I have worked as a contract grant writer for non-profits with a $10M annual budget, ones with a $500,000 annual budget, and everything in between.
My grant research strategy and which grants I decide to write depend on the org’s size and grant budget goals.
I use a loose framework for evaluating whether a grant is too small to be worth it.
I consider five main things.
First, I consider the program budget. If the grant is a program grant, it likely will not fund more than 30% of the program. If the program is $50,000, the maximum ask will be $15,000. If the program is $500,000, the maximum ask will be $150,000. This gives me a grant ceiling.
Now that I have a ceiling, I establish a rough base amount. Anything less than 10% of the program budget may not be worth it. If the program budget is $50,000, it is likely that applying for anything less than $5,000 would not be a good investment of time. There are exceptions, especially with larger program budgets, but this is a guideline.
Next, I consider the funder. If the funder has funded us in the past, the chances of them funding us again are in the 80%+ range, so applying for a small grant may be worth it.
I always look at the application before making a decision. Some grant applications take an hour, and some take 10 hours. A grant for $5,000 may be well worth it if the application is a simple web form. But, if it requires several financial documents and a 15-page application, I will skip it in search of a larger grant.
Finally, I look into the reporting. I learned this the hard way. I won a $15,000 grant for a newer non-profit. They were thrilled…until it came time for reporting. The grant funder required receipts to be numbered, scanned and recorded on a spreadsheet. They required payroll reports with details about the percentage of employees’ salaries that were funded. They even required info about parts of the program that weren’t funded by the grant.
When it was over, we decided that $15,000 was not worth the time and aggravation spent on the reporting, and we passed on the grant the following year.
Hopefully, thinking about grants in this way can help you decide whether a grant is too small and allow you to focus your grant research on identifying the perfect grants for your non-profit.
Until next time,
Write Epic Grants