Agency Management

Nonprofits are created and chartered to pursue a specific mission. It’s how an organization earns its tax-exempt status and it’s the salient purpose that brings people together to do important work. When a nonprofit decides to edge out from the core of its mission and attempt new projects, it’s sometimes thought of negatively, as “mission creep.”

Most, if not all, funders now expect your nonprofit to address diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in your proposal. Funders want to know what you have to say about whether and how your organization is diversifying, delivering your work equitably and including all who are a part of your community and society.

When it’s time to write the winning proposal, it can turn into a scene from a bad movie: the writer, alone at a cubicle, staring down the guidelines, cramming thousands of words into tiny boxes, gulping black coffee and heart racing to the beat of a merciless clock on the wall.

The good news—a foundation wants to look closely at your nonprofit organization because there’s the possibility of a major grant. You’ve heard that a site visit is planned, a review of your board’s participation is in the works and a thorough financial examination is part of the process.

Your nonprofit has been around a long time—congratulations, statistics suggest that a third of nonprofits fail after 10 years, half of all new nonprofits shrivel up after only a few years. If your organization has weathered economic downturns (and Covid lockdowns), you’re doing just fine.

Routine medical exams almost always measure a number of vital signs: temperature; pulse rate; blood pressure; respiration. Often, too, there’s height and weight, questions about changes, an overall assessment. Nonprofits might borrow this approach.

Nonprofits know they need plans. Like any other organization, they have goals and objectives, work to do, resources to gather and manage. This doesn’t happen in a vacuum or on the spur of the moment. It happens as the result of a planning process—deciding where you want to be at some date in the future, and how you want to get there.

Your nonprofit has a history of funding from a variety of foundations, a few local businesses, maybe a special-purpose state grant. Congratulations. Now a new person takes the proposal writer’s chair, it’s time for reports and renewals, so the newbie asks the basic questions: “Did we get a grant from the XYZ Foundation? How much? When? Who did we work with over there?”

If your organization applies for Federal funding, you’ve gotten to know the commercial data firm Dun & Bradstreet—more specifically its unique numeric identifier called the DUNS number. Your organization probably has (or had) a DUNS number, along with 300 million others, so the Feds could tell exactly which agency or organization you are.

One of the most important elements in a persuasive proposal is the “qualifications and credentials” of the organization and its people who will actually carry out the work. It’s also one of the easiest to get wrong, or just wrong enough to derail the application. These are some of the mistakes nonprofits have made and some ways to avoid them.