By Felena Hanson
Valerie Grant has worked with nonprofit organizations and for-profit organizations to help obtain grant funding since 1998. Her company, Grant Consulting Services, assists organizations through project development, comprehensive funding searches, expert grant management, and professional grant proposal writing services. Valerie is also a published author and an accomplished freelance writer.
Read on to learn more about her career path and how the grants process works.
What led you to become a grant writer?
I became a grant writer quite by accident. I was working at a nonprofit organization when I lived in Virginia and, like many nonprofit organizations, we wear multiple hats in order to meet the needs of the people we serve. I was the volunteer and transportation coordinator as well as a database administrator. A colleague was also doing multiple jobs and did not have time to work on a small grant application. I wanted to help the team and had an interest in learning more about grants. I worked on the application, submitted it, and it was awarded.
It was a small grant of about $1,200, but it meant a lot to me that I was able to help secure those funds. I started helping more with other grant applications. I found that I really enjoy the grant development process, and found it to be very rewarding, especially because we started to be awarded more and more critical funding for the organization.
Fast-forward 20 years and hundreds of grant applications where I have a full grant service company. My team is able to help organizations across the globe conduct a grant assessment to determine if they are ready to try to obtain grants. If not, we can help them to become grant-ready so that they can show that there’s a need in the community that they’re meeting. They can prove that they are doing the same thing internally that they’re doing externally. So grant readiness, especially for newer organizations, is important.
Our next service is to identify potential funders through a funding search. Next, we write the grant proposal tailored to the potential funder’s specific guidelines. When the grant is awarded, we assist with the grant management and follow-up reporting. Grant compliance and reporting are essential to continue to build relationships with funders so that organizations and funders can continue their good work together in the community.
What are primary sources of funding?
The majority of fundraising dollars for nonprofits actually comes from individual donors and not grants. Grants being a primary source of revenue is one of the misconceptions that we try to help organizations to understand.
In other words, don’t expect grant funds to be more than about 20% of the budget; the statistics show that about 80% of funding comes from individual donors. Fees for services are also a good way to raise money for nonprofit organizations.
What are the different types of grants?
In general, there are three different types of grant funds: there’s government funding (federal, state, and regional), corporate funding, and foundation funding. There are no fees associated with submitting a grant application. If an organization is charging an application fee, it is a contest—not a grant application. There are very few grants for for-profit organizations or individuals. Grants for businesses are primarily for R&D and green initiatives. Grant for individuals are restricted to higher education.