Grant Writing for Nonprofits and Freelance Writers

Learn how to "grantsmith" winning proposals, think like a funder, draft a solid boilerplate, and build relationships.

What you'll learn:

• Identify relevant government and private foundation funders
• Draft solid and efficient proposal boilerplate language that can be used for years
• Strategically align funder priorities, organizational mission, program design, program budgets
• Use provided sample language as a guide in your own proposal writing

Many nonprofits are worried about tax law changes affecting donations. To be competitive, you need to diversify andbuild your skills for generating revenue.

This course is designed for nonprofits that want to not only get better at writing successful proposals, but also get better at the process of researching and applying for foundation and government grants. The course is also for grant writers or freelance writers who want to offer their clients a more comprehensive approach to grant writing.

When you’re done with the course, you’ll have assembled one of the most powerful tools a nonprofit can have – a proposal boilerplate.

The boilerplate contains about 75% of the language you’ll need as you’re drafting proposals. Working on the boilerplate outside the pressure of a proposal deadline will result in language that is better-written, as well as more thoughtful and strategic. It will also set you up to be uber-efficient as you’re writing proposals in the future.

Throughout this course we'll be using real examples and real language, and each lesson includes a transcript, so you can kickstart your own boilerplate.

You’ll also be given strategies and tips for finding foundation and government grants, including:

• Identifying five relevant local foundations
  
• Gathering information about grants at the local, state, and federal level for you to start pursuing

Finally, we’ll be walking through key strategies for completing solid applications, including:

• Letters of intent
  
• The budget
  
• Meeting a funder’s expectations

Each video session includes two downloads: a PDF of the slides in handout format, and a Word document transcript.