Every potential
grant funding agency lists specific types of funding they will and will not award to potential grantseekers. In order to weed out the grants that won’t work for your organization, you have to understand
the different types of funding that are available. The following list gives you the scoop:
- Annual campaigns: Money to support annual operating expenses, infrastructure improvements, program expansion, and, in some cases, onetime only expenses (such as a cooling-system replacement).
- Building/renovation funds: Money to build a new facility or renovate an existing facility. These projects are often referred to as bricks-and-mortar projects. Building funds are the most difficult to secure; only a small percentage of foundations and corporations award grants for these types of projects.
- Capital support: Money for equipment, buildings, construction, and endowments. These types of large-scale projects aren’t quickly funded. It often takes two to three years for total funding to be secured. This type of request is a major undertaking by the applicant organization.
- Challenge monies: These funds act as leverage to secure additional grants from foundations and corporations. They’re awarded by funders and are contingent upon your raising additional grant funds from other funding sources. You must use internal organizational funds to meet the challenge grant requirements.
- Conferences/seminars: Money to cover the cost of attending, planning, and/or hosting conferences and seminars. Funding may be used to pay for all the conference expenses, including securing a keynote speaker, travel, printing, advertising, and facility expenses, such as meals.
- Consulting services: You may want to secure the expertise of a consultant or consulting firm to strengthen some aspect of organizational programming. For example, if you bring in a consultant to do a long-range strategic plan or to conduct training for a board of directors, you’re paying for consulting services.
- Continuing support/continuation grant: If you’ve already received a grant award from a funder, you can turn to that funder again and apply for continuing support. However, be aware that many funders only fund an organization one time.
- Employee matching gifts: Many employers match the monetary donations their employees make to nonprofit organizations, often on a ratio of 1:1 or 2:1. If you have board members employed by large corporations, have them check with their human resources departments to see whether their employers have such programs.
- Endowments: A source of long-term, permanent investment income to ensure the continuing presence and financial stability of your nonprofit organization. If your organization is always operating in crisis-management mode, one of your goals should be to develop an endowment fund for long-term viability.
- Fellowships: Money to support graduate and postgraduate students in specific fields. These funds are only awarded to institutions, never to individuals.
- General/operating expenses: Money for general budget line-item expenses. These funds may be used for salaries, fringe benefits, travel, consultants, utilities, equipment, and other expenses necessary to operate grant and contract-funded programs.
- Matching funds: Grant funds that are awarded with the requirement that you must find other grant funding that matches or exceeds the initial grant’s matching-fund stipulation. Matching funds are a type of leverage grant. To qualify for a matching funds grant award, the grant applicant must come up with matching funds. The funds can be internal (from the grant applicant organization), from a partner agency, or even from another grant funding agency.
- Program development: Funding to pay for expenses related to organization growth, the expansion of existing programs, or the development of new programs.
- Research: Money to support medical and educational research. Monies are usually awarded to the institutions that employ the individuals conducting the research.
- Scholarship funds: Scholarship awards to individuals. Remember that when funds are awarded directly to an individual, they’re considered taxable income (with taxes owed by the recipient).
- Seed money: Most often, these types of grants are awarded for a pilot program not yet in full-scale operation; hence the term seed money. Seed money gets a program underway, but other grant monies are needed to continue the program in its expansion phase.
- Technical (consulting) assistance: Money to improve your internal program operations. Often, this type of grant is awarded to hire an individual or firm that can provide the needed technical assistance. Alternatively, the funding foundation’s personnel may provide the technical assistance. For example, a program officer from a foundation may work on-site with the applicant organization to establish an endowment development fund and start a campaign for endowment monies. In some instances, the funding source identifies a third-party technical assistance provider and pays the third party directly to assist the nonprofit organization.
Read More :
Understanding How Funders Describe Their Grantmaking Interests
