Do you ever feel stuck coming up with funding-worthy grant proposals?
Well, you’re not alone! Continuously creating innovative proposals that stand out to funders is a challenge every nonprofit faces. Thankfully, there are ways to productively use your time so that you can think up new ideas fast.
This article will present you with six strategies for developing ideas for successful grant proposals. While it is true that every grant application is different, these tips should hopefully refresh your approach to grant proposal development, giving you basic beginning steps to help you catch the eyes of funders.
Let’s get started!
1. Build a Strong Relationship With the Programs Team
You should already know that relationships are crucial to every part of the nonprofit field.
Programs are only successful if the people behind them work together. To develop effective grant proposals, you have to cultivate a work environment with diverse perspectives where everyone feels safe bringing their differing expertise and professional experience to the table.
By fostering relationships built on mutual trust and respect, you’ll get unique insights into your programs, which can help you learn how to present them to funders in ways that stand out.
When trying to come up with innovative grant ideas, reaching out to your programs team should be one of your very first steps. Try asking them:
- What has their experience with the nonprofit been like so far?
- What do they think about the program?
- What changes would they make to it given your current resources?
- What changes would they make should you receive a grant?
- What would they keep the same?
Remember that it is important that your team feels heard. You want them to know you value their opinion by taking their thoughts into serious consideration. Their insights will help you more easily identify the needs of your organization and where you could greatly improve your nonprofit in the future.
2. Assess Your Program Strengths
Leveraging your organization’s strengths is one of the best ways to ensure successful grant proposals. But before you can do that you must evaluate your nonprofit’s programs to correctly identify where your strengths lie.
Ask yourself:
- Where have we done well in the past?
- What sets us apart from other nonprofits working toward similar goals?
- Where does my staff’s expertise lie?
By answering these questions, you can identify where your organization’s natural strengths lie, and you’ll be able to lean on them more consciously when writing your grant proposal. Highlighting these strengths in your grant proposal will also help demonstrate to funders your nonprofit’s readiness to handle a grant award responsibly.
Let’s take a look at the Puppy Up Foundation, a nonprofit dedicated to supporting canine oncology research. With events centered around dog walks, one of Puppy Up’s strengths is its community-based and family-friendly approach to raising funds and raising awareness. In a grant proposal, highlighting this aspect of their brand while backing it up with data on the number of participants and funds raised would help demonstrate the nonprofit’s ability to pull off successful programs.
Storytelling is a power shared by all humanity. Stories can make us laugh, can move us to tears, and they can even inspire us to work towards change!
Your nonprofit has a story to tell, and grant funders are eager to hear it. It is your job to identify that story and wield it for the benefit of your organization.
By knowing how to create an effective narrative, you can show your audience your program’s point of view and demonstrate your communities’ needs, which will then strengthen your grant proposal and persuade funders to become avid supporters.
When trying to identify your story, ask yourself:
- How has your nonprofit changed over time?
- What vision do you have for the future?
- How do you hope to get there?
- What is the hardest obstacle you’ve had to overcome so far?
By giving funders something to relate to, you should be able to craft an inspirational narrative of triumph that puts success in your supporters’ hands.
You can check out our blog for more tips on nonprofit storytelling.
4. Study Successful Proposals for Ideas You Can Steal
One of the best ways to learn is to follow the example of those who came before you. The same is true with grant ideas.
When trying to come up with ideas for grant proposals, consider looking at what other nonprofits you admire have done in the past. But don’t just blindly copy without understanding why it worked.
When studying other successful proposals, consider:
- What are the main differences between those organizations and yours?
- What made the proposal successful?
- What was it about their proposal that stood out to you?
- How was their storytelling?
- How did they align their ideas with the funder’s mission?
Let’s look at this example from the Suburban Council of International Literacy (Reading) Association (SCIRA). By answering the questions above when studying their case, you can learn how they successfully wielded their grant narrative and how to best present your nonprofit’s story to win the hearts of your funders.
We have more examples of successful grant proposals to study in our blog.
5. Research Philanthropic Giving Trends
Another way to come up with successful proposal ideas is to leverage current philanthropic giving trends.
The CCS Fundraising’s The Philanthropy Outlook 2024 and 2025 is a great resource for well-researched and relevant information that can shape your proposal. After all, understanding current trends in the nonprofit space should help you identify which aspects of your grant proposal to emphasize.
According to the report, charitable giving is on the rise for 2024 and 2025. That being said, corporate giving is expected to lag behind giving by both foundations and estates. Knowing the reason behind these trends should help you better tailor your proposals to their specific audiences.
6. Brainstorm Grant Ideas With AI
AI is a new and powerful tool that can help you in a myriad of ways, including getting the ball rolling on some new grant ideas for your nonprofit.
As Nonprofit Courses CEO Matt Hugg explains:
“There’s a saying that a writer’s biggest fear is a blank page. AI can be a big help in giving you a starting point.”
Thanks to tools like ChatGTP, the blank page has become a thing of the past. By typing in a prompt requesting grant proposal ideas for nonprofits and defining the specific parameters, ChatGTP can quickly generate ideas which you can use as a starting point for your brainstorming sessions.
After having AI generate your beginning point, you can then easily use any of the other strategies listed in this article to further develop those ideas into something new and unique.
Wrapping Up
Creating innovative grant proposal ideas can be challenging, and after a while we all get stuck at some point in the road.
While it’s always important to personalize your proposals according to your funders’ requests and your nonprofit’s needs, this article has provided you with six strategies that, when used individually or combined, can get you through the obstacle of coming up with something new.
For more resources and tips on creating winning proposals, check out this guide: Mastering Grant Proposals: Your Ultimate Guide + Pro Insights.
