Five Steps to Demystifying and Impacting the Grant Decision Making Process - Part V: Follow the Rules

Throughout this series, I've shared some of what I've learned in my 25 years of grant writing, teaching and grant making about what motivates and informs the funding decisions of grant makers. I've demystifying four factors that have an impact on funding decisions and how you can position your grant application to align with these factors.

The final tip in this series is a really obvious one, but also seems to elude some grant writers. It's simple, but can have a huge impact on whether or not your grant even makes it past the Grant Manager. Here it is - just follow the rules.

Despite what it may feel like at time, grant makers do not create their guidelines just to frustrate grant writers. Most funders go through a thorough and thoughtful process when they create their guidelines in order to insure that they are reading only proposals that fit within their scope of giving.

The danger in not following the funder's guidelines is not just that your program won't get funded this time, but you risk developing a negative profile with that funder and undermine your chances of being funded in the future.

To help boost your chances of being funded, you should:

- Make sure you have qualified that funder as a good prospect. What this means is that you have read their materials and determined that they fund in your area, for your target population or community and the specific services you are providing. If you are on my email list, you've already received a good tutorial on how to do this. If you're not receiving my emails, you can get on my list here: www.yourfundraisinglab.com

- Make sure you have thoroughly read and understand the guidelines related to page or character length, font size, required attachments and information requested. Create a checklist or other tool to make sure you have followed each rule, provided all the attachments, and included all of the information.

- If you have any questions, and the foundation allows it, call or email the contact person and ask! You can't know what you don't know, but before you ask make sure the information isn't available.

- Above all, make it easy for the reader to digest your application. Understand that they are reviewing dozens and sometimes hundreds of proposals at the same time.

It's OK to decide that the investment of your time and energy on a outrageously demanding proposal isn't worth it. Every organization needs to conduct a cost/benefit analysis of staff time and develop some metrics around this, especially considering the dollar amount of the potential grant and your projected chances of being funded.

If you have questions for me, please let me know! I hope this series has been helpful to you as you seek out grant funding.

Please continue to follow me here on LinkedIn or on Facebook for more actionable fundraising and grant writing information. Kate.