It’s back-to-school season, one of my favorite times of the year.
As I’m in the business of teaching grant writing online and I want my students to have incredible success, I think a lot about how to learn as a nonprofit professional.
Since I started in 2016, I’ve had the opportunity to teach thousands of nonprofit leaders. These are folks who amaze me every single day with all they accomplish, their passion, and their dedication.
On top of running their organizations (which some of them are doing on top of their day jobs), they take the time to hone their skills and improve their grant writing.
And it pays off. Big time.
I hear from students all the time about their incredible 5- and 6-figure grant wins and what that funding has allowed them to do in their nonprofits.
If you’re reading this, you have the same spirit of dedication to lifelong learning that I see in my Grant Writing Made Easy and Ultimate Guide to Grant Writing students.
Because it’s back-to-school time, I want to share a few tips I have for folks who want to maximize their potential to learn as a nonprofit leader.
- Know when to turn off the fire hose
- Find an expert you trust
- Celebrate back-to-school, nonprofit professional style
Know when to turn off the fire hose
There is so much information available online. In some ways, this is great. It means that the answer to your question is probably out there somewhere, no matter what your question is.
If you want to learn about grant writing, you’ll find a wealth of material available.
But sometimes, what’s available is too much information. It can feel like a fire hose, especially if you’re new to grant writing or if you’re busy.
Not all the grant writing advice on the Internet is good. Not all the people giving the advice are credible. And not everything you read is going to be easy (or even possible) to implement.
If you’re an information-gatherer, a knowledge-seeker, kudos to you. But if you find that sometimes your information-gathering and knowledge-seeking doesn’t translate to better outcomes, then it might be time to turn off the fire hose.
The problem might be that you’re taking in information that isn’t high quality or that you’re taking in information that doesn’t come with guidance on how to implement it in a systematic way.
One example of this I see often has to do with statistics. Every year, GrantStation puts out a State of Grantseeking report, and every year, one of the takeaways is that the odds of winning a grant increase dramatically with the number of applications an organization submits. So, in response to this, you’ll see a flurry of posts about how the #1 thing you need to do to be successful with grants is to apply for more.
And while that’s not incorrect, strictly speaking, it’s incomplete advice because it neglects all the other factors that go into being successful grants and the advice isn’t easy to implement in a systematic way. It doesn’t acknowledge that there are barriers to applying for grants, like limited time and a lack of confidence in one’s skills as a grant writer.
So, again, if you find yourself spending hours and hours reading up on how to be successful with grants, and you’re either not able to implement the advice or the advice doesn’t work, it’s time to turn off the fire hose.
Find an expert you trust
Trusting the person you’re learning from is essential in order to actually learn anything.
When you seek information online about how to be successful with grants, look into the source. Are they professional grant writers themselves? What can you tell about the work they do? Do they seem to understand all the different facets of grantseeking or do they preach on one action to the exclusion of others? For me, anytime I want to learn something new, I look out for people who claim to have a “quick fix” because true success and mastery doesn’t come from quick fixes. It comes from having a systematic approach to whatever problem you’re trying to solve.
Want to get to know me a bit better? Follow me on Instagram or TikTok and check out this page to see the successes I’ve had writing grants for my clients.
Celebrate back-to-school, nonprofit leader style
I love to make the most of the rhythms of the year, and around this time, that means setting goals for my next year of learning.
Are you ready to go back-to-school, nonprofit leader style? Ready to level up your grant writing? Is it time to commit or re-commit time to learn as a nonprofit professional?
The good news is that you don’t have to enroll in an expensive university course to learn something valuable. You don’t need to worry about inconvenient class times or commuting to a campus because (drumroll . . .)
. . . to celebrate back-to-school season, we’re opening up enrollment for The Ultimate Guide to Grant Writing!
With The Ultimate Guide to Grant Writing, you can get started on the path to grant success for just $73.
You can read about all the course includes here, but I want to share a few highlights:
- 306 pages of workbook content (fillable, of course, so you can apply what you’re learning)
- 120 minutes of video (so you can learn exactly the strategies I use to write grants for my clients)
- The Organizational History Generator (take the guesswork out of this section – just enter some information, and the generator will create 3 different versions of your history)
- The Grant Prospect Spreadsheet Template (track your entire grant pipeline using the same template I use for my clients)
