3 Reasons Nonprofits Still Struggle To Win Grants Even After Hiring A Grant Writer

A common concern nonprofits have when hiring a grant writer, whether as a staff member or consultant, is the return on the investment. It’s completely understandable to wonder “If I spend the money to hire a grant writer, are we going to get results”? 

A common misconception among nonprofit staff and leadership is the belief that hiring a grant writer guarantees that you will win grants. However, one thing for certain and two things for sure - no grant writer (even the most seasoned) wins every grant they apply for. While poorly written grant proposals generally don’t get funded, many times a rejected grant proposal is not because of the grant writer’s skill or lack thereof. 

In this article, I’m going to share why nonprofits may still struggle to win grants and not get the grant results they hope to achieve even if they hire a grant writer. If you address these reasons, it will help you, your nonprofit, and the grant writer (if you decide to hire one) be more successful. 

REASON #1:  Lack of organizational grant readiness 

You may be saying, “we’ve got our 501 © 3 certification letter of course we’re ready for grants.”  However, while important, being “grant ready” requires more than completing necessary registrations.

Grant readiness is your nonprofit’s ability to do good work, effectively manage money, and deliver results. It’s a key factor to grant success because, in order to get grant funding, your organization has to demonstrate to funders that it is prepared to manage the responsibilities of getting grant funding. The nonprofits that are “grant ready” have invested in building and maintaining a solid foundation.

This means having a strong reputation and involvement in the community, relevant and result-producing programs/services, strong leadership and , including an engaged board of directors, good financial standing, systems in place to track their work and money, and clear mission, and strategic direction. It’s important that you have these elements, that you have this strong foundation because this will increasing the chances of getting and keeping grant funding.

If you’re a new and/or start-up nonprofit, you will need to invest time, effort, and resources in building this solid foundation to be able to ask grant funders to invest in you. Once your nonprofit has applied for and successfully receives grants, you want to as the kids say “stay ready so you don’t have to get ready”. This means making sure that you’re continuing to invest in these foundational areas so that you are always primed and ready to tackle grants. 

REASON #2: Lack of fundable program/s

Funders want to invest in programs that they believe work well and will have an impact. In my first nonprofit job (over a decade and a half ago), I thought all a nonprofit needed was an important cause and it would be easy to get grants. I learned the hard way that is not the case. After a few rejected grant proposals, I quickly learned that to write a successful grant application, our organization had to invest in planning a fundable program. A fundable program is a logical planned response to a community need, be of interest to grant funders (has to answer why should someone care about the issue), and must generate results (some type of transformation) that can be measured in some way. I’ve worked with new and well-established nonprofits that are all passionate about making a difference but many struggling to fund their programs. One of the most common pitfalls is that they had good ideas or beloved programs but not fundable ones. 

REASON #3: Lack of grant strategy

When I was trying to win my first grant, I made a lot of mistakes. The biggest one was that I would apply for every grant that I found. And the result was the same every. single. time. REJECTED. I was so focused on finding a grant and writing a proposal and I didn’t know there was a process, much less how to navigate it. So I spent, or rather wasted, alot of time applying for grants that we would never get. Once I understood the process I was able to go from struggle to success. In the grants demystified course, I break down the 5 stages of the grants process, where you’ll see that grant writing is the 4th step in the process. Because grants are won are lost before you put pen to paper, you need to have an overarching strategy for how you’re going to work through each stage of the grant process. To help you start building your grant strategy, I’ve created a framework of all the steps I’ve used to help U.S. nonprofits create their winning strategy to secure grants from $5K to $3 million. You can get a free copy of my framework HERE.  

There are lots of pros to making the investment in hiring a grant writer whether they are going to be an employee or a consultant. But to achieve grant success, our nonprofit has to also invest in :

1. Getting (and staying) ready for grants by building and maintaining a solid foundation
2. Creating and growing fundable programs
3. A strategy for working through each stage of the grant process, including focusing on targeting the right grant funders. 

If you invest in being grant-ready, creating fundable programs, and committing to an overall grant strategy, you’ll yield better results when you do decide to hire a grant writer, whether as an employee or consultant because you’ve set them up and those your nonprofit up to be more successful. If you’re not committed to working on these key 3 areas, you’ll waste money hiring a grant writer. You may even find it difficult to hire a grant writer because most are hesitant to work with nonprofits that haven’t made the commitment to focusing on these areas.  

You can start getting your nonprofit primed and ready, building fundable programs, and your strategy with my free