When corporations provide resources, it’s usually to advance their long-term interests—so before you ask a business to support your organization, try to learn more about your prospect. Bernie Jankowski (“Grants…5 things to find out about a potential corporate sponsor,” NPT Instant Fundraising, May 5, 2009) suggests finding out:

• What are the company’s revenues?
• How many employees do they have?
• How’s their financial health?
• Are they headquartered in your area, or is their local office merely a branch office?
• What are their major products and/or services?
• What’s their standing in the markets in which they compete?
• What kind of non-grant support do they provide (donated products, services, employee time, event hosting, meeting space, etc.)?
• What is their policy on employee matching gifts?
• In what ways might your organization collaborate with them (e.g, through the Chamber of Commerce or other organizations)?

[Note: NPT Instant Fundraising is a publication of The Nonprofit Times.]

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Grants.gov has been overwhelmed by traffic since passage of the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. But federal agencies are continuing to open up alternate routes for grantseekers. Local/State Funding Report (May 4, 2009) lists ten departments and agencies that have begun accepting grant applications through their own web sites:

• Corporation for National and Community Service
• Department of Defense
• Department of Education
• Department of Energy
• Department of Housing and Urban Development
• Department of Justice
• Department of Transportation
• Environmental Protection Agency
• National Air and Space Administration
• National Science Foundation

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The Lumina Foundation hopes their new grantmaking practices will lead to an increase in the percentage of Americans with college degrees—from the current 39% to 60% by 2025. In “Lumina’s Leader Sets Lofty Goals for Fund’s Role in Policy Debates” (The Chronicle of Higher Education, May 1, 2009), Sara Hebel describes the changes Jamie P. Merisotis has made since he became Lumina’s president last year. Under Merisotis, Lumina has made grants to eleven states to help them to find ways to keep more students in college through graduation. The foundation is also making grants designed to develop ways to help more students from low-income backgrounds and communities of color earn degrees from institutions of higher education.

[Editor’s Note: The Chronicle of Higher Education has granted {Centered} readers access to Hebel’s full article for a limited time. The link above will expire on July 16, 2009.]

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After a yearlong analysis of their grantmaking systems, Ford Foundation president, Luis Ubiñas, has announced some structural changes in the foundation’s grant programs. According to Marty Michaels, in “Grant-Making Overhaul at Ford Emphasizes Collaboration and Efficiency,” (The Chronicle of Philanthropy, April 23, 2009), Ford wants to see more collaboration among grantees. They also want more data on which grants produce results and which ones don’t; to this end, they’ve created a new position, Director of Impact and Evaluation. They’ll increase the percentage of assets paid out in grants from between 5 and 6% to 6.5% in 2009 and 2010. They’ll also announce the amount of funding they’ll devote to each of the eight areas in which they’ll be making grants:

1. Human rights
2. Freedom of expression
3. Democratic and accountable government practices
4. Expanded access to economic opportunities
5. High-quality education
6. Sustainable development
7. Sexuality and reproductive health and rights
8. Social-justice philanthropy.

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Last December, when we published “Avoiding Grant Nightmares—10 New Year Resolutions to Make Life Easier,” by Patty Hasselbring, we invited readers to share some of their own grant nightmares:

That big fat zero
I once applied for a large grant from a family foundation. Immediately after the foundation’s board meeting, one of the family members called me to say that our proposal had been approved and that the $1 million grant would be paid out in two installments. Since we were holding our annual event that same week, I asked whether, to spur additional giving, we could announce the award at the event. The answer was yes, and at the event, we announced that we had been awarded a $1 million grant.

On the following day, we received the first installment—a check for $50,000. Thinking that a zero was missing, I called the foundation office to verify the total gift amount and was told that the total amount of the grant was only $100,000.

As I hung up the phone, I wondered how I would tell my boss and our board that we were short $900,000.

Minutes later, the foundation official called me to correct herself—the grant was indeed for $1 million and a check for $450,000 was already in the mail.

—Caroline Woodward
Director of Development and PR, Bethlehem Haven

GRRRRRants.gov
My worst nightmare involved an electronic submission, through Grants.gov, in which each part of the narrative was to be sent as a separate attachment. By error, we sent one section twice and completely omitted another section, worth 20 points. Of the peer reviewers, only one realized what had been done. Since we did not discover our mistake until after the deadline, we were unable to correct it, and the proposal was not funded.

—Rebecca P. Harvard
Director, Office of Sponsored Programs, Choctaw Tavern

Ten years of red tape
As Special Projects Director for my hometown of Crawfordsville, Indiana, I was charged, in the mid-nineties, with seeking federal monies for alternative forms of transportation. The Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (which encompassed the largest transportation changes since President Eisenhower signed the Federal Highway Act) preserved rail routes for new uses, so our city and county jointly applied for funding to turn the old Peoria & Eastern Big-4 rail route into the new Sugar Creek Trail.

Over the next ten years, we were sued in challenges to the federal statute. This generated tons of publicity in newspapers and on television stations across the country—and we were awarded the grant! But the county eventually bowed out under pressure, leaving the city to take on the hotly contested project—a 4.5 mile trail that began at our new high school and wound through the suburbs near Wabash College to end at scenic Sugar Creek.

The red tape seemed endless, and I was right in the middle of it, as federal, state, and local laws were challenged, rewritten, and litigated. But finally, the trail was built. Volunteers planted flowers and donors provided benches and gazebos. Today it’s a community treasure, where people can exercise safely, watch birds, enjoy nature, and visit with their neighbors.

When I revisited Crawfordsville, earlier this month, a new extension to the Sugar Creek Trail had just been opened. And the trail looks great, thanks to volunteers, like Emmett Bowman, who maintain the plantings.

—Marla J. McDaniel
Grants Specialist, Jacksonville University

[Editor’s Note: Unfortunately we had our own nightmare earlier this year, when a server failure wiped out a small batch of emails from our readers. If you sent us a grant nightmare that doesn’t appear in this issue, please let us know.]

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