Keri Silk, MS, DTM
Having trouble finding the corporations and others who will want to give money to your cause? This is not uncommon. Most nonprofits find looking for grants to be overwhelming and time consuming. In my Where’s the Money Class and Money for….. books I offer a wide variety of tips to make not only the search easier but applying less painful. Here are a few of those tips.
If you are not connected to the data bases and alerts that I am try a web search. Use key words for your project. An example is: Money for children’s clothing drives. Search engines can do a lot of the work for you. Be sure to check the update date on the page you click on. Sometimes a browser can take you to an old long cached page. It would be sad to get excited about an opportunity only to find that it no longer existed.
Go to the federal governments grant page. You can do a key word search there as well. The United States Government has made finding grants easy by creating www.grants.gov. This is a marvelous time saver. Though occasionally grant announcements are not listed, but as you learn you will discover all the ways to be assured that you receive the ones that are in line with your needs. Keep an eye on this blog. I will frequently let my readers know about changes to www.grants.gov.
Once you have worked with foundations or the government, you will discover that Requests for Proposals (RFP) are sent directly to you. You will also find that getting media coverage for your program will bring contributions and RFP’s. Several foundations prefer that they find you. They will not consider applications or requests. Next time I will write about ways around this.