I’ve had an opportunity over the last few months to gain some insight into fundraising, mostly from the side of non-profit organizations approaching donors. This is not really a glamorous or high profile area of the work, but as the main activities of non-profit organizations by their nature tend not to be, well, profitable, finding and securing sources of funding plays an important role in the running of those organization.

This is a huge topic, and the realities will certainly vary by country and by the type of organization. A few things I found surprising in the area of seeking grants:

• Finding appropriate donors is no small task. You first of all need to know where to look; if you wait for them to come to you, you may wait awhile. Many foundations large and corporations which make grants have quite specific “priorities” as to what they will fund.
• Many donors only fund specific projects and don’t want to give “general support”: they want a plan explaining in detail the problem addressed, the organization’s program, how results will be measured and how the program can continue without funding. In practice, this can mean that an organization may need to develop and submit plans for projects with the specific requirements of each particular donor in mind, with the chance that, in a month’s time or more, they may find that the donor will select one of the other many organizations applying and they are back to square one.
• Many corporate donors want to fund projects only in communities where their company has offices. Other donors specify that they want to fund organizations which incorporate volunteers – maybe volunteers from their own local offices. The IRC points out on its volunteer page that each volunteer hour is assigned a monetary “value” and the organization receives federal funding tied to the number of volunteer hours. This means, to me, that there are all sorts of ways direct and indirect which utilizing volunteers can be to the benefit of an organization.

I certainly don’t mean to just rail on donors. The Ford Foundation, for example, receives 40,000 applications for grants per year. They make 2,500.

Everyone in the world wants money from the Ford Foundation; some guidelines and priorities are simply a practical necessity, and better that they tell people in advance than just choose happy-sounding projects arbitrarily. But from an organization’s perspective, especially a small one’s, this means securing funds is a large task, and often requires a person both knowledgeable in grant-writing and also very well-versed in the details of the organizations work and the field in general.

Again, this is based on my own observations, which may not always be accurate or their application may vary by context…but much of this definitely was news to me. I suppose my main point is that getting funding is very complicated, and just because an organization does good work, or work that needs to be done, does not mean it will get funding.