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Here’s a story from the early days of The Grantsmanship Center—a valuable lesson learned in 1972, still relevant today. Norton Kiritz, founder of The Grantsmanship Center, shared this experience with his classes. Hope you enjoy this brief tale from a class transcript.

Several times each year, people ask The Grantsmanship Center how to evaluate the performance of grant development professionals. Here's what we tell them:

One of our alumni recently asked about submitting a grant proposal to a specific funder. She wanted to know what percentage of the organization’s annual budget she should request in her proposal for general operating funds. And if the organization decided to seek program funds instead, she wondered what percentage of the program budget she should request. Here's what I told her:

When it comes to statutes and regulations, the definition of terms really does matter. The definitional content of a term can have a huge impact on what you can or cannot do in a given situation.

Approximately 360 individuals and organizations commented on the proposed Circular that was adopted as final on December 26, 2013 in the Federal Register (pages 78589 to 78691). The question is who benefits from the new rules and why does the Super Circular matter?

The release of the super circular by the U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the December 26, 2013, issue of the Federal Register has ushered in the largest rewrite of pre- and post-award grant policy since the origin of the circular management system in the early 1970s. In this second of eight briefings on the new super circular, The Grantsmanship Center turns its attention to the big picture of federal grant reform. With a regulatory guidance document of this length, it’s easy to get so lost in the many particular items of change as to lose sight of the way grants, as we have known them to be especially during the last 40-plus years, will change overall.

The train en route to federal grant reform has reached the last stop on a 24-month journey from concept, through proposed reforms, to the final guidance. The new provisions—just over 100 pages—became official on December 26, 2013, with their publication in the Federal Register (pp. 78590-78691).

The energetic and imaginative changemakers who staff nonprofits are full of great ideas. They’re constantly coming up with ways to make things better and looking for grants to support their vision.

Since reading a 2010 paper by Howard Husock published by the Philanthropy Roundtable, I’ve had this question on my mind. Ruth McCambridge of the Nonprofit Quarterly raised it again not too long ago in a LinkedIn group (Readers of the Nonprofit Quarterly), and I was compelled to peck out a quick reply on my iPhone while waiting for a 6 am flight home from McAllen, TX, where I’d been teaching (yes, there were typos).

In the field of fund development, grants aren’t all that well respected. Once, after I was well known for bringing in millions of grant dollars, a local fund development director recognized me as “the woman who raises all the junk money.” Junk money? Fund development professionals focus on individual giving because it’s the largest piece of the philanthropic pie. Individual giving represented about 73% of all giving in 2011, and 81% if you throw in bequests–the dollars total about $242.20 billion. Fund development professionals also focus here because the dollars are generally flexible, renewable, and growable. Individual giving done right can be the beanstalk to the golden eggs that just keep coming. I get that.