This article was written as a result of a phone call received from a person who was looking for a grant writer (more accurately referred to as a “grant proposal writer”) to help her get her new nonprofit off the ground. She was wondering if it was possible for some writer out there to write a grant proposal or two for her. When she got the money she would then pay that person for his or her time-in other words, she wanted to hire a writer on a commission basis, paying them only if and when they got her some funds. While that may sound like a plausible plan to some people, in the real world, it just is not a practical approach. People who propose these types of arrangements simply do not understand how the grant writing process works-actually, what they do not understand is how grants work, how they are approved, why they are approved (or turned down), and what happens after they are approved. Perhaps looking at a few “numbers” realities might shed some light that may hopefully help dispel some of the myths and misconceptions which continue to plague today’s nonprofit-affairs-misinformed population.
One way to illustrate just what is involved in the grant writing/grant application process is simply by looking at the numbers of one particular grant writer working for Good Willingness, Inc., a large make-believe nonprofit organization in the Atlanta, GA area of the US. This particular grant writer worked full time as a Development Director (although 90% of what she did revolved around grants, i.e., grant writing); she put in an average of 40 hours a week for a total of 50 weeks a year, or the equivalent of 2,000 hours. In that amount of time, she had 2 grant proposals approved. Based on these numbers alone, she had roughly spent 1000 hours per proposal. Naturally, this was not the actual case. She had, in fact, written about 100 proposals, meaning that she had spent roughly 20 hours per proposal, which is a good estimate of how long a proposal may take to write, although some proposals can take considerably longer and some may take much less. What it all comes down to is that, although she had written 100 proposals, only 2 had been approved.
Actually, when it comes to what proposals get approved and which do not, there is no way to guarantee results either way. In other words, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the whole process. Some people are under the impression that all one has to do is just fill out a proposal and, if one fills out the proposal correctly, the money will soon be on its way. This is far from the way it actually works. First of all, there are a number of specific criteria that most applicants have to meet (having nonprofit status, a good Board of Directors, connection with at least one well-established nonprofit, etc.); beyond that, it also comes down to how worthy of support the nonprofit and its programs are. Thus begins the competitiveness involved in the process. It is not just how deserving the organization is, how well-researched its programs are, and how needy its target population happens to be-rather, it comes down to how well all these things fare in comparison to the other applicants. Although this is an accurate assessment, it still does not paint the full picture.
Whether a grant proposal is approved may also depend on the quality of the relationship that has been established (by the nonprofit executives) with the foundation or government agency in charge of the grant. Does this make for an unfair, generally undocumented advantage? Of course it does, but this is only one of several things that affect grant proposals beyond whether the organization and its programs are best-suited or best-qualified. In some cases, there are politics involved. If politicians, local celebrities, community leaders and lobbyists, for example, get behind a nonprofit and go to bat for it (often behind closed doors), that may greatly change the scheme of things.
Simply put, some nonprofits are favoured when it comes to certain grants, even before any proposals start to come in. In fact, it may be good to point out that in most communities it is the big, well-established nonprofits that get much of the funds coming into most communities (which is why it is such a good idea to form relationships with them); part of the reason is because they have full-time grant writers on their staff, but that only partly explains their being favoured. This is yet another reason why grant writers, or the quality of their work, cannot always be blamed for why some grant proposals do not get approved. Even if the grant writer does a perfect job and the nonprofit meets all the criteria, the grant may still go to a competing nonprofit applicant-the one that had the special “inside connections.”
Getting back to that grant writer working for Good Willingness, it may interest some to know that one of the grant proposals that she got approved was for $5,000,000.00 and the other was for $7,000,000.00, for a total of $12,000,000.00. Obviously, this grant writer did her job rather well, but what people lose sight of is what led up to that vast amount of money. For one thing, she was tirelessly working a full-time job to achieve those numbers (which flies in the face of some people’s mistaken perception that grant writing can easily be done on the side, randomly spending just a few hours one can spare, after doing a “real job”); additionally, she had to write a whopping 100 proposals to get just the 2 successful ones approved. Is this typical? Well, it is not unheard of for people to have their first 3 grant proposals approved-in other words, one might spend a month or two just working on a few grant proposals, ultimately getting the funds that some writers may take a whole year to achieve. The bottom line, though, is that there are too many variables that come into the picture which neither the grant writer nor the nonprofit has any control over-consequently, is it fair to expect grant writers to work with no pay for a certain amount of time, with no guarantee of any kind of potential results?
For the record, many professional organizations (like the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Northwest Development Officers Association, the Cheney Foundation, and CFRE) which either license grant writers or work to uphold the highest standards for the fundraising industry, do not approve of any arrangements which expect grant writers to work on commission or for a percentage of money received through grants. This practice is simply considered to be unethical. Actually, for a number of reasons, it is not only unethical but potentially harmful both for nonprofits and for professional grant proposal writers (who, if they are reputable, generally do not work under any such arrangements). For one thing, many foundations and government agencies have specific rules that either prohibit or discourage any such arrangements.
Some people may think that they can work out a deal which they can then hide from the grant funding agency, but this is a risky venture, at best. One generally signs a contract with lots of interesting (but demanding) fine print every time a grant is approved. If it says that money received cannot be used for consultant or grant writer compensation, then that is exactly what they expect. As it turns out, all grants come with many strings attached-one very common “string” is that nonprofits provide detailed accounting records regarding how every single penny of that grant was used. It would be very difficult to “hide” or put under a secret category any amount in excess of $1000.00; it may also constitute fraud, since such reporting also has to be shared with government monitoring agencies.
While it is possible to hire freelance grant writers on a part-time basis, whether they are hired as independent “consultants” or as “employees,” one needs to be conscientious and fair about what is involved in the process. Grant writers deserve and need to be paid for their time, including the time they spend on proposals that never get approved. “Wait a minute,” one might say, “what then is the incentive for them to work hard to make sure that they do a great job on the grant proposals?” The same incentive that a doctor looking for the etiology of symptoms has: professional responsibility, the value of one’s reputation, and personal integrity. When a doctor performs several tests and a full examination after a patient comes in complaining of certain specific symptoms, should the doctor be paid for the tests performed and the time he took out of his schedule to meet with the patient, even if no actual disease was found? No one would question the doctor’s right to get paid in that instance, but many people dare to question whether a grant writer should get paid for time spent on unsuccessful grant writing.
For the record, writing a grant proposal takes a lot of time-it is a very time-consuming process, often involving many things that go beyond filling out forms or composing a written proposal. Finding a grant that matches the needs and criteria of a nonprofit, for example, can be very time-consuming; so is reading up on the funding criteria of foundations and government agencies, all of which provide thousands of pages of material they expect all applicants to read before anyone sends in an application. No two foundations or government agencies have exactly the same qualifying criteria; additionally, it is not just about researching the qualifying criteria. A good grant writer often spends time finding out about the funding history of the foundation or government agencies, the people who run, manage and support these funding agencies, the organizations that actually received grants, and the best ways to establish on-going relationships (if possible) with the people who process and evaluate grant proposals.
Whether it is checking out websites, reading printed materials put out by funding agencies, talking to grant managers or proposal evaluators, poring over very detailed and difficult to read grant qualifying criteria-all of these things take a great deal of time. Grant writers spend lots of time writing proposals and filling out forms, but they also spend a great deal of time researching, talking to people on the phone, writing or reading letters and emails (pertaining to different grants), reviewing similar grant proposals (in order to get a good idea on how to best frame the proposal), writing letters of inquiry or interest, meeting with nonprofit executives (to get an idea of what they want and by when), community leaders, and experts (sometimes using their written testimony as technical support in the proposal) in fields related to what the nonprofit specializes in, etc. As for the former, the process becomes even more complicated if one is seeking funds for which scientific research will be needed; this is usually the case if the nonprofit will itself carry out any scientific research or if its Mission focus involves a particular disease, the environment, a public health issue. If this is the case, it is helpful if the person writing the grant proposal has a science education background and is familiar with scientific funding practices. This is yet another reason why grant writers with the right qualifications can be so crucially important to the grant writing/qualifying process.
What it all comes down to is that looking at just some of the numbers involved in grant writing may not tell the whole picture. It is necessary to go beyond them, way beyond them. The best case scenario is nonprofits hiring a grant writer on a full-time basis, paying them a regular salary for their well-worth-it efforts. As a matter of fact, Development Directors (if they are competent at what they do) are one of the few people nonprofits can put on their payrolls whose involvement will generally pay for itself, and then some. In the case of Good Willingness, for example, the grant writer whose efforts have been the focus of this article, although she was only paid $65,000.00 a year, she brought in approximately $12,000,000.00 in one year for the nonprofit. Clearly, this was a good investment on the part of the nonprofit.
In looking at this picture, though, one needs to note that the $65 thousand that she received as compensation did not come from the $12 million that she acquired in grants. In general, it is best if nonprofits use money received through donations, fundraising events, membership fees, or “profit” made from sold products and services, to pay for any consultant’s services and maybe even for employee compensation, when possible. Some grants allow for administrative costs (which can include employee compensation), while others can only be used for program development and capacity building-one needs to be sure to follow the requirements of any approved grant, since failure to do so may result in not getting any future grants, having to give grant money back, or even in the filing of complaints or criminal charges against a nonprofit and its trustees and staff.
The thing to focus most attention on, though, is the fact that grant writers (often acting as Development Directors) can play a crucial role in helping nonprofits bring in the money that helps them stay afloat and, hopefully, thrive. It is not asking too much that such persons be compensated fairly-the majority of the time they prove to be well worth the investment made on them!
