Читать книгу Grant Writing For Dummies - Stan Hutton, Beverly A. Browning - Страница 38

Your grantfunding plan is really a guide and a roadmap for where the dollars will come from for two years to support your programs. Just a few years ago, the trend was to create three- to five-year long-range funding plans. Today, if an organization wants to be on the cutting edge and able to roll with the economic punches, as well as the shifts in priorities by existing funding sources, its strategy needs to focus on two fiscal years. Yes, that’s it — 24 months.

If you have current funders that traditionally fund your organization year after year, their decision-making processes will be shorter. For example, if you have a track record for implementation success (carrying out the program’s goals and activities that you committed to in writing), then there is likely a turnaround time of six months or less from the time your organization requests funding until you get the check in the mail.

On the other hand, if you’re planning to approach new funders, which means building a relationship before asking, the time between the grant application’s submission and the funding decision could be longer than 12 months. What you thought would be awarded in this fiscal year won’t be coming into your bank account until the next fiscal year. This means you need to track funding priorities and decision-making timeframes so you don’t build your annual organizational operating budget on dollars that won’t come in for 12 to 24 months.

This is a grantfunding plan for your grantseeking goals. But there are also funding plans for securing dollars from individual contributions, special events, and miscellaneous sources. Because this is Grant Writing For Dummies, I want you to focus on developing a plan for going after grants from all types of grantors.

In the following sections, I get you acquainted with the components of a typical grantfunding plan, show you an example of one, and give you a checklist of how to keep your plan in tiptop shape.