It is not uncommon for human services organizations to rely heavily on public funds – grants and contracts from local, state, or federal agencies. In fact, many would argue that this is the way it should be, that it is the responsibility of the government to fund housing efforts, health services, maternal healthcare, early childhood programs, arrest diversion, mental and behavioral health initiatives, and other programs that address the needs of vulnerable members of society.
So what does this mean for fundraising from private foundations in the field of human services?
Diversified revenues are crucial for just about any organization, creating sustainability and resilience when a funding source runs dry. While human services organizations may have a substantial public funding portfolio, and many government grants require a private funding match, this does not mean that other sources of revenue – including earned income and philanthropic funds – should take a back seat in your funding strategy. In fact, I encourage you to think differently about philanthropy and its role in supporting human services providers.
Imagine you’re on the leadership team of a service provider that implements a highly effective program for returning citizens; clients successfully maintain housing and jobs, and avoid further justice-system involvement. A contract with the state Department of Justice makes up the majority of the program budget, with the balance coming from a Master Leasing initiative and one wealthy individual donor who gives annually. For the most part, the program is meeting the needs of the population it currently reaches, but there is zero capacity for expansion, innovation, or outreach.
The Board and leadership team is concerned with the long-term sustainability for the program, and next steps involve developing a strategy to diversify revenues for the organization. A discussion ensues around pursuing foundation grants as a key tactic for diversification. The leadership team considers which aspects of the program may be well-suited to private grant opportunities. Should you seek grant opportunities for direct program expenses like rent and food assistance? Or are foundations more likely to support a new outreach component focused on engaging those who are incarcerated before their release? Perhaps you should seek General Operating Support?
If invited to that debate, I would argue that public funds can and should be used for direct programmatic expenses, 
whereas there may be a unique role for private foundations to provide the funding needed to build capacity, test new ideas, and establish the evidence for what works.
My advice to the leadership and development teams at human services organizations: Do not primarily think of private foundation grants and other philanthropic contributions as a budget gap-filler. Consider where public funds can and should be used, and where private philanthropy can have a unique impact.
For example, social services organizations might focus philanthropic asks on:
- Well thought-out new initiatives for which you need to establish proof of concept before advocating for public investment;
- Support for concrete diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives;
- Organizational capacity building (investments in a strategic plan, executive coach, or development strategist, for example);
- Initiatives that are crucial to your clients’ wellbeing where public funders limit their support (such as access to abortion services, gender-affirming care, or harm-reduction initiatives); and
- General Operating Support!
Above all, the grant request most likely to be funded is the one that is aligned with the foundation’s own priorities, adheres to its proposal guidelines, and for which you have the encouragement of foundation program officers, Board members, or other decision makers to apply.
Is your organization ready to establish (or grow) a private grants program? The team at Elevate can help! Reach out to us at hello@elevatedeffect.com to learn more about our work with nonprofits throughout the U.S. to build smart and strategic grants programs.
A version of this article was originally published in the Summer 2023 edition of The Provider Newspaper, the flagship publication of the Providers’ Council.
A few months ago, we published a Q&A with April Walker of Philanthropy for the People, in which April provided her perspective on centering equity and inclusion in nonprofits, and the limitations of institutional philanthropy in the pursuit of equity. As promised, we are back with more ideas and strategies from April for our readers!
Centering equity and inclusion in any manner of organization is a long-term effort that requires financial resources and buy-in from both staff and leadership. Unfortunately, equity has become a co-opted term, and the work so jargonized, that it is often difficult to tell what efforts are substantive and which are performative.
For this reason, we bring you four practical tips for meaningfully centering equity in your nonprofit. We hope that these tips help you in navigating the complex yet essential process of resetting your organization’s culture with a focus on equity.
Tip 1: Embrace Discomfort. April says: “You can’t gold star or checklist your way through [equity work]. You’re looking to exist in a very messy, uncomfortable space where you have to get comfortable not having the right answers and saying the wrong thing.”
Centering equity in your organization is not linear work. You will need to get used to engaging in uncomfortable conversations, grappling with hard truths about where your organization is falling short, and examining your biases, both explicit and implicit.
As Dr. Ella Washington, an organizational psychologist, explains, this work is about “making cultural changes, finding new ways to influence people, and making difficult decisions,” which requires an “intentional, nuanced approach.” It is impossible to change a culture, with all its systems, values, and traditions overnight, so be prepared to roll up your sleeves and embrace the uncertainty and challenge!
Tip 2: Pay Employees a Living Wage. April says: “I urge people to ask, ‘What does our organizational budget look like with everybody at this organization earning a living wage? What does our budget look like with everybody at this organization having quality healthcare benefits? What does our budget look like with everybody having access to professional development?’”
A nonprofit’s most valuable resource is its staff—without their day-to-day efforts, it would be impossible to achieve any funded outputs or outcomes. Yet, workers in the nonprofit sector remain vastly undercompensated, and many of them identify as members of the most marginalized communities. Boards and funders have also enabled this disparity by focusing on the bottom-line of financials and failing to treat the people who do the work as part of the work itself. But this need not be the case! What if funders played a bigger role in helping nonprofits to better invest in the talent that drives them?
Some funders are starting to wake up to the implications of supporting nonprofits that undercompensate their staff. Dr. Adriane Johnson-Williams, a program officer at the Pyramid Peak Foundation, noted an inconsistency inherent in this approach to philanthropy:
I took it upon myself to tell agency heads I could not in good conscience support a budget that didn’t pay people appropriately, and I backed that up with funding recommendations to support those budgets . . . We would need far less philanthropy in Memphis if we had higher wages. In deciding which programs to fund, if I had taken their board-approved budgets as presented, I would reinforce an expectation that people working in the nonprofit sector deserve less. I would have co-signed the myth that work in the nonprofit sector feeds the soul, so it doesn’t have to feed or clothe or house the body.”
Likewise, nonprofit governance can play an important role in changing compensation practices. The Center for Progressive Reform is an example of a nonprofit that committed to a multi-step process to reach the goal of paying its staff more than a living wage. To do so certainly took advance planning and didn’t happen overnight. First they worked with their board to establish a contingency fund to augment salaries to mitigate inflation; they also upgraded benefits packages, and partnered with Living Wage for US to conduct an individual assessment and achieve certification.
Beyond pay, it is also imperative to provide equitable opportunities for professional development, as well as more intangible measures such as mentorship and networking for staff.
Tip 3: Hold Leadership and Governance Accountable. April says: “Equity and inclusion also need to be baked into everyone’s performance evaluation, including the executive director’s and board members.”
We hold organizational leaders accountable for other job performance measures, so why should helping to shift workplace culture to advance equity be treated any differently? While we want to be careful not to equate progress with overly-simplified metrics, there are ways to thoughtfully gauge and measure progress over time. Doing so also reinforces the message that everyone at the organization is tasked with this work (see more on this point below).
Creating a culture of accountability in leadership and governance is key to sustaining momentum for long-range, deep-seated work. In the absence of such a culture, “any effort to prevent racial harm or provide proper redress when it occurs will fall short . . . and deepen distrust and disconnection among staff”; it can also impact employee retention and team performance.
Tip 4: Avoid Tokenization. April says: “Everyone at the organization should be doing equity work so that they can figure out what being an active ally actually looks like.”
There are a number of reasons why an organization should ensure that everyone shares in the work of centering equity. First, this work involves transforming workplace culture—if large segments of your organization aren’t engaged, how can a true shift take place?
Additionally, those who experience the most inequity should not disproportionately bear the brunt of these endeavors, both for practical and fairness reasons. Often, the voices of those who are most marginalized are numerically underrepresented in the organization. It is also necessary for those who enjoy the most advantages to learn to leverage their influence to support their colleagues in effecting change. This allyship can take different forms – it does not always look like being front and center.
Finally, you might want to consider a team-based approach to equity work that convenes communities of practice for staff and board members from different organizations to engage in learning sessions, peer sharing, relationship building and coaching. Check out ProInsipre for more tips on this type of team-based model for building equity, as well as other helpful resources and training opportunities.
If your organization has embarked on an equity journey, we’d love to hear what you have learned through this important and challenging work!
Interested in learning more from organizations who have successfully implemented these tips? Stay tuned to this blog for further discussion in our Elevate Q&A series with nonprofits and funders, or join our email list to be the first to know when new content is published.
Just the grants, please!
Picture It: Grant Writing Nightmares!
Nightmare 1: Imagine, you are the Director of a nonprofit’s small but mighty Development Team. Everything is going swimmingly…until the day your indispensable grant writer sheepishly asks to schedule some catch-up time on your calendar. It turns out they have secured an exciting new career opportunity! You smile winsomely and wish them well, but inside, you just died a little bit. You keep thinking about that overflowing grants calendar and the extra work that is going to fall to you or your other colleagues while things get sorted.
Hiring and training a replacement grant writer is a process. It took you 4 months to find the last one, who stayed with the organization for just over one year. During the last grant writer search, you missed deadlines for important grant reports and renewals. And one long-time funder became irritated with the lack of coordination and pulled their support… Your mind is spinning with all of the worst-case scenarios that simply cannot happen again.
Nightmare 2: Now imagine you are the Development Director for a nonprofit entering into an exciting transitional period. Program staff is in tune with emergent needs of the community and developing exciting and impactful new programs that are resulting in tons of new interest in the organization. The proverbial phone is ringing off the hook with new funders and partners who want to support the organization’s work. The Executive Director and the Board are looking to the Development team to increase revenues in line with program growth. Up until now, you’ve been keeping all those fundraising balls in the air — managing major donors, overseeing the grants calendar, prospecting new funding leads, and planning successful events. But now, you’re starting to wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat!
You know that soon, something’s gotta give, whether it is long-term planning, maintaining corporate relationships, or wooing major donors.
QUIZ TIME!
What would you do if you were the Development Director in one of these nightmare scenarios?
A – Text a friend and plan a coffee date to vent about your to-do list.
B – Roll up your sleeves and get to work.
C – Call Elevate!
D – Both A and C
Reclaim Your Time: Elevate’s Ongoing Writing Retainer Service To the Rescue
The correct answer is D, which also stands for “Don’t despair!” That’s because Elevate has got you covered with our Ongoing Writing Retainer Service (OWR)!
Our signature service at Elevate is Comprehensive Grant Writing Services, which offers you a suite of grant program strategy advice and planning, grant calendar and data tracking, project management, prospect research, cultivation support, and full-service grant writing.
While for many organizations this is the solution they need, we’ve learned in our ten years of work with nonprofit clients that, from time to time, organizations simply need a boost in grant writing capacity. In response, we launched a streamlined retainer package in 2022 to help nonprofits through capacity challenges such as the ones described above. We call this service an Ongoing Writing Retainer (OWR).
The OWR matches an organization with a professional grant writer that works to focus exclusively on drafting, editing, and submitting written deliverables – grants, LOIs, and reports – thereby freeing up your internal team’s capacity for other important tasks.
The OWR might be the right Elevate service for you if you already:
- Develop and plan your own annual fundraising goals and strategy;
- Have a planned grants calendar and successfully track all funder deadlines and cultivation history internally;
- Research new funding opportunities, draft funder outreach materials, and track progress toward cultivation targets internally.
The right support at the right time: Elevate and Cavalry Women’s Services
Cavalry Women’s Services, a Washington, DC-based nonprofit that ensures women have access to the proper trauma-informed healthcare and educational support they need to take positive steps toward independence, engaged Elevate for an Ongoing Writing Retainer in early 2023.
Calvary came to Elevate with a solid grants program, at a time when they were planning ahead for their Director of Institutional Advancement to step away from work for a period of leave and a temporary need for capacity to their internal grant writer planned to be away for personal leave. With a strong grants program and a clear calendar of opportunities in place, they sought Elevate’s support to write and submit their grants.
We paired Calvary with one of our expert grant writers who quickly acquainted themselves with the organization and its programming. Calvary assigned up to four deliverables per month to their Elevate grant writer, including proposals and grant reports.
The Elevate writer met with our point of contact at Calvary briefly on a biweekly or as-needed basis to confirm details and deadlines, receive assignments, and discuss what information was needed to prepare the grants. Elevate handled each step of the drafting process—from planning, drafting, editing, attachment gathering, through to submission. Meanwhile, the team at Calvary was free to focus on other development responsibilities while knowing that their grants submissions could rest in Elevate’s capable hands.
When asked about her experience working with Elevate on an Ongoing Writing Retainer, Heather Laing, Chief Development Officer and our main Point of Contact at Calvary, shared:
“When we had a temporary vacancy on our team, Elevate’s Ongoing Writer Retainer service met our grant writing capacity needs. Elevate was invested in our success in a genuine way, and it was a gift to have a fresh perspective on our grant language.”
Interested in what an Ongoing Writing Retainer or one of Elevate’s other services can do for you? Get in touch so that we can answer your questions, and you can spend more time where your energy is needed most, whether that’s building relationships with your funding partners, implementing your programs, or enjoying more coffee dates with your BFF.
I had the opportunity to sit down with one of those partners, April Walker, founder of Philanthropy for the People for an Elevate Q&A, the first in a series of blogs where we “pass the mic” to another member of our extended community to gain their personal perspective on issues relevant to the philanthropic sector and nonprofits. These conversations are exciting to Elevate as they lift up the opinions and expertise of our partners — which sometimes differs from the perspectives of Elevate’s leadership or readers. We believe that rich dialogue and difference of viewpoints makes this work more meaningful.
In my conversation with April, the first of our Elevate Q&A sessions, she shared her perspective and advice for organizations seeking to center equity and inclusion in their work. She also offered her thoughts on the limitations and challenges inherent in institutional philanthropy and fundraising – plus some advice for grant professionals and nonprofits. Here, I share some of the highlights of our discussion.
Institutional Philanthropy as an Imperfect Solution
Every day, nonprofits navigate the uncomfortable realities of power dynamics and disparities inherent in grantmaking. I asked some questions that explore these tension points and how it is possible to embrace an alternative value system while attempting to meet an organization’s budgetary needs.
Johnisha Levi: Institutional philanthropy is an imperfect solution to societal need, in part because it is the product of inequitable wealth transfers. Given this reality, what do we do to challenge and disrupt this system while society has yet to undertake the necessary systemic and structural reform to replace this entrenched system?
April Walker: When I started in the field, folks were not quite as bold as they are now. Now they are starting to say, “Hey, you over there with all that wealth that you amassed in a problematic way, or that you inherited, we see a problem with that. And not only do we see a problem with that, we’re challenging that because we don’t trust exactly where the money came from, or we see that you’re limiting how you actually show up inside of the values you purport to have. We see that you’re asking us questions that you yourself don’t live by.”
So with the big players in the philanthropic space, it is getting harder and harder to celebrate the ways in which those dollars are exchanged. They’re not actually losing much, and the demands on celebrating and recognizing them are creating an additional strain for those of us who see the truth of what’s happening. It’s not necessarily an indictment of individual wealthy people or of all foundations of all sizes. but it is a request and growing demand for transparency. I think one of the biggest things that we can do is speak truth to power and not just placate, laud, and celebrate people for having huge amounts of resources at their behest—and with that act of calling out comes incredible amounts of power.
JL: When do you think the tide started to change in terms of calling out problems inherent in Philanthropy?
AW: I think within the past five years things have shifted. We’ve seen this as funders invite more conversations about diversity, equity, and inclusion by asking related questions of grantees. As a grant writer or grant professional, if you’re continually having to answer questions about how diverse or not a nonprofit’s board is, or how inclusive or not a program is from a funding entity that is none of those things, it is going to continue to expose these inequities.
JL: What is giving as its most ideal? What other models of giving do you recommend we look to for inspiration in our work and in our own lives as givers?
AW: In proportion to what we have as a community and in proportion to what we have been able to amass on a large scale in terms of wealth, Black people are deeply generous. Sometimes it shows up financially, but there is also a generosity of time, of connection, of resources. Members of my family would likely never call themselves philanthropists, but have they put money into a pot to ensure a certain relative can achieve XY and Z dream? Absolutely. Is that a giving circle by the sector’s terms? Absolutely.
I trust in the power of our ability to show up because you can pretend to care, but you can’t pretend to show up, whether that means showing up with a plate of food or showing up with $20 or just to lend a hand, and not even needing a thank you. All of that to me counts as generosity where I come from, and there’s a different type of connection in that than when money is at the center and you have to perform a certain way in order to even be in relationship.
Advice for Grant Professionals and Nonprofit Clients
JL: In a recent Cocktails, Conversations & Lessons in Philanthropy episode, you discussed funders’ need for public recognition and celebration and how that is frequently integrated into proposals. How do you recommend that grantees (and the fundraising consultants who work with them) respond to the common (and frankly uncomfortable) question of “How will you publicize our donation?”
AW: There are two applicable buckets. The first bucket is name recognition, or the literal benefits the funder receives for donating—what I call the five star treatment. The other bucket is a funder taking credit for stuff that they didn’t really do—meaning that funding an initiative through-and-through looks very different from making a non-profit apply every year. The former takes a long-term, sustained investment where people do not have to question if this money is going to run out. I wish quite frankly someone would do a case study of how much funders, especially corporate foundations or businesses in general, spend on ensuring that their investments look a certain way versus actually ensuring that their dollars are impactful.
Some grantees may decide that this recognition costs too much emotionally or mentally; other times, this may extend to telling the foundation this truth. It really comes down to being clear on how much risk your organization can assume. I’m also a huge advocate of telling other funders about their peers. I think at the end of the day, when you have a relationship with a funder who is deeply understanding—who does show up inside of their application in a way that’s not making you and your vision feel small—that it’s an opportunity to say, “Hey, I really appreciate your process for all of these reasons, and here’s how we also are engaging with other folks differently.”
JL: Funders are fixated on the idea of metrics and measurements, often to the detriment of smaller, less resourced organizations that are doing great work that is not necessarily measurable in the way that they demand. How do we evolve from this need to quantify? What have you seen other funders doing as an alternative? And how do we move away from the status quo?
AW: There are funders that will ask for anecdotes in lieu of metrics or measurements, including asking for successes and challenges encountered. I quite prefer those questions. My personal and ever-growing feeling is that funders who want metrics should collect them themselves. Nonprofits need not be experts in all things. You want someone that’s really skilled in data analysis and measurement, if you as a funder have a specific focus on funding poverty in this local community, is it not incumbent upon you to collect the data that you need to prove that you are funding it in the right way? I don’t know many nonprofits that can pay a data expert what they’re worth.
Nonprofits are interested in the data too—we want to know that we are doing the “thing”—but we are also interested in the reality of the thing and data doesn’t give us all of that narrative. The question is really one for funders to start asking themselves. Given you as the funder have set your own focus areas and funding priorities, how do you plan to go about getting that information from nonprofits that you can see are under-resourced? And even what funders do get from nonprofits is not always the most accurate, most comprehensive, complete story.
I’m also not sure what all these reports are telling people. As someone that used to be a program officer and received grant reports, even I had the question of, “What do we do now?” And if an organization didn’t meet the metrics, are we using that reality that they fell short of the metrics to determine whether or not we fund them again, rather than to determine how we can help improve the situation?
JL: Sometimes as individuals and organizations, we feel powerless to effect change when the problems are so massive. What are some steps or some work that you recommend we can still do to make a difference in our day-to-day work?
AW: Giving into hopelessness and giving up is not a path that we can choose. You have days that are challenging and demoralizing, but you can look up any number of leaders in the sector that remind us to be hopeful. Equal Justice Initiative’s Bryan Stevenson is a great example. And we do have wins along the way!
I’m also finding the people that I can link arms with. I’m not going to spend a huge amount of time on the people that are committed to moving slowly or delaying. I think your day-to-day has to find a balance between, “I have this capacity to fight, but when I feel like I’m at my wits end, I can turn back to the community that I know is bolstering me and take some strength from them.”
I also use my own philanthropy for this purpose. I support the organizations that I believe in and I know are doing good work and that I can trust, and that’s where I designate as much support as I can. I can also show up as a volunteer, I can show up as a board member, or I can just lend time to make an introduction. All of those things still matter inside of a system that is working to save itself, inside of whiteness as a construct that only knows how to defend itself. I have no qualms and no Illusions about how powerful the systems are, but I also won’t doubt my capacity for change and my capacity for impact.
Interested in learning more about alternative models of fundraising that are more community-centered? Check out the 10 principles of Community-Centric Funding developed by fundraisers of color that are grounded in racial and economic justice.
Keep your eye on this space for more ideas and strategies from April in the coming months as well as other Elevate Q&As.
Elevate is excited to share two new partnerships that we have started in 2023 to support our Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Justice (IDEA+J) efforts.
Read more below to learn about our partners, our plans, and our journey.
April Walker, Philanthropy for the People
In February, we kicked off a year-long partnership with Philanthropy for the People, and its founder April Walker. April’s expertise centers specifically on racial equity and justice in fundraising and grantmaking,
April is facilitating conversations and workshops for Elevate staff about wealth, philanthropy, and fundraising justice throughout 2023. Our aim for this portion of our work is to build a shared vocabulary and understanding among Elevate staff about these topics so that we can be better partners to our clients and drive meaningful change in the nonprofit sector.
April’s unique focus on equity in philanthropy is particularly important to Elevate, given the nature of our work to support nonprofit fundraising in an inherently inequitable philanthropic sector. This context has major consequences for our nonprofit partners, and Elevate is committed to hastening change in the sector.
Interested in hearing more about April’s expertise and her advice on what it will take to transform the philanthropic sector? Look for our next blog installment!
Dominique Hollins, WĒ360: 360° of Workplace Equity
We have likewise engaged Dominique Hollins, Founder and Connector-in-Chief of WĒ360, to conduct a company-wide equity audit. Our work with Dominique is internally-focused and designed as the primary information-gathering step in developing Elevate’s long-term IDEA+J strategy.
Dominique will conduct a company-wide IDEA+J assessment that highlights strengths and areas of development for sustainable IDEA+J implementation in the years to come. Her assessment will include surveys of Elevate staff and a review of relevant internal policies and procedures. This information will inform the design of our long-term IDEA+J strategy. We intend to repeat this assessment every two to three years to measure and evaluate progress.
Dominique is a sought-after consultant, coach and speaker who has been quoted in the Washington Post and recognized by Fortune for her work. She develops customized strategies that bridge the gap between corporate responsibility and organizational accountability to enable equitable and inclusive business practices.
Why Two Partners?
Elevate strives to be an inclusive and equitable workplace where all members of staff are accepted and recognized for their contributions. It is therefore critical that any work we do to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion is inclusive of our company operations and practices.
At the same time, Elevate operates within the larger context of the nonprofit and philanthropic sectors, as we support our clients in their pursuit of funding from institutional donors. Our clients are in part dependent on the largesse of donors, and we are cognizant that philanthropy itself is inherently imperfect. Philanthropy writ large is a product of the income inequality and disparity rooted in a capitalist system – a system in which much of this country’s wealth is and always has been generated by Black, Brown, and immigrant laborers.
So, when tasked with identifying the right partners to support Elevate’s journey, the IDEA+J working group identified the need for two partners with distinct expertise who could support our work with both an internal and an external focus. While it took some time to lay the foundation for these two partnerships, we are optimistic that our collaborations with April and Dominique will facilitate the holistic and multidimensional approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion that we’ve been looking for.
Laying the Groundwork
At Elevate, we believe that to build a workplace that is inclusive and equitable requires a values alignment, an invested leadership team, financial resources, and staff capacity for a sustained, long-term commitment, as the work is quite simply never finished if it is substantive rather than performative.
Individual Elevate staff members have consistently expressed enthusiasm and demand for the company to invest more in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion work. While wanting very much to heed this call to action, founder, President and CEO Alayna Buckner, wanted to enter into this undertaking responsibly with sufficient internal assets in place. Equally important to Alayna was for Elevate to do its due diligence to avoid engaging in DEI that was superficial, counterproductive, or harmful. This was especially true in light of the proliferation of ill-conceived DEI pledges and initiatives in the wake of the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. We also did not want a disproportionate amount of emotional labor to fall on staff belonging to marginalized communities, as often happens when initiatives are entirely staff-directed. Finally, we wanted to look both inward at ourselves and our organization and outward to our sector to better understand how intrinsic injustice and power imbalances are to the core of fundraising.
Accordingly, we made certain we had the financial resources that would allow Elevate to invest in the necessary expertise to guide this journey. We hired Vice President of Personnel, Letese Lamb, to act as the executive sponsor of our DEI initiative. We also reduced staff workloads so that they would have the space to participate in IDEA+J working groups and committees. Then, we undertook a thoughtful year-long partner selection process as an IDEA+J Committee.
Now that we are here, we know that this transformative work will challenge us in ways we may not expect. All the same, we are eager to begin this collective learning journey and to share our progress with you!
Check out a few of our previous blogs for more on how philanthropy is changing and why it is critical that grant writers use empowering language in their funding requests. We also offer a webinar on Power Dynamics in Grant Writing as part of our Learning Collection on How to Prepare Expert Grant Applications. Join us on May 25, 2023 for a session that will explore the role of fundraising in creating equitable partnerships among communities, the social sector, and philanthropy.
You might have noticed that Elevate’s tagline is “Smart Grants for Powerful Social Change.”
Elevate works with over 100 inspiring nonprofit organizations that improve people’s lives and communities. This is the “powerful social change” in our tagline, while “Smart Grants” is in part a reference to one of the essential tools that we use to get better at the work we do every day for our clients: data. Understanding what data tells us about our clients’ grant program outcomes is key to our success. Tracking grant-related data is a unique hallmark of Elevate’s services, and one of the features that sets Elevate apart from other fundraising and grants consultants.
Every year, we review the data related to our work and examine trends and highlights. Our year-end infographic, Elevate 2022 by the Numbers, offers a data snapshot of the preceding 12 months. Our mighty staff of 82 served 162 clients, submitted 2,901 deliverables, (i.e., grants, letters of intent, and reports), and won over $132 million for our clients! Last year, we had a 65% win rate for grants prepared by Elevate.
There is much to celebrate about our clients’ significant grant wins last year! But at Elevate, we do more than acknowledge our client’s triumphs: we also look for significant trends and lessons that can better inform our work with both new and long-time partners in the years to come.
Our 2022 Win Rate: 65%
Last year, our clients won 65% of the grants that Elevate wrote on their behalf. This is an extraordinary success rate – we win two-thirds of all grants submitted, more than three times the national average.
This win rate is a conservative calculation. It only includes opportunities that were drafted and submitted by Elevate on behalf of our clients. However, Elevate also provides advice and language on a client’s own submissions, as well as “softer-touch” aspects of support that may ultimately lead to funding wins, including helping clients cultivate new funders and steward relationships with current funders.
We have searched for a comparable national statistic to gauge our 65% win rate. Based on nonprofit self-reporting, information from Foundation Directory, and raw data, Candid estimates a national average win rate of 17%. Other sources place the average win rate somewhere between 10 and 30%. (We wholeheartedly welcome any alternative sources for national win rate data if you wish to reach out to us!)
Stepping back so that we may assess the bigger picture, our own data set reveals that win rates vary based on factors such as a nonprofit’s tenure with Elevate as well as their budget size.
For instance, there is a bit of a ramp-up in building a new grants program: it can take anywhere from nine to 18 months from the point at which an organization first begins researching grant opportunities to the point when they secure their first grants.
When many partners begin working with Elevate, especially if they are new to grants, the first several months are spent getting to know the organization’s needs, collaborating on a suitable grant strategy, identifying funding opportunities, and building a grants calendar.
For this reason, it is really not until these clients enter year 3 with Elevate when win rates start to consistently approach the 65% mark. This is also why our very long standing clients (those who have partnered with us for 7 years or more) have even higher win rates. In collaboration with these organizations, we have systematically built efficient and sustainable grants programs!
Interestingly, Elevate has witnessed a steady uptick in our overall win rate as our organization has matured. We moved from a 55.6% win rate in 2018 to a 60.7% win rate in 2020 to our current rate of 65%. This progression reflects an increased investment in our staff as well as a high-quality operations team to better support them and our clients. (For more on our organizational investments, check out our Founder’s Elevate is Ten! blog post celebrating our decade milestone.)
Our 2022 Total Dollars Won: $132,835,761
In addition to our team’s impressive win rate, we are very proud to share that we won over $132 million for our clients’ work last year!
There are a lot of ways to parse this nine-figure sum secured by Elevate clients. For our Comprehensive Grant Writing Services clients, Elevate and our clients work collaboratively to decide which opportunities to pursue based on their customized grant strategy for a given year. Other clients may opt to utilize one of our project-based services such as our Writing Capacity Projects to add extra grant capacity for a limited time or to apply for a large grant. Clients’ needs also differ based on numerous factors, including their sector (we partner with organizations working in the areas of arts & culture, education, health & human services, advocacy, and international issues, for example), their mix of local and national funders, their budget size (we work with organizations with budgets under $500,000 to those with annual budgets over $50 million).
Therefore, whether it is a $250 award (our smallest in 2022) or a $7.8 million grant (the largest grant we secured last year), all of our wins are vitally important in helping to sustain our clients’ good works. Between these polar extremes, we calculated an average award of $151,000 and a median award of $25,000 among the grants secured in 2022.
Interested in learning more about how Elevate uses data to serve our clients? Check out our blog on how general operating requests have a higher win rate than program-restricted proposals. Also look out for the “March of Project Coordinators” series next month (we also like puns!) that will illustrate the value of data and project management on our client teams.
ABOUT OUR DATA
Elevate uses Salesforce to log thousands of grant opportunities each year across our nearly 100 nonprofit partners. We track information related to which grants are secured and which are lost, how much funding is requested and awarded, whether each grant is for a specific program area or for operating support, and much much more. The results described here come from thousands of data points across all of Elevate’s nonprofit partners. We love data!
January 12, 2023
Celebrating a decade of partnerships, growth, and meaningful impact
While each new year brings an opportunity for reflection and goal-setting, here at Elevate, we have actually been thinking about 2023 for many months – not just as part of our routine organizational planning for the new year, but also because it is another big milestone for us: our 10th Anniversary Year!
TEN YEARS! I started formulating the idea for Elevate in late 2012, after grant writing for and consulting with nonprofits on my own for a few years. And I officially filed the paperwork in December 2012 so that I could launch the company on January 1, 2013.
First, I am very proud of what we have accomplished. About 20% of private sector businesses in the United States fail within the first year; 50% after five years; and 65% after ten years, according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. In contrast, ten years in, Elevate continues to grow and invest in services and our staff. We have exciting plans for the years ahead!
Moreover, per the National Women’s Business Council, we’re in the top 1% of women-owned businesses in the United States in both revenues and staff size – although, to be honest, this may say more about the state of gender equality in our country and business than anything else.
In fact, there is one experience that I remember very clearly from my early days building Elevate: I was in a cohort of other business executives that were working on scaling their companies. There was a panel of three CEOs who were talking about failure, and the role it has in taking risks and experimenting. One man proudly shared that he had started four companies and all of them had failed before his current venture. I remember turning to my colleague (in mild horror!) and saying, “I don’t want to start four companies and watch them fail: I want to start ONE company and make sure it succeeds.”
I know that his intent was to normalize failure; and we all have projects or ideas that do not work out – I certainly have. But from Day 1 of Elevate, I viscerally understood that YOU – our clients – were placing your trust in us: to develop high-quality proposals; to submit them on time and accurately; and to literally raise their budgets and staff salaries. I was in my twenties when I started Elevate, but I knew that this was a profound responsibility and I never took it lightly. I still do not.
In building Elevate, I have worked to ensure we offer high-quality services that meet our clients needs and that we have hired excellent staff to deliver those services. Over the years, we have developed strong training programs (which is still ongoing)! We invested in a management layer that supports staff one-on-one and a Client Services department that moves quickly when clients have concerns. We have reduced workloads so that all staff have more time to focus on each client. We also continue to invest in a high-quality operations team to support staff and clients day-to-day. And most importantly: I have made sure we have a competent and professional executive team of leaders with exceptional judgment.
I bring all of this up because the news is heavy with stories of atrocious corporate governance and irresponsible business leaders: from the collapse of FTX and its grotesque lack of internal accountability; to the decades-long criminal tax fraud of the Trump Organization; to former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes being sentenced to 11 years in prison.
Leaders matter. The decisions we make for our organizations matter. And I have always looked to the nonprofit sector – rather than the corporate sector – for inspiration and guidance about how I wanted to lead Elevate. On this point, I’ll share one final story from Elevate’s founding.
Early on, a colleague and I were meeting with a potential client and explaining our three-person team model. (Yes, we do think it is distinctive and an important part of our value proposition to clients!) However, this person innocently said, “Oh, how innovative…!”
My eyes got wide and I was about to begin my multi-part thesis on why innovation is overvalued and effectiveness is much more important – when, thankfully, my colleague just said, “Don’t get her started…”
But it is true that after a decade of seeing funders prioritize the new and the shiny over the tried and true, I had developed a strong opinion on the matter. My staff who have worked with me long enough know that my favorite poem is To be of use by Marge Piercy (and my not-so-secret goal is for Elevate’s mascot to be the water buffalo).
That is because this poem encapsulates all that I love most about working with and for you – the nonprofit organizations that make people’s lives and communities better. It beautifully reflects how good people, doing hard work, day in and day out is what matters most. It is why I am so proud to have dedicated the last decade to serving you and your organizations. And it is why I am committed to ensuring that Elevate only improves in serving you over the next decade.
To be of use
BY MARGE PIERCY
The people I love the best
jump into work head first
without dallying in the shallows
and swim off with sure strokes almost out of sight.
They seem to become natives of that element,
the black sleek heads of seals
bouncing like half-submerged balls.
I love people who harness themselves, an ox to a heavy cart,
who pull like water buffalo, with massive patience,
who strain in the mud and the muck to move things forward,
who do what has to be done, again and again.
I want to be with people who submerge
in the task, who go into the fields to harvest
and work in a row and pass the bags along,
who are not parlor generals and field deserters
but move in a common rhythm
when the food must come in or the fire be put out.
The work of the world is common as mud.
Botched, it smears the hands, crumbles to dust.
But the thing worth doing well done
has a shape that satisfies, clean and evident.
Greek amphoras for wine or oil,
Hopi vases that held corn, are put in museums
but you know they were made to be used.
The pitcher cries for water to carry
and a person for work that is real.
November 3, 2022
WHY I FOUNDED ELEVATE
I have been a grant writer pretty much my entire career. I always loved the work because it let me write professionally. (Who says a philosophy degree isn’t marketable?!) But more importantly, I enjoyed it because good grant writing makes good things happen. I loved winning proposals for important community projects. As a consultant grant writer, I loved working with nonprofit leaders to identify programming gaps, and find funding to address those gaps.
But having worked in-house at nonprofits, and then as an independent consultant to a handful of organizations, I felt that there were challenges with both models. Too often, I saw early career grant writers hop from organization to organization in order to grow their skills, advance their careers, and be exposed to different types of grants and organizations. (And, yes, I was guilty of this myself!) These nonprofits were likewise spending six or nine months training a relatively inexperienced grant writer, and then losing them after a year or so, only to re-start the expensive hiring, onboarding, and training process. And in the meantime, their grants programs stalled.
Later, as an independent contractor, I got to work with a lot of nonprofits and gain expertise on diverse topics quickly – but I missed having a team of other people to work with. I wanted to share advice, cultivation strategies, program ideas, and trends in the sector. I wanted to invest in the best research tools and have a robust grants database that would benefit all of my clients! And, I noticed that nonprofits were stuck in an inefficient position by paying me hourly. It is expensive to pay independent contractors who have high-level development expertise to also do a lot of the day-to-day work like managing the grant calendar and submitting proposals.
So I started Elevate with a clear purpose, a distinctive team model – and MANY questions.
A PURPOSE, A MODEL…and MANY QUESTIONS
Our purpose, which has never waived, is to ensure nonprofits have access to the best grants expertise in the country.
Our team model has been refined over the years, but remains the foundation on which Elevate is built. It is also how we stand apart from other firms. Simply put, when you work with Elevate, you get a whole team of people with distinct roles, training, and expertise. You get access to a high-level strategist and team manager; the dedicated support of a highly skilled grant writer based on how big your grant calendar is; and you get a data professional to manage your calendar and ensure all of the details are captured. Instead of hiring three people with these distinct skill sets, you can work with Elevate. Instead of trying to find a “unicorn” who can do it all, we hire, train, and support excellent fundraisers – and assign you a team based on your needs.
So, we had a clear purpose and a unique model,but the rest of Elevate was up for discussion, iteration, and improvement. I won’t detail the (literally) thousands of questions that I had – and the hundreds which we have systematically asked and answered over the past decade.
But I will tell you one question I had back then, sitting on my couch, planning Elevate’s future: I did not know if nonprofits would want to work with a firm like Elevate. Or if they would want to keep working with us over time. My clients at that time only knew me; they had hired me; they trusted me. I wasn’t sure if we would be able to translate that expertise over to people they did not know.
But year after year, our nonprofit partners have answered that question with a resounding YES!
QUESTIONS ANSWERED
YES! They want to work with our amazing staff. Our clients appreciate the diverse professional skill sets, past work experiences, and personal perspectives and backgrounds our staff bring to their work.
YES! They will stay with Elevate for years and years. Even as nonprofits have a growing option set of other firms, individual consultants, or in-house staffing, they continue to choose to partner with us to grow and sustain their grants program. They value our consistently high-quality work, our industry-leading win rates and ROI, and the stability we bring to their development departments.
YES! They will stay with Elevate as their needs evolve. Over the years, we have dedicated increasing staff time and leadership to working with clients to make sure they are in the right contract and scope of work to ensure their needs are met even as these needs shift over time.
YES! They trust us – and hold us accountable – to continue to improve our services. This past decade has had its ups and downs: as we have grown, we have improved the quality of our services and increased the consistency of our work. We have worked hard to respond promptly and thoughtfully to client feedback so that we consistently improve our work and the service we provide.
YES! They see the benefits of Elevate’s shared expertise, insight, and resources. Not as competition and scarcity – but as a mutual benefit that supports all of our nonprofit clients. They appreciate that we have a deep bench of expert staff and a long roster of clients.
SPACE TO SUCCEED
A particular part of Elevate’s growth that I am most proud of is that with Elevate’s own expansion, our clients actually get more personalized attention and support than ever before.
As we have grown, we have not cut corners for clients – in fact, we have invested a lot in ensuring that our staff can focus on client work. In 2021, after a long COVID year that hugely impacted the sector, we adopted a priority of providing our team with the “Space to Succeed.” We reduced staff workloads by 20% for Grant Writers and over 10% for Team Directors, meaning our staff have more time and space for each client.
We also built out a stellar team of trained supervisors who support each member of the staff in navigating their work with their clients and teams. And, our excellent Data Team continues to grow and excel, bringing new insights to our work with clients and to the sector as a whole! (See their most recent blog post here.)
As we look ahead to 2023 – our 10th Anniversary Year! – we look forward to continuing to be a trusted partner to over 100 nonprofit partners every day. Thank you to everyone who continues to support us on this journey!
September 21, 2022
Here, we share our team’s top picks for books that have contributed to their grant writing prowess.
Elevate Grant Writer Amy O’Barr recommends The Only Grant-Writing Book You’ll Ever Need by Ellen Karsh. Amy describes this book as, “A must for any grant writer’s library!” The guide starts at the ground level with grant writing, covering everything from the basics such as vocabulary, up to writing about organizational sustainability. Currently in the 5th edition, readers can be assured that the info is timely and relevant. Bonus: tips from grantmakers!
Grant Writer Sam Murphy suggests Good Writing by Connie Snyder Mick for folks who want “a solid refresher on the basics of persuasive writing and argumentative rhetoric.” Often found on syllabi for writing courses, this textbook is designed to equip writers for social action.
Amy describes Grassroots Grants as “A no-frills classic for grantseekers.” With an emphasis on activism, this guide includes actual proposals and budgets with commentary on what works and what doesn’t. The second edition was published back in 2004, so some of the resources included in this book may be a little outdated. Still, the how-to on grant writing and budgets is spot on for grant writers today.
Another recommendation by Amy, Winning Grants Step by Step is a workbook that guides both novice and experienced grant writers through the grant process from organizational readiness to funder networking. Amy says that the “concise format and many worksheets are ideal for organizations starting a grants
Supervising Director Raquel Braemer, suggests that new grant writers check out The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Grant Writing. She says, “I found this book incredibly helpful. It walks you through every stage in the grant writing process, providing examples and tips along the way. Everything is divided into very clear sections, so you can find some insight or a template quickly when you need one.”
Another top pick for newbies, Amy also recommends Grant Writing for Dummies. She says, “This comprehensive guide is a perfect primer for those interested in grant writing but unsure where to start.” Written by an industry expert, this book dives into government grants, an area that many grant books do not cover.
Of course, we don’t only read up on grant writing! Here are a few titles Elevate staff recommend to build a greater understanding of philanthropy and nonprofits:
And finally, because effective grant writing is as much about understanding the social context as it is about great writing, here are a few of our favorite books about social change:
What books have made you a better grant writer, leader, and changemaker? We’d love to hear from you!
August 16, 2022
A 2022 analysis completed by Elevate’s Data Team found that our clients’ win rate for general operating support requests is higher than our win rate for program-specific requests, and that this is true for both new and renewal grants.
Given the continued changes in the sector in 2025 – including serious resource constraints for many nonprofits – we wanted to see if the data is still trending the same way. So, we ran the numbers from a full four years of grant applications – from 2020 through 2024 – which included more than 13,500 proposals! During that time, the win rate for general operating support grants was 73.7% (for every 100 grants submitted, 73 were won), whereas the win rate for program support was 66.1%. This mirrors our findings in 2022. Further, all of the other data points that we examined in 2022 were within a few percentage points and the same in their relationship to each other.
What’s our takeaway? This continuing data shows that funder interest in supporting general operating expenses was not a peak COVID aberration. Now, as nonprofits face extreme uncertainty related to funding from public agencies, it is more important than ever to identify and take advantage of opportunities to request funding that truly meets your organization’s needs.
QUESTIONING ASSUMPTIONS
How many times have you heard fundraising advice along the lines of: “Grant proposals that are focused on a specific project or program are more compelling than those requesting general support.” Or: “Foundations want to support programs, not overhead!”
If you have worked in nonprofit leadership, development, or an adjacent role for any measure of time, I am certain that the answer is likely more than you can count!
But how true is this traditional advice?
In recent years, the team at Elevate has observed key trends in the types of grants our clients are winning. We had a hunch that our nonprofit partners were securing more general operating support dollars each year, and that grantmakers are warming to the idea of providing general operating support. And we saw the think pieces; read any listicle on the “top trends in grantmaking” and you’ll undoubtedly see increased general operating support and trust-based philanthropy on top of the list.
Still, we wondered what our own data would reveal. Are Elevate clients winning more general operating support or programmatic grants? How does the amount of grant revenue they secure compare between the two? And is it possible to secure general operating support from a new funding partner, or should we only ask our existing donors for general operating support? So we rolled up our sleeves, typed in our two-factor authentication codes, and dug into our trusty Salesforce database for the answers.
WHAT WE LEARNED
Elevate and our clients win a higher percentage of the General Operating Support grants we submit compared to Program-Restricted grants.
We looked at the overall win rate – the grants secured compared to the total number of grants submitted – for both general operating support and for program support for the two-and-a-half year period from January 1, 2020 to June 30, 2022. During that period, our clients submitted a total of 6,229 proposals. The win rate for general operating support grants was 72.2% (for every 100 grants submitted, 72 were won), whereas the win rate for program support was 66.8%. While this may seem modest, we actually ran a chi-square test to ensure that these results were statistically significant (p < .0001), and not due to random variation. The findings were clear: there are real differences in win rate by request type.
Even when disaggregated by new and renewal grants, win rates are STILL higher for General Operating Support requests.
After examining the above, we wondered whether the result would be different if we broke the opportunities apart by new versus renewal opportunities. An opportunity would be considered “new” if it is one that the organization has never applied to in the past, and a renewal opportunity is a grant they have secured in previous years. Generally, a grantee has a much higher likelihood of securing a renewal grant than a new one. (You already know this if you read our two-part blog on How to Predict the Future!) But we wondered about the likelihood of securing a new grant for General Operating Support.
Interestingly, our findings held true for both new and renewal opportunities. For renewal grant opportunities, the win rate for General Operating Support requests was 92.2%, slightly higher than the win rate for program requests at 87.8%. For new grant opportunities, the win rate for General Operating Support requests was 54.3%, and the win rate for program requests was 47.1%.
On the flip side, the total dollars secured for Program-Restricted grants is more than twice that of General Operating Support.
While the data around win rates is very compelling, we also wondered about the total grant dollars our nonprofit partners secure that is designated as general operating support versus program-restricted funding. Interestingly, for the same set of opportunities that resulted in the win rates in findings #1 and #2 above, our clients secured roughly $370.3 million in programmatic support, as compared with $169.8 million in general operating support – less than half of the total amount of programmatic funding won!
Naturally, we wondered why this is the case, which lead us to our final finding: overall, there are more opportunities to request Program-Restricted grants than there are opportunities to ask for General Operating Support.
While win rates may be higher for general operating support grants, the opportunity to request this type of flexible support is not the norm. Our data set revealed that Elevate clients had nearly 25% more opportunities to request program support than they had opportunities to ask for general operating support.
OUR THOUGHTS ON THE FINDINGS
Our analysis shows how important general operating support is to a holistic grant strategy. And, it shows how our nonprofit clients are both empowered to ask for what they most need, and able to find true philanthropic partners willing to invest in the sustainability and capacity of their organizations.
Still, across the board, foundations invest more dollars in programs than in the operations of their grantees. We view this as a fundamental problem facing our sector today: many philanthropists are unwilling to invest in the necessary infrastructure of nonprofits. And as any nonprofit leader knows all too well, without unrestricted funding to invest in staff, technology, capacity building, anti-racism work, and unanticipated opportunities, nonprofits are hamstrung, unable to innovate or act swiftly to serve their community or constituents when the need arises.
The bottom line is that general operating support is essential to the success of the nonprofit sector. Organizations need flexible funding that they can leverage as needed to advance their missions. And they need more funding partners who are willing to trust nonprofit leaders and invest in organizations in a way that allows them to do their work.
We are hopeful: the data is pointing in the right direction. And, philanthropy must continue to invest even more unrestricted resources in the nonprofits doing the meaningful work of social change.
ABOUT OUR DATA
Elevate uses Salesforce to log thousands of grant opportunities each year across our nearly 100 nonprofit partners. We track information related to which grants are secured and which are lost, how much funding is requested and awarded, whether each grant is for a specific program area or for operating support, and much much more. The results described here come from thousands of data points across all of Elevate’s nonprofit partners. We love data!
