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A Reflection on Growing Capacity Project Program 1 with Co-Founder Mary

Thu, 31 Oct 2024 11:55:38 GMT

What insight will Mary share today?

A reflection on Program 1 of the Growing Capacity Project

with Cofounder Mary Ramsay

Nonprofit GrowthGen Co-founder Mary Ramsay sat down with student worker Brentley Sandlin to reflect on Growing Capacity Program 1: Gathering Resources in Hawaiʻi for Hawaiʻi.

For six weeks, the Program 1 cohort explored, pooled, and provided resources and content based upon topics identified by community members in non-profit museums, library archives, and other museum-like cultural organizations in Hawai’i. The topics ranged from fundraising approaches to centering community needs, and we prioritized making space for our participants to build community and crowdsource solutions and collaborations to the topics.

1. What needs in the community led you and Mandy to create this program topic? Was there a specific moment that made you feel like this program had to be held? Do you feel like the program addressed those needs sufficiently, and how so?

Mary: When Mandy and I lived and worked in Hawaiʻi, we observed and experienced the desire in the nonprofit sector for professional development and mentoring. Often nonprofits were strapped for time and resources to offer professional development for their staff. Those working in nonprofits also had reservations about consultants who came to Hawaiʻi from the continent to offer professional development and training: there was a ‘one-and-done’ experience that sometimes made it feel extractive for the participants in the training. When Mandy and I had to leave Hawaiʻi because of our family situations, we both had a strong desire to stay connected to the impactful work being done here. We wondered if we could help build grant writing and other skills among Hawaiʻi nonprofit professionals informed by our experience living on Oʻahu and working for a Hawaiian organization.

After piloting a small grant-writing mentoring and training program at Bishop Museum during the pandemic and receiving positive feedback, we were fortunate that Museum leaders wanted to partner with us to make this type of mentorship available to peer institutions and organizations in the state. When we received an IMLS grant through Bishop Museum for the Growing Capacity Project, we knew we wanted our program to be designed with community input. We distributed surveys to learn what staff working in Hawaiʻi nonprofits feel they most need. In an early survey, folks expressed a range of needs related to growing capacity in their organizations, such as board development, strategic fundraising, partnerships, and centering community needs. When sharing the needs identified in the survey with our advisors, they suggested that we tap the expertise of those working in Hawaiʻi now by inviting them to share their own experiences and solutions. This suggestion transformed our approach, placing Mandy and me in the role of organizers/facilitators and our colleagues working in Hawaiʻi as the content experts. Considering our positionality as white women living on the continent, this shift has made a great deal of sense.

Our hope is that those who participate in the Growing Capacity Project can share their experience and knowledge with each other, contributing to a network of leaders and guides in Hawaiʻi who can offer support to each other well beyond this grant-funded program. It is really exciting that participants and even guest speakers from Program 1 are now participants in Program 2! We can all learn from each other and a network of thought partners can help us feel less isolated and alone in the work we do in the museum and culture sectors.

Brentley: Absolutely, I think for you both to adopt a more logistical facilitator role where you take a step back allows a natural sense of sustainable community to emerge amongst Hawaiʻi and Hawaiian museum professionals. And I think the continued buy-in of folks from this program into the next illustrates this deep desire for such connection and peer-to-peer community.

2. What is one quote/concept/moment from a participant or guest speaker that has particularly stuck with you?

Mary: I distinctly remember when a Program 1 cohort member started opening up about her experiences working in a Hawaiʻi nonprofit. She was extremely passionate about the mission of her nonprofit but felt overwhelmed by multiple priorities and goals, high expectations, and what she perceived as her own inexperience. My perception was that her willingness to share her challenges and express her vulnerability opened the door for cohort members to have deeper conversations and see the connections between their own work and that of their nonprofit colleagues. I think this expanded our collective sense of the support we could offer each other as cohort members.

There are many motivations that drive people into nonprofit work but passion often plays a big role, especially considering that the pay is fairly modest and expectations are typically high. How do you figure out how to navigate in this environment and how do you set priorities so that you have some chance of meeting your goals when resources may be constrained? Passion can make it possible to stay committed and focused but can also lead to burnout and overwhelm.When this one class member broke the ice for cohort members to keep it real, she also opened the door for collective problem solving and for colleagues to step forward with their own stories, challenges, and successes. Another moment that has stayed with me was when a guest speaker discussed partnerships and he said something to the effect of “sometimes you have to get a divorce.” We had not gone into our discussion about managing healthy partnerships with this in mind, but it is absolutely true that some partnerships run their course and are no longer relevant to your mission and you have to find a way to respectfully disengage or step away.

Both of these moments reframed the conversation in ways that were unanticipated and added a richness and candor to the exchanges in class. Working in the nonprofit world often requires holding the passion and inspiration alongside the frustration and overwhelm - and we need our colleagues and community to make this sustainable.

Brentley: Yes, I think these and many other small moments between cohort members show again the necessity of this program in creating ongoing and hopefully long-term connections. Nonprofit work can feel overwhelming and lonely, and the Growing Capacity programs not only build resources and shared knowledge, but also valuable connections and a feeling of community that seems to be much desired.

3. Were there any moments of growth for you while facilitating the program?

Mary: When Bishop Museum learned it had received this grant to support professional development in the Hawaiʻi museum and culture sectors in partnership with Nonprofit GrowthGen, Mandy and I were thrilled. But as we began talking with colleagues in Hawaiʻi and thinking about our positionality as white women now living on the continent, I had a lot of concerns. I don’t think I was conscious enough when we applied for the grant of the potential for reenacting a colonizer scenario. When I realized this, my impulse was to back out and find someone else who was “of Hawaiʻi” to take on this project. I felt that we had been presumptuous in proposing this notion of growing capacity in Hawaiʻi and wondered if it would have been better done by a person or company still residing on-island.

Mandy and I talked about this in depth with our advisors and other colleagues in Hawaiʻi. They provided concrete suggestions for ways we could structure the work drawing on expertise in Hawaiʻi and how we could distribute grant resources to our partners, colleagues, and cohort members in Hawaiʻi. For example, one colleague shared the challenges she experiences in her own museum work where the demands of caring for and managing the collections themselves are so unrelenting that she doesn’t have time to offer opportunities for on-the-job professional development to her staff. In her mind, having people external to her museum providing these opportunities was a plus, allowing her to stay focused on her primary responsibilities. Her perspective supported Mandy’s and my decision to move forward and to consciously build curriculum and experiences rooted in cultural humility. We are committed to helping to grow capacity in Hawaiʻi nonprofits over time, so that our engagement is not just a one-and-done type of thing. All of this has been an area of big growth for me and the growing continues.

Brentley: I think that is such a crucial and continual process for anyone working in communities that are not their own: how do we leverage our privilege in a beneficial way without falling into a savior or expert trope? And how do we make sure we are still doing important work without shying away because we are worried about our own positionality? Audre Lorde has such beautiful writing about the necessity of understanding our differences in ways that allow us to more deeply engage with one another. That is one of the ways the program structure really benefits: you all leverage your expertise in the field by coordinating and connecting with folks here to build the infrastructures, whilst simultaneously letting lived experiences remain at the forefront.

4. What are you looking forward to about Program 2?

Mary: With the experience of Program 1 behind us, it’s exciting to have a “round two,” so to speak. I feel that project management is often the ‘elephant in the room’ for many organizations: we’re all asked to plan and execute projects, but no one is telling us how to do it effectively or mentoring us through a project. Most of the people in organizations who do the bulk of project management are not professionally trained in this area and this was certainly the case for me. We do the best we can but it can be very stressful.

I was involved in the higher education grant world, helping colleagues, who were in the formative stages of developing a project, bring their ideas to life. For me, the relationship between grant writing and project development and management is clear but I was never formally trained in project management. Although I had great mentors who helped me learn on the job, I can’t say we ever took the time to systemize an approach to project management and we rarely debriefed a project or reflected on how the process went before we were on to the next project! Project management is such an important topic and I am so glad we will focus on it in Program 2 for folks working in nonprofits.

I am really looking forward to the first class on pre-launch considerations. I think what happens (or doesn’t) in the early phase of planning a project is critical. I distinctly remember one instance of being asked by senior management to work on a grant proposal without a lot of lead time before the deadline. The project itself was new and had not yet been fully developed. I reached out to my colleague whose department would execute the project, knowing we would be scrambling to bring some clarity to an emerging project so we could meet this grant deadline. My colleague said, “Mary, my team and our partners really needed to be included at the beginning of these grant conversations. This project will require true partnerships and developing these relationships needs way more time than is possible with this deadline.” She ran her own department in a collaborative manner and she was committed to having all stakeholders around the table at the start to co-create a project. Quite honestly, I came into my work in Hawaiʻi with a very western understanding of deadlines and project management, and her framing of project management as a community-engaged process woke me up to the importance of understanding the culture in which I was working.

Brentley: As we have spoken about throughout the planning of Program 2, project management is so personal, and our own cultural understandings and identities definitely impact the way we perform our work. Understanding our differences and our positionality inside others’ communities helps us to better work side-by-side in meaningful ways. Thank you so much for your time, Mary!

Exciting Opportunity for Interpreters (and other informal educators)

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 18:52:47 GMT

Our Fall Mini Grants101 Workshop is complete!

We partnered with the National Association of Interpretation (NAI) to host a special, 3-part workshop series to help kickstart any budding grant-seekers and grant-writers out there. Many of the 15 participants took advantage of the 1:1 mentoring session with Mary or Mandy to discuss their particular organization's needs and goals related to grant strategy, seeking, and writing.

Together, we learned about the biggest grant questions on interpreters minds, the cool things happening around the country, and discovered dozens of new funders that might match specific types of projects. We also explored a variety of platforms to search for grants and talked about how AI might be able to support fundraising.

Feedback from the Grants 101 cohort suggests that time learning about grants with experts and the templates we provide during the training were the most useful aspect of the program.

While we highly value collaboration and strive to build supportive communities of practice through their mentoring and training programs, we're still trying to figure out how to foster that long-term supportive atmosphere withing our more abbreviated trainings. If anyone has any ideas along those lines... please reach out to us.

As for our participants - we're wishing you the best of luck in your grant and project pursuits - and we hope you share your journey with us so we can support and celebrate you along the way. !!

10 Things to Know About Grant Writing

Mon, 13 Jun 2022 11:55:38 GMT

When people work up the courage to walk down the grant writing path, they are often met with unfamiliar hurdles. New terminology, literature searches, awkward calculations, confidential salaries, and complicated instructions can all add to the daunting nature of this work. This is why Mary and I are here; we guide growing professionals through these obstacles while helping you keep your eyes on the horizon. The list below is a compilation of some of the most common speedbumps we see as new grant writers get acquainted with the funding landscape.

RFP's, NOFO's, and FOA's Oh My!

Don't be alarmed when you see these acronyms. They are just jargony terms that grant-makers (funders) use to describe the documents used to announce funding opportunities. We've seen more than a handful of versions of this in our career, but here are some of the most common: Request for Proposals (RFP), Notice of Funding Opportunities (NOFO), and Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA). So the next time you search for funding, see what happens when you use these acronyms in your search engine!

Letter of Intent or Letter of Interest (LOI)

Grant writing is time consuming. Reviewing grant applications is too. In order to save time for both parties, many funders require prospective applicants to pass a condensed, preliminary checkpoint before being invited to prepare a full application package. If your funder requires this, pay special attention to the deadlines, communicate with the grant officer in charge if you have questions, and get your preproposal or Letter of Intent (LOI) in by the deadline. in nearly all cases where a LOI is required, if you miss the deadline, you will not be eligible for this grant during this round.

Matching Funds

Some grants require that you bring resources to the table in order to be eligible for the grant. This is the fine print you need to seek before getting your hopes set on any particular funder. It's also one of the first questions I ask of new clients when they are considering hiring me for a grant. If they don't have the required resources to balance the demands of the NOFO ( see what I did there? ), then it's probably not the right grant for the job. However, new grant writers should be aware that sometimes funders require cash, but other times, they accept in-kind resources as collateral for the matching expectation. They may ask for 10-50% of the grant budget be matched by your organization. A 1:1 match is when you (and your project partners) put in 50% of the funds and the grant pays the other 50%.

You have to read the instructions carefully to be sure, but oftentimes, funders will accept the following matched resources:

Volunteer time (currently valued at $29.95 an hour in 2022)
Facility rental loss (the amount an outside organization would pay to use the meeting space)
Equipment donations or purchases, timed with the grant, that support grant activities
Your nonprofit's staff time (Senior leadership time and Fringe adds up quick. Give them some in -kind hours!)
Do you host a fundraising event? Put those funds into the same project as a match.

Fringe Benefits/Fringe Rate

Have you seen these acronyms before? FTE and PTE? They stand for Full Time Employee and Part Time Employee. For larger organizations with dozens of staff members, they commonly have benefits that vary by someone's employment status category. Businesses pay taxes like social security and unemployment for each employee. Moreover, FTE's often have medical insurance, time off, and other perks (like tuition assistance, admission tickets, and professional memberships) associated with their employment. PTE's have similar opportunities, but usually fewer perks like paid time off. As a result, there are hidden costs to hiring employees that many staff never think about. These hidden personnel costs are called Fringe Benefits. Nonprofit organizations typically pay anywhere from 10% to 45% of an employees salary in fringe benefits. Thus, when you calculate a staff members cost to a grant, you need to consider adding their Fringe benefit costs as well. Otherwise, those added monies will come out of the nonprofit's operational budget.

Indirect Cost Rate (IDCR) or Overhead

The cost of doing business is more than just paying staff salaries and supply costs. Your nonprofit likely pays property taxes or rents, utility fees, technology support, and other operational costs in order to keep the business open. These expenses are called indirect costs or overhead. Some grants don't allow any IDCR, other's allow 10%, and others allow up to 45%. Claim as much as you can to help keep your business's operations strong. See your organization's accountant to get a sense of the real Indirect Cost Rate (IDCR). If your team doesn't have a sense of this figure, Nonprofit GrowthGen can guide you in how to make the calculation.

Letters of Support or Commitment

Do people in your community think your project has merit and will meet a community need? Or di you have partners committed to supporting this project? Then document that support through letters from organizational representative on their own letterhead. Letters of Support (LOS) serve to demonstrate the stakeholders in your area support the project proposal. Perhaps you want to work with teachers or students in the county, then get several teachers, parents, and administrators to share why they see your program proposal as important. Letters of Commitment (LOC) demonstrate that your partners are so invested in the proposal that they are willing to commit, in writing, that they will contribute staff, volunteers, buildings, equipment, or other expense-incurring resources to the project. We share best practices and templates of these letters in our trainings.

Board Participation

Some grants expect that your board is actively involved in supporting your organization through annual financial contributions. It's important to know whether your board has 100% participation and to what degree the total giving is during recent years. Even if it's just $5 in cash from lesser-giving board members, it can make a difference in your eligibility. It also looks much better to reviewers to see that your board's total giving (and getting from their network) is impacting funds somewhere in a range that aligns with requested funds.

Personnel Summary

Most NOFO's require that you have a key personnel list as well as 1-2 page resumes for project leads. This can be time consuming for grant writers to gather fresh each time, so we suggest that you/your organization maintains and updates a stock pile of 1-paragraph summaries, 1-2 page resumes, and/or Curriculum Vitae of most key leaders that may support grants. This way, you can pull the resource rather than generate it every time.

Text Formatting and Word Counts

There are few things more frustrating and tedious as a grant writer than to realize you were mistaken on your formatting, word counts, and page limits. Log the font size, type, spacing, and margin guidelines up front. Note whether they want specific headers or questions prompts recorded in order. Mind the page and word counts. Editing a 300-word section down into a 150-word section almost takes longer to refine and vet than writing the original section from scratch. Pay attention to these requirements. Double check them. Record them at the start of each written document you create. Also, be sure to note and follow any document naming conventions

Submission Portal

There is a WIDE range in how grants are submitted between private and public funders as well as local, national, and international agencies. Submission can be as easy as sending several attachments to a grant officer through email, or it can be as complex as navigating a password-protected dashboard with multiple permissions and upload demands. In the latter case, file uploads may have specific size, type, and naming conventions. Another practice we're seeing more and more is uploading files into a personal shared folder from the funder. In all cases, be wary of saving your submission for the last 24-48 hour window. These systems can get bogged down by increased usage the lag causes stress and even inhibits submission by the deadline in some cases.

Summary

If you're still reading, that's a great sign! Grant writing requires perseverance, and you're showing it here.

Remember, it takes practice to build a new skill. Every time you read, write, and submit a grant, the next one gets that much easier. There is a huge initial learning curve, but you're not in it alone. Consider joining one of our live instruction cohorts to join a team and get a new support group as you sharpen your skills. Or, if you need a more convenient and self-paced option, consider signing up for one or all of our asynchronous learning options. With that option, we're still available for 1:1 mentoring... you'll just have to schedule time during during our office hours!

We look forward to working with you and celebrating your future successes!

Happy Granting!

Mandy Kirchgessner, Ed.D.

Strong Partnerships Start with Humility

Mon, 23 May 2022 11:55:38 GMT

Relationships grown when we're proactive, transparent, and genuine.
Whether you're working with volunteers, designing a new initiative, developing a new project, or delivering reports... if we approach the work and our partners with an understanding that we still have lots to learn, we all grow together. This is working with a lens of humility. If your work has you interacting with people from vastly different backgrounds from you, it's also important to be aware that potential blind spots and misalignments of meaning will naturally occur. If you can be curious, open, and responsive to them, this is approaching your work with Cultural Humility.

I've made some of the mistakes below.

As a cisgender, white woman from the Continental US working for an organization serving Native Hawaiian people and histories, I made some mistakes. Most of those mistakes were preceded by an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach when I thought about my next-step in grant-writing. I would be in such a rush to meet a grant deadline, I would break my own rules about how to build relationships. For example, I circled back to a fairly unfamiliar contact to ask them to support a new initiative we never discussed. One of the most 'ah-ha' light bulb moments of my career was when I asked a team of my colleagues if a Hawaiian Title I crafted was a good name for a project submission. The look on their faces helped me to realize I was using culture as a 'sprinkle on top'* rather than the substance it merited through deeper work. That day changed a lot for me. I'm so thankful the team was understanding, informative, and encouraging to me as I continued to learn how I can do better. I still cringe when I think about those moments, and I know I will probably make more mistake in the future. However, I'm here to continue learning while also sharing my missteps with others.

*I want to honor and thank some of the colleagues who really helped me grow during this time: Lokomaika'i Lipscomb , Kapalik ū Maile, Bill Marston, Leah Caldeira, and Kamalu du Preez. In fact, The latter two introduced me to the "sprinkle on top" analogy.

There are so many ways to begin and strengthen relationships. There are also ways to damage them. You know your community better than we do, so only you will be able to answer the following question: Are you knowledgeable enough about an emerging project partner to to speak on behalf of them? If the answer is no, then you should probably invite representatives from this business in your planning discussions OR you should find someone who can serve as a more informed liaison between your organization and this partner. The best collaborations actually start with the partner at the table. The next best invite them to the table early on. These are the partnerships that last, overcome, and achieve great things. Sadly, the one's that begin with one organization asking for approval rather than collaboration tend to be fleeting and superficial at best.

Below, we play out various partnership-building strategies. They are listed in order of weakest to strongest collaboration and inclusive practice strength.

The "I did this thing I think you would have liked, can you say it was awesome?"

Yuck. This does not feel good for anyone. Not only was this partner an afterthought, but the sentiment has us all questioning the motive. Does this organization want to look good, or be good? If the organization genuinely wants to work with this group in the future and support their shared interest, then we propose this alternative approach. "Hey, we did something I think you would have really liked. Would you like to learn more about it? We're wondering that, if we repeat or expand upon this in the future, if you might like to be involved in design/development/delivery of the next phase."

The "Hey can you look this over and sign it" Partnership Ask

Shucks. Maybe you didn't have time to vet your ideas and plans through the ideal partners. Should you even ask them at this point to be involved? The answer is mixed. If you approach this from an "I know best" and "You should agree with my plan" standpoint, we're not impressed. However, if you can use this moment as a transparent realization that things warrant more deliberate communication and inclusion in the future... then there is opportunity. In talking with a prospective partner, collaborator, or stakeholder at this stage, we suggest sharing with them what you are trying to accomplish with this grant. Acknowledge you wish you involved them sooner. Invite them for input now and to several discussions in the near future to continue growing your own understanding and readiness to serve others.

The "We've been working on something for a while now when it dawned on us that you should be here with us!"

Whoops. It's an easy mistake. You're past the design phase of setting goals and outcomes, but you realize someone (a person, stakeholder, or client) is missing from the discussion. It's certainly not too late to see if they are interested in being involved, on what level, and at bare minimum - gather their input about the project design and intended outcomes. You can still refine your approach to be more impactful with their expertise added.

The "I've got this idea I think you might like. Want to work with me to develop it?"

Cool! You have an idea and you want to partner early to see how you all can work together to be the most thoughtful, effective, and strong team as you shape and plan for your goals.

The "Wow, we really value working with you and what you do for our shared community. What more can we do together?"

Fantastic! You've found a partner who's voice and ideas helps amplify your combined efforts. It's great to maintain that connection while, collectively, asking yourselves if any other perspectives or stakeholders would add value and strengthen your ongoing collaborations.

The "Our evaluation and/or community feedback says we need to X, would you like to partner or this?"

Wow! Bravo. Not only are you thinking deeply about who you serve, but you're also evaluating what's missing. By acting on this, you are creating a powerful spark that could ignite something really big! Who should be involved in those discussions moving forward? Bring them all to table and think about the problem and what you can do together to overcome it!