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| Re: Internal vs. External Grant Writer
Posted by Linda Procopio  on 8/3/2007, 10:11 pm, in reply to "Internal vs. External Grant Writer"
VIP Poster|
I can give you some of the benefits of hiring an external grantwriter. Usually it costs much less to have an outside consultant prepare your grant proposals than to add a competent person to your development staff. From a time-management standpoint, sometimes it just makes sense to outsource very labor-intensive aspects of your workload. Grantwriting consultants keep extensive records on their experiences with foundations; past successful (and unsuccessful!) grant proposals can suggest valuable biases and leanings that may not be included in a foundation’s published criteria. Foundation research to uncover prospective grant opportunities, when done correctly, is a tedious laborious exercise for a nonprofit organization. A grantwriting firm doing a significant volume of grant proposals has time-saving advantages. Research for one client often uncovers an exceptional opportunity for another client. Broader ‘category’ research into ‘environmental-grantmakers’, ‘arts-grantmakers’, ‘at-risk-youth-grantmakers’, etc. can often be applied to more than one initiative. Grantwriting consultants cannot stay in business unless they succeed in bringing in a consistent financial return on each client's investment in their services. Of course, the learning curve is substantial until an external (or an INTERNAL) grantwriter knows your initiatives well enough to compose your strongest case for support. You want to choose either an internal or an external grantwriter carefully, in the hopes that you might be entering into a multi-year commitment. You don't want to have to repeat that learning curve again the next year with someone new. Nonprofits often hire internal staff for that very reason: they hope the person they hire and train will stay for decades. But actually, longevity can be more easily controlled using an external grantwriter where you can keep renewing your annual contractual agreement if the collaboration is working and producing for you. Whereas a grantwriter on your staff that you have trained may take those new skills and move on to greener pastures. I think the average stay for development staff people at a nonprofit is less than 3 years. As an external grantwriter, over half of my current 23 nonprofit clients have been with me longer than that.
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Link: http://www.procopiofundraising.com
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