoot to achieve during the grant period — like 45 people trained, 15,000 oral hygiene kits distributed or five collaborations struck. But what’s the next step ahead?
Your vision for the future should include what those 45 people trained will do. In your ideal world, would 95 percent of them go on to achieve a college degree, and of those 70% find employment in their field? Of those 15,000 oral hygiene kits distributed, do you hope 90% adopt more frequent brushing and flossing habits leading to 90% fewer root canals?
We all should hope so!
Sustainability
What will keep the lights on? I’ve rarely encountered a grant application process that doesn’t ask the dreaded sustainability question. “Sustainability? Well, asking your foundation for more money, of course!”
Establishing sustainability inevitably involves money. Your mission may live on, but how will your organization endure financially to live it? It’s enough to keep grant writers up at night, especially if you’re from a small nonprofit that depends entirely on grant funding sources, big and small, to survive.
The logical (and honest) answer may be to say simply, “We remain committed to securing stable funding sources.” But sustainability can also be expressed with longevity. If your organization or program has stood reliably for years, that in itself demonstrates sustainability.
Own that success in your blanket proposal. Acknowledge that the efforts have long included continually securing the funds needed to survive and thrive.
Growth and Expansion
Your organization may look to expand its mission and reach. Have you outgrown your current facility and look to a new property in town to house your mission? Expanding to a new city? Establishing a regional coalition of nonprofits serving a similar mission?
Include these plans in your blanket grant proposal. Show where your roads lead, how and why. Indicate how many more people and systems will be impacted as a result of your pending growth. Where you might help 100 people in a small town, you may impact 10,000 in a medium-sized city or 100,000 in a big city.
This may involve leasing or purchasing a new property. Have you scouted prospective locations? If so, have you selected a location? Why did you choose it? How many square feet? What makes it ideal for your operations? Explain how and why such a place or places will serve your purpose.
Multimedia
Pictures, videos, graphics, charts, audio recordings and all combinations of the sort can speak for themselves. Imagine what they can do in concert with your blanket proposal — and the individual proposals that stem from it.
You may not have money in the budget for a videographer. Your only photos may be scattered somewhere in a smartphone or social media feed. However organized or disorganized your multimedia capacity may be, let them augment and add color to your narrative.
Call to Action
You hope your words inspire action. This last piece of your blanket proposal will prepare your organization to call grantmakers and other potential supporters to back your mission.
Here’s your special appeal, your chance to say, “With your help we can do x, y and z.” But how exactly can they help? Spell out exactly how grant funding will help. Quantify the impact:
- Operational support
- Administrative and staffing capacity
- Program participants and service recipients
- Community fundraising
- Product distribution
- Planning and innovation
- Facility mortgage/lease
- Expansion
This section must call for grantmakers to provide capital as a catalyst for specific metrics for success. They must be able to envision their investment in action.
Are You Ready to Build Your Blanket Grant Proposal?
Again, you’re not building a generic grant ask to be distributed everywhere in hopes it sticks. You’re preparing the organization’s messaging to inform and inspire future grant proposals in whatever form they require.
It’s helpful to have all of this information in one easily accessible place. In the best-case scenario, once you’re confident the message is perfect, you’ll be able to copy, paste and attach your blanket proposal’s contents in multiple grant applications. At the very least, you’ll have a strong framework to construct future proposals meeting grantmakers’ requirements.
As an added bonus, you’ll cut down the time it takes to draft a volume of grant proposals within your great grant writing strategy. If you still need some help, hire an experienced grant writing consultant who can organize and guide your process.
