It’s two weeks before a federal grant deadline, and you just learned about the opportunity and that you are eligible to apply for grant funding. Unfortunately, your fundraising team is busy preparing for your organization’s annual event, and it is all-hands-on-deck. This federal opportunity is nice, but you just can’t tackle it right now.
Your staff are up to their eyeballs in program operations and other work to grow your mission. Doing your foundation or government grants keep falling off the bottom of the list, impacting your grant proposal submissions. Before you know it, it’s been months since anyone has applied for any funding.
You had a fundraising plan and office that was running pretty smoothly. Then, it changed. There was staff turnover and your grant writer isn’t there anymore, complicating the grant writing process. Or you took on a large initiative and now your staff is stretched thin and doesn’t have capacity to do more grants and the other initiatives at the same time.
Does this sound familiar?
If it does, you are not alone. I talk with many nonprofit leaders who are working to capacity. When new funding opportunities come along, they often don’t have the additional bandwidth to pursue them. Or they are so caught up in other work, they don’t even know the opportunities they are missing. As a result, they may put off applying until they do have capacity, causing them to miss deadlines and delay asking for the funding they desperately need.
While there is a lot that a nonprofit can’t control in the grant world, one thing is certain: if you don’t apply, you can’t win. If you need urgent grant writing help, be sure you know what your options are to add more bandwidth to your grant writing team so you don’t miss funding opportunities.
In this blog:
- When do nonprofits need urgent grant help?
- What does a grant consultant bring to the table?
- What is the process to work with a grant consultant?
- What to look for in a grant consultant?
- The right grant consultant provides rapid support, funding results
- Conclusion
When do nonprofits need urgent grant help?
Nonprofits may find themselves in need of urgent help with grant writing when:
- A staff member leaves to take another position
- A staff member takes a leave of absence
- A staff member is on vacation during peak grant season
- They realize they haven’t submitted grants in more than a month because of competing priorities or emergencies
- Funders open up opportunities with a short turnaround time
- A federal or state grant opens, requiring more attention than the fundraising team can provide
Nonprofit staff tend to wear many hats, and each role can stretch staff thin during the grant writing process. As a result, even a small disruption in the workflow, like one staff’s planned vacation, can make a new funding opportunity with a tight deadline feel like a crisis.
In each of these cases, when there is an active, open funding opportunity on the line, nonprofits need grant help that can begin nearly immediately to secure funding.
Hiring a grant writer can take 6 months or more when you consider the time to post the position, interview the candidates, and select and onboard the new hire. If a staff member leaves permanently, hiring a grant writer may be an important part of the long-term solution for a nonprofit to continue to have an effective development department.
But in the short term, more immediate help is needed to ensure that no current grant opportunities are missed. This is especially true if you are interested in a federal or state government grant. Federal and state grant opportunities fluctuate significantly each year, and there is no telling if or when a similar nonprofit grant opportunity will open again. A missed deadline may mean fundraising dollars that can never be recouped.
Maybe your short-term solution includes having a current staff member, board member, or volunteer write grants for you. Even though they are familiar with your organization, it will take time to train them to be an effective grant writer. Grant writing—like all forms of writing—is a specialized skill, which takes time, experience, and training to hone.
When a new hire or training a current staff won’t solve your immediate grant writing situation, there is another alternative—a grant consultant.
What a Grant Consultant Team Brings to the Table
A grant consultant, like Millionaire Grant Lady and Associates, can provide you access to an experienced grant writer with years of experience and success at a fraction of the cost of hiring a full-time grant writer.
A grant consultant is often much more cost-effective than a full-time grant writer because you hire the consultant just for the specific scope of work needed to shore up your capacity. For example, our team has supported nonprofits with completing a new funder search, writing a single federal grant, or preparing a new grant template for your team to use to complete grant applications. We can also step in to act as an outsourced full-time grant writer for your organization. A grant consultant works for you based on your organization’s needs and your budget to optimize the grant funding process.
The MGL team brings speed and strategy to the table. We pride ourselves on preparing accurate, effective applications that position you to win funding. We know you don’t just need a grant writer—you need a grant winner.
Unlike a freelancer, we offer you access to a full team of professionals. This means that even if one of our team members is out sick or on vacation, your work is still completed and deadlines are met. We will never shift work to your plate because our kid is throwing up. This means that when you contact us for support to meet a near, tight deadline, we will get it done.
A great grant consultant should support the work of your existing team. Many of the nonprofits we work with have wonderfully talented development teams often collaborate with grant consultants to enhance their proposal writing efforts. We augment their capacity and support the overall efforts of the team. Many of our clients see at least 8x ROI on our services.
What is the process to work with a grant consultant?
Because nonprofits are often most familiar with the process of having their own in-house grant writer, working with a grant consultant can come with some questions.
I recommend that any nonprofit who is considering using a grant consultant start by considering a grant consultant’s expertise, experience, and results, as well as cost, to ensure that the grant consultant is the right fit for your organization.
Once you have decided to move forward with a specific grant consultant, you can expect the process to include:
- Onboarding: The onboarding process with a grant consultant will usually include filling out an intake form, having an initial call to discuss your mission and goals, and gathering initial documents like budgets and tax forms. At Millionaire Grant Lady and Associates, we have streamlined our on-boarding process so it takes just 2 hours of your time, allowing you to focus your energies on the work of the nonprofit, while we handle the grant tasks.
- Timeline and deliverables setup: For clients working with us to meet tight deadlines, one of the first steps we take is to create a clear timeline of work and identify deliverables. This creates clarity for both the existing development staff and our team to ensure deadlines are met with effectiveness and efficiency. Our goal, and our client average, is to reduce the time on grants spent for you by 80% or more.
- Drafting and collaborative feedback: Our team works to draft our deliverables and present them to your team for review before moving forward. We ensure the draft meets all formatting and content requirements, allowing your team to do a quick review for accuracy prior to submission.
- Final submission support: Our team has experience navigating federal, state, and foundation submission portals are essential for nonprofit grant applications. We can assist your team in completing the portal submission, or we can handle the submission process from start to finish.
If you need urgent grant support, the Millionaire Grant Lady team has the flexibility to support you as you work to meet tight or unexpected deadlines, without going through the months-long hiring process for a new hire.
What to look for in a grant consultant team?
A strong grant consultant offers expertise across sectors, ensuring successful grant proposals. Look for a team that augments, not duplicates your capacity. Alex, the Millionaire Grant Lady, has worked with over a hundred nonprofit projects across the United States of every shape and size. She has overseen grant work that resulted in more than $125 million in funding for our partners, including federal, state, and foundation grants. This wide breadth of experience ensures that we are ready to supplement your team’s capacity with expertise that expands the horizons of your nonprofit.
You should look for a consultant team that saves you time while increasing funding. Alex has focused on creating efficient systems that allow nonprofits to complete onboarding with us in just 2 hours. We use templates and tools and your existing narratives and grant materials to get up to speed on your organization quickly so we can continue the work begun by your team to ensure you don’t miss an opportunity.
When working to meet tight deadlines, partnering with a freelance grant writer that is a strong communicator is key. Millionaire Grant Lady and Associates has clear communication protocols that ensure you have a direct point of contact for your project and that communication lags on our end do not hinder progress on yours.
If you have an urgent grant writing need, you also have to consider the grant writer’s availability—do they can do the work in the required time frame? Because of our internal structure, the Millionaire Grant Lady team can often have a team member devoted to your work within a week, ensuring that our capacity meets your demand for effective grant research and proposal writing. Instead of wading through applications for freelancers hoping to find someone who can help you, we have done that hard work for you. Our team of grant professionals is ready to support you today.
The Right Grant Consultant Provides Rapid Support, Funding Results
Ideally, when a new funding opportunity comes your way, you will find a partner who can support you quickly while also getting you the results you seek. Here are some examples of how Millionaire Grant Lady and Associates has stepped in to support nonprofits when they needed it.
One nonprofit came to us when their grant writer went on leave. After our quick onboarding process, we could work through their foundation grant calendar, ensuring no deadlines were missed. We worked to streamline their grant research and application processes so that their team could move forward with confidence as the grant writer returned from leave.
Another nonprofit sought our services for a federal grant whose application was due in just four weeks. We moved swiftly to onboard with the client, develop a clear timeline for the grant application process and all required deliverables, gather needed materials from the team, and draft interesting narrative portions of the application. We supported the client through the submission process, and we are proud to say they were awarded millions in funding.
Another nonprofit in education work had just 10 days to submit a state grant application that was a vital pillar of their organization’s funding and required thorough proposal writing. We quickly put together a timeline of tasks to submit a successful grant, learned about the organization’s work and the 57-page state Request for Proposal, advised them on positioning to win the grant, got them a complete draft of the narrative and produced a final draft for them two full days before the submission deadline.
While these are just a few client stories, they indicate the way we provide rapid grant support for nonprofits that is driven by results.
Conclusion
If you are in a time crunch, it is possible to submit a sound proposal—even at the last minute.
I always encourage clients to plan—no one wants to get caught in a crunch. But emergencies happen. Government and federal grant opportunities you weren’t expecting open. An important staff member is ill. You realize you haven’t kept up with your grant applications. When the need arises, know you have options. A grant consultant can provide you access to a talented, results-driven grant writer allowing you to meet the deadline and get the funding.
If you need rapid support, schedule your call with the Millionaire Grant Lady team today. We are ready to help fill the gap in your capacity so you don’t miss out on this critical opportunity.
