Not-For-Profit: Getting Ready for Free Money

You say you need money to start doing your projects. Do you have a project plan or a business Plan? For more than 10 years now I have volunteered my time helping NFP organizations get their project moving and I still hear the same thing over and over again: "We can't start the project without funds!"

Of course I always ask the same question to that question: "Are you ready for this free money that will come along?"

Guess what? I haven't encountered an organization yet who categorically answered yes to this question. Absolutely none! At least not the ones I am helping (It's probably the reason I'm helping them). Every one of them wants the money but none is actually prepared to receive it if it drops on their lap on the same instant.

The question now is: "How do you prepare for or get ready for funding?"

Here are some aspects or areas of your organization you should look at.

Beneficiaries
NFP organizations must be able to recognize who benefits from what they do. It can be bit strange to some NFPs but some of the most professionally managed NFP organizations actually refer to their beneficiaries as "Clients". You may be in an organization wherein there are no direct beneficiaries. Ecological and environmental oriented NFPs for example have programs with goals not immediately discernible and with impacts going beyond the immediate generation.

Do you have a clear profile and criteria of who is and who will be your beneficiary? If someone walks up to you and ask for assistance, will you be able to say to this person if you can or cannot help him? Will you be able to explain to him why you are or are not helping him? How are you going to do that?

Will the public know who you are by the kind of beneficiaries you have? Does the public even understand what is a beneficiary in as far as your programs or projects are concerned?

Define your beneficiary according to their psychosocial profiles, socio-economic clusters, demographics, geography, age group, sex, civil status, education, profession, occupation, physical attributes (or absence of certain characteristics), religion, culture, medical condition, political subdivision, degree of certain conditions, and other combination of characteristics or attributes.

There will be a great temptation to help everyone and admittedly to the frustration of most volunteers, you can only do so much. Defining your beneficiary or client keeps time, resources, projects, programs and volunteers focus.

With a clear definition of you serve, you deliver your services to those you can help the most. Your organization will be providing nothing fancy but also nothing less than the best you can offer.

Goals and Programs
Define your goals clearly and create the most appropriate program to accomplish one or two of those goals. Design as many programs as the goals you have set out to accomplish.

The ideal ratio is to have one program for each goal. Typically however most organizations will have two or as many as three organizational goals per program. This is the reason why goals must be defined clearly. The more refined the definition of the goals the more focus the programs will be.

The unexpected benefits of good programs are better selection of what projects to undertake.

Strategy and Structure
In my organizational development and business planning workshops, I have always emphasized the essence of formulating strategy before structure. I still have to witness an organization doing this right the first time.

Try to imagine this: You are a new leader talking for the first time to your people in front of the Red Sea about a great journey. You describe your vision of a land rich with grapes and honey. The picture of wonders has amazed your people and they are all gearing up to pack and follow you anyway, anywhere.

After your inspirational speech everybody seem to be busy forming committees of every conceivable size and purpose. Suddenly, you get people weaving cloth for sails, some cutting trees for timber to build a boat, others are stocking water in large jars, and other carving oars.

As their leader, you now stop to ask: Why in the name of the Great God of my ancestors are they building a boat?

As a concerned leader, you step down from your esteemed throne to your people and ask: “Why are we building a boat?”

Your loyal follower answers:
"Your Greatness, you have talked about a land rich with grapes and honey in front of the Red Sea. We all thought that we are going to cross the sea to that land of wonders."

You answer your loyal follower:
"No idiot! We're going to Egypt in a caravan! The only reason we have the Red Sea is because we're in Sudan and there's no other sea around!"

As a leader you made three monumental mistakes. First, you created a vision without crystallizing it into a well-defined goal: Migrating to Egypt. Second, you forgot to outline your strategy. The general idea how to get there: Traveling by land in a caravan. Third, you did not define your structure well. You allowed your people to make assumptions as to how they will organize the trip to the land of wonders. They did what they thought was obvious enough for them--Organized committees to build a boat.

When I step in to help NFP organizations what I find is a structure made of committees: Ways and Means, Membership, Public Relations, etc. These kinds of structure do not tell you what the organization actually does. Most of the time members of these committees do not know what they are going to do and what the committee is for. You have to define your strategy and design your structure based on how you will comply with your defined strategy.

Internal Processes
Your internal processes are sets of activities or tasks that you do regularly and predictably to get jobs done. Most of the time because it is happening consistently and by the same people, we never come to think that if we lose people the organization have to start all over again to do even the most simple tasks.

NFP organizations must study their processes if it is logical and actually useful. You must document your internal processes and know why they exist. You document your internal processes through charts, procedures, and forms. Funding organizations will include your systems and processes in evaluating organization because it is a good indicator of capability to manage projects. An organization who is very experienced in managing projects tends to have very sound and transparent systems and procedures in place to manage and to protect resources. Typically, these organizations adapt best practices in finance and logistics and have very good audit procedures.

Organizational Resources
It is a given already that most NFP should have assets in tangible form like supplies, tools, equipment, and other assets to get their project s and programs done. Two resources today are always taken for granted in NFP: knowledge and alliances (partnership). More and more funding sources are learning the critical role of knowledge resource and partnerships in managing programs and successful completion of projects.

Knowledge resources in technology, communication, public relations, investment and fund management, project management, and Internet marketing are now being sought out in NFP organizations in almost the same quality and quantity as business enterprises. In a way, this poses a greater challenge for leaders in NFP organizations. Now they have to be more creative in recruiting and retaining workers and volunteers alike.

Partnerships or alliances are critical because it brings the capabilities of NFP organizations beyond existing resources. It provides enhanced image and prestige not to mention the network of knowledge resources that it immediately brings into the NFP organization. Funding organization also find NFP organizations with so many alliances more reliable and seemingly trustworthy. If you trust IBM, Asian Development Bank and the UNICEF, you certainly will trust the organization carrying the logos of these institutions on their letterheads.

Operational Plan
People or organization engaging and spending time on planning must be very serious in what they are doing. At least most funding organizations will see this to be so. Institutions that have evolved to be strong in their chosen fields know that planning will involved keeping stock of what you have, it means having internal processes that keep track of progress, it translates into knowing strengths and weaknesses, and eventually doing an assessment of what can be done in the context of existing realities.

Funding organizations will expect you to know what you are doing and where you are going. Your strategic, business or operational plan will at least give them a documented view of your direction and how you intend to get there. Take planning seriously and if you are not at it yet better start now.

Well-defined Projects
When you define your project, your most common basis will be your goal. Some may argue that it is the mission or the primary purpose of the organization. If you were in the United States, Canada or somewhere in the U.K., that will be most logical.

In the United States there's probably less than 1,000 foundations that have formed the landscape of altruistic, civic or social development work.

Define your project based on your clearly defined goal. When many competing projects fit or serve your goal, eliminate and choose by looking back at your vision or mission (if you have one). If you think your project is not consistent with your goal or mission, you can bet your funding organization will realize or see that too.

Don't ever underestimate the ability of funding organization to discern the intent or the doability of your project as you propose it. You can spend time doing proposals for many project but these guys do the one thing they do best which is separate the best proposal from an utterly bad one (or stupid ones). Funding organizations don't feel obligated to justify or take initiative to explain their action on your proposal.

The Project Teams
You don't expect funding organizations to believe in your business plan if you don't have a team who will manage your projects and deliver results. The best way to make an impression about your project team is to have a brief profile of each team member. A comprehensive resume from each of them should take care of this. The team is really as good as its individual team members and the team leader who keeps and manages them.

Individual team members coming from the general membership or corps of volunteers that have successfully done projects together are more impressive than teams put together from subcontractors.

Information Education and Communication
Organizations use to call this public relations or corporate communications but it does not define very well other things that NFPs do. Information, Education and Communication are really 3 distinct activities that NFPs do to get their message across to their stakeholders.

Information is the content or the message in your campaign or your project. This should include editorial style, images, forms, fonts, layout, etc.

Communication is the technology, media, channel or sets of activities that delivers the message.

Education is the strategies, projects, tasks or activities that creatively and effectively use information and communication for a desired outcome. The outcome can be a certain course of action, acquisition of knowledge or skill, change of attitude and perspective or a decision in favor or against a certain issue.

A Well-written Proposal For Funding
There are five (5) very important sets of paper you will need to know or get familiar with in preparing proposals for grants: inquiry letter, cover letter, table of contents, executive summary and project summary.

Inquiry letter is really a portion of your research or due diligence. In the point of view of the funding organization, it is a chance to screen out proposals that are unlikely from the more likely to be approved. Inquiry letters are good for testing project ideas.

Cover letter refers to the letter that accompanies the proposal. Some funding organizations do not require it but those who do have a very specific use of the cover letter especially a well-written one. The cover letter is your introduction to the funding organization.

The table of contents or sometimes referred to as ToC is a glimpse of the highlights of the proposal. Anything not found in the ToC is considered most likely insignificant to the proposal. The ToC is the road map of your proposal. It is important that you include in the ToC specific components in the proposal that the funding organizations have specified in their guideline. You must reflect in the ToC topics that funding organizations want to find.

Your executive summary must provide a very brief description of the project and the desired outcome. It must provide the funding organization pertinent contact information and must declare what you expect of the funding organization. Also indicate what you or others in your organization have already invested to support the project you are proposing.

The project summary is called or referred to by many names: project overview, project synopsis, or The Abstract. Funding organizations usually use the project summary for publicity opportunities. It is the tool that funding organizations use to find out at a glance if your project meet the minimum criteria of their funding program.

There are really many facets of your organization you should look at. The few aspects of the organization above are merely the most common that funding organizations or even prospective partners of your organization will look at to gauge the integrity, reliability and capability of your organization.