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| Re: Presenting grant writer services
Posted by Linda Procopio   on 7/1/2009, 2:59 pm, in reply to "Re: Presenting grant writer services"
VIP Poster
You can find your local AFP chapter by going to the national AFP website (www.afpnet.org), and scroll down the blue menu bar on the left to 'Chapters'. AFP is a wonderful networking opportunity because more than half of the membership consists of Development Directors of various nonprofits. These nonprofit Development Directors are excellent potential clients as many will want to outsource their grantwriting so that they can focus on other aspects of their job. The rest of the AFP membership are mostly other fundraising consultants, who may specialize in other genres of the industry (Capital Campaigns; Planned Giving, Special Events, etc.) and may want to bring you into a campaign to do the accompanying grantwriting. (I often 'share' a client with another fellow AFP member, with one of us referring the other.) And a small percentage of AFP members are staff at grantmaking foundations! The opportunity to sit at lunch and talk informally with the Grants Manager of a local foundation in a 'peer setting' is well worth the annual dues!
You ask about training. AFP has it's own certification process for seasoned fundraising professionals and you can get involved in that as a member after you've been working in the field a couple of years. Most of the AFP members of my chapter learned 'on the job', with many consultants (including me!) having been nonprofit executives before branching out on their own as consultants. There are college courses now specifically in fundraising, but most of the grantwriters I know came into the field with some nonprofit management experience and a writing background honed in the private sector. The part-time grantwriting staff of my little company (www.procopiofundraising.com) includes 2 attorneys, my pastor's wife, a Drexel University professor in computer science, a housewife with a Fine Arts degree in writing, and a development director at a nonprofit moonlighting in the evenings. None of them studied grantwriting or fund development, but all worked or volunteered at a nonprofit at one time and all have strong writing and computer skills. I train them myself, so I may not be the person to ask!
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