Grants are not my area of expertise, but I do like to be familiar with the basics. One of those basics of course is that there are many more requests out there than actual grants available. 80% of donations to non-profits come from individuals not foundations or corporations. Which are two reasons I’d rather focus […]

Through our website Top School Fundraisers we’re sponsoring a one-time grant program.  A quality education is something that every child deserves and I’m happy to be able to “give back” in some small way.  With this in mind only projects that are educational in nature will be considered. This grant is not a contest per […]

Here is a great program for public or school libraries.  You can honor your favorite, hard working librarian for the “I Love My Librarian Award.”  The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the New York Times created the award to recognize the accomplishments of librarians in public, school, college, community college and university libraries for […]

I recently had the opportunity to review grants for the WI Department of Instruction (DPI). Reading grants is by far the best professional development available for grant writers. For me, it revealed the secret to good grant writing. For those of you who have never had a chance to do so, I’d like to share […]

“Relationship” is a key word in fundraising. As part of Fundraising 101 we learn that to be truly successful we must develop relationships with our donors. We learn that a single donation is merely a transaction and that’s not good enough to sustain our organization long term. To set ourselves up for success in the […]

I started out just looking for a basic grant writing 101 guide and was surprised to find so many resources available for free, even classes and full text books. Even if you eventually hire a consultant or purchase training material, these resources will provide a good introduction to the basic terminology and concepts of grant […]

The success of a grant fundraising effort is challenging to measure. Simple ratios that compare the number of grants submitted to the number funded don’t really reveal much. Grant fundraising success must be defined for each organization individually, in part by considering how appealing its organizational mission is by current public or foundation standards. More […]