4 Questions To Ask Before Hiring a Grant Writer!

Grants are great, without a doubt. They’re a significant source of income for many not-for-profits and charities, and can be the lifeblood that gets exciting new projects going when they’re still lacking just that little bit of support you know you need to get everything to pop in place.

However, the amount of money available all around being offered enticing you to apply can also be a stumbling block. A lot of organisations think they need grants now to ensure their programs, fundraising, and activities are a success.

But securing grants is more than hiring a grant writer, giving them your details and expecting them to work their magic.  There are a few prerequisite questions you need to ask yourself first to ensure that you’re making bang for your buck,

So before you hire a grant writer and wait for money to start dropping in your lap from all the money you’re going to win with them, stop and assess yourself. Ask yourself these four questions, as you look at that thousands and thousands of grant money that you want to get a slice of.

And if you’re ready and comfortable with your answers, launch your grant program with confidence.

Question 1: Are you grant ready?

Winning a grant isn’t about sending for support letters to local MPs and community groups and submitting them with a summary of your project.

As grants grow in funding amount, the more requirements they might look for.

A competitive grant proposal is a snapshot of your organisation. It’s your mission statement, constitution, evaluation plans, financial position and history, all working together to pain a picture for the grant funders to judge on. Additionally, grant money is usually released with priorities in mind, so copy and pasting is a big no go.

Each and every grant proposal has to be customised to address a grant funder’s specific questions and priorities. A grant application is often a complex process with many moving pieces, especially when grant amounts get large.

To be grant ready, you should:

1. Have a strong grant narrative
2. Clear goals
3. An evaluation plan
4. Current financials, or an annual report.

If you don’t have these four pieces right now, it’s alright! This might be a sign to tell you to continue fundraising and working on preparing all of these while developing what you need to welcome a grant writer and launch your grants program.

Question 2: Do you know what you need your grant writer to do?

Like in any project, it’s important to understand who is going to do what. That means deciding what responsibilities your grant writer will have, and what they can or can not do. What’s your role in contributing to grant writing success?

Responsibilities for a grant writer can vary. It impacts how much you’ll pay and how active of a role you’ll need to take in building a grants program.

For example, do you want your grant writer to build your narrative from scratch, or do you have your story ready to go? Do you want them to write and coordinate your letters, your partners, and manage the whole application process, or do you want them to stick to writing and attaching documents you’ll provide for them? What about grant research – do you already have a populated grants calendar, or will you ask your grant writer to search for funding opportunities?

If you need someone to manage submissions, attachments, develop language and project details and write the grant itself, you’ll need a veteran writer who’ll most likely have a very high price tag!

There’s a lot a grant writer can do for you, and it depends on what you and your organisation needs.

However, no matter what role your grant writer plays, you should still be ready to play an active role in developing proposals and projects, and cultivating funders. Don’t expect that hiring a grant writer is to hand someone the reins and say ‘write grants for me’. Grant writing often involves aspects of your whole organisation, so keep that in mind!

Question 3: Are your expectations of your grant writer realistic?

One of the most common questions grant writers are asked when hiring are ‘what is your success rate when you submit grants?’

Honestly, that’s a fairly meaningless question. Success rates can be as high as 90% if your organisation is highly established, have a history of securing funding, and are submitting renewal proposals. However, in open, highly competitive grants, success rates can be as low as 10% to 20%.

There are many variables that go into winning grants, so asking a writer on success rates isn’t the best way of gauging your writer’s expertise. Some of the variables that determine whether you win a grant or not are matters like your reputation, the quality of your project, your organisation-wide grant readiness, your relationship with the funder, and pure competition.

If you’re just starting on launching your grants program or in the process of hiring your first grant writer, set your expectations realistically. Estimate a 20% response rate for grants. You can then help your grant writer by having a grants calendar ready to go, your language and narrative sorted, and an executive director ready to support and cultivate relationships with grant funders.

Having established that success rates is a terrible question to gauge your grant writer’s experience, what questions should you ask then?

Try asking these questions:

1. How do you work when approaching a grant?
2. How do you find and research grant opportunities?
3. What do you recommend when looking for new funding opportunities?
4. What’s the most challenging grant they’ve worked on, and why?

Question 4: Do you have the funds to invest in a grant writer?

Grant writing is a specialised skill. Just like any specialised skillset, it can get expensive. Preparing for a grant often takes time, energy, planning and investment, and not all grants succeed to recoup that cost.

But if you have the funds to invest in a skilled grant writer, you’ll be able to build a robust revenue stream.

Grant writers don’t work on commission either – for a lot of reasons! Writing a grant is hard work, and they should be paid for their skill and expertise regardless of the success of the grant. It’s also considered unethical by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. Additionally, very few grant funders allow you to include the wages and salary of a grant writer into grant budget.

If you’re not ready yet to invest in a grant writer (with all the associated costs and benefits involved), consider bringing in a grants expert instead. They can help you create your narrative and language, assess and audit your current grants and opportunities, create program goals and evaluation models and methods, as well as coach your existing organisation members to write and submit grants.

In the future, all of this knowledge will empower your grants program when you do launch one, and ensure that it’s in the best position to succeed. Knowing how to approach grants is a critical skill for any non-profit organisation, so getting a professional to teach you can be a great place to assess yourself and start out with a great foundation.

Ready to Start?

If you’re still ready to start and launch your grants program after these four questions, then don’t worry and launch your grants program, and get cracking on some grants! Funding opportunities are always available, from various levels of government to private foundations and more. Find your strengths, and get the funding to boost them up to new levels!