RstephensonJR's blog

In the worlds of nonprofit programs, management, fundraising and development, there are few topics more widely discussed and more generally misunderstood than the role of the board. In development, e.g., some nonprofits expect (demand?) that board members make a financial contribution to the organization. Others beg and plead with the board to do something, anything, to help raise money.

One of the inescapable truths about proposal writing and grants funding is the time it sometimes takes for a funder to make up its mind. Weeks, months – many months – can go by without a word. Funders work on a variety of timetables: some wait for a regular board meeting; some review proposals as they are submitted; some put requests through a series of screens and determinations, each one setting the stage for the next one.

Across the country, thousands of nonprofits have been hard at work for many years, delivering life-saving social and human services to millions of people. Your organization is one such. In addition to doing the work, your nonprofit has learned some things about the causes of the problems you’re trying to address. You’ve begun to reflect on the words of Desmond Tutu: “There comes a point where we need to stop just pulling people out of the river. We need to go upstream and find out why they are falling in.”

Hardly anybody remembers John Venn, a British mathematician from the late 1800s. But everybody has heard of Venn diagrams, maybe used them in charts to explain how one group of characteristics “overlaps” another, and to name and define the stuff in the place where the groups overlap. Circle A represents tall people, circle B represents athletes. When we overlap the circles we’ve got tall people who aren’t athletes, and athletes who aren’t tall—but in the overlap, we’ve got tall athletes.

Let’s say you’re an experienced development staffer, or a consultant, and you’ve been submitting grant proposals to support the organization’s mission. Let’s also say you’ve gotten good at it and have helped your organization win funding. But you’ve lately gotten very interested in a different field (arts, environment, housing, e.g.) and you think maybe you can take your skills to a nonprofit in that new field that will be glad to have you. Can you? Will they?

It’s not common, but sometimes a nonprofit comes to the end of a program grant with some money that is unspent. This might happen if the program didn’t start on time, or the nonprofit has raised money from other sources (e.g. individual contributions) and uses that money for part of the program, or things didn’t cost as much as you thought they would—unlikely but sure, it could happen.

You’ve done your research and submitted a very well-written, well-documented proposal for a grant. You’ve prepared a reasonable budget, attached all the required forms, asked for the right amount of money and submitted well before the deadline. In short, you’ve done exactly and fully what is necessary to win the grant. But you don’t.

How much impact should you promise in your proposal? Let’s say you’re addressing homelessness, or addiction, or any one of a number of stubborn social problems. You’re a $4 million-a-year agency in a major city. Should you be claiming to “solve the problem” with a few large grants? Probably not.

It’s that part of the proposal we almost always tend to shrug off. “Oh, yeah, we have to write up something to explain the budget, we’ll get to that after we do the important stuff.” Evidence suggests it might be worth much more than a shrug.

Nonprofits are created and chartered to pursue a specific mission. It’s how an organization earns its tax-exempt status and it’s the salient purpose that brings people together to do important work. When a nonprofit decides to edge out from the core of its mission and attempt new projects, it’s sometimes thought of negatively, as “mission creep.”