Grant Writing Confidential

I recently wrote about the likely impact of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting on grant making and seeking, which is why this CNN piece about ongoing gun violence in inner-city Philadelphia and Chicago in the context of Sandy Hook resonated with me. Unlike the sudden impact of Sandy Hook, which captured the nation’s attention and [...]

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I’ve about had it with the endless blathering about the so called fiscal cliff.* There is one nugget in the story, however, that should strike fear and loathing into the hearts of nonprofit executive directors: Whether or not President Obama and Speaker Boehner hold hands as they jump off the cliff, America faces an enormous [...]

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In the L.A. Times, Howard Blume says that a “Gates Foundation-funded education-reform group [is going] to close,” because the organization—Communities for Teaching Excellence lost 75% of its funding. And that 75% came from a single source: the Gates Foundation. This story holds an important lesson for nonprofits: you’re only as good as your next revenue [...]

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In a Hacker News thread, “guylhem” asked a (very) common question, in the context of firms that specialize in providing services to nonprofit and public agencies: “Why exactly is profit / commerce considered a bad thing?” Since we’ve been working with nonprofit and public agencies for decades, we naturally have some ideas about the issue [...]

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As we’ve written about before in “What Budget Cuts? The RFPs Continue to Pour Out,” “One, Two, Three* Easy Steps to Start-Up a Nonprofit Upstart,” and “Grant Writing from Recession to Recession: This is a Great Time to Start a New Nonprofit,” the Great Recession and continuing economic malaise present tremendous grant opportunities for nonprofits—provided [...]

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