August 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by admin
Forming your own organization need not entail the establishment of a large, formal institution. It may mean simple coalitions, consortia, or affinity groups that have no formal, separate legal status. Such group formations and alignments may be quasi-independent from existing community organizations or technical assistance agencies or may function as arms or chapters of such agencies. Any nonprofit organization is eligible to serve as an “umbrella group” for the purpose of applying for grants. An umbrella group refers to an intermediate agency, usually nonprofit, that receives and disburses funds to individuals. Churches, schools, community organizations, self-help groups, arts councils, and even local clubs, if they are nonprofit, may serve as umbrella groups for grant applicants.
Examples of the kinds of individual projects that might benefit from this type of less formal arrangement are seasonal events, such as festivals, craft demonstrations, art shows, workshops, seminars, conferences, or poetry readings, all of which are executed within a relatively short period of time. As an individual, or a group of individuals, you really don’t need to form an organization to implement such ideas. You simply require some existing group to cover for you (as an umbrella) for the duration of the grant project. Such a short-term affiliation may take the form of a project under the auspices of an umbrella group or of a simple offshoot from it.
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Posted in: Affiliation
August 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by admin
Closely related to applying for grants on your own — and one option available to the grantseeker along the affiliation continuum — is forming your own (typically nonprofit) organization. Such organizations may be loosely or formally structured depending upon the degree of affiliation required by potential funders. They range from affinity groups of individual grantseekers who band together to provide one another simple moral support to formal tax-exempt 501 (c) 3 organizations incorporated for the purpose of seeking grants for specific projects.
If your idea involves the solicitation of funds from the general public as well as from funders (e.g., a matching gift or similar situation whereby funders provide only part of the project money), if it involves a construction program, renovation, or the large-scale purchase or rental of equipment (e.g., the transformation of a vacant inner city lot into a park, playground, or community garden), if it requires complex long-term procedures calling for several staff people in addition to yourself (e.g., an archeological dig, a free mental health clinic, a dramatic performance), then you probably should consider forming your own organization.
Forming your own organization may take time (from three months to one year), money (from several hundred to several thousand dollars in legal, accounting, and/or registration fees), and may be unappealing to the individual grantseeker who shuns formalities and red tape. Obviously, not all ideas lend themselves to the establishment of nonprofit organizations. For those that do, nonetheless, this is another possibility for the grantseeker. It serves as an alternative to seeking institutional affiliation and sponsorship.
The concept of forming an organization is one of establishing a coalition to create funding opportunities where none may have previously existed. You become, in effect, your own sponsor. Stated simply, if funders require institutional affiliation, you’ll give them an affiliation, in the form of your own nonprofit tax-exempt institution.
If the organization you form qualifies for a certificate of tax exemption from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), it is worth its weight in gold in terms of grant dollars, because a certificate of exemption is required by many corporations and foundations prior to consideration of your proposal. For information on securing tax exemption, see IRS publication 557, Tax Exempt Status for your Organization http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p557.pdf (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office).
A useful dictum to follow in forming your own organization is always to get competent professional advice. Secure free advice where available from those who have already done it and information from agencies like the Small Business Administration — an excellent resource on starting your own business and related topics. You may not have thought of your grant idea as a small business, but in fact this is a useful construct for you to consider. Getting paid professional help as required from lawyers, accountants, bankers, and others provides a kind of insurance and usually proves economical in the long run, because it helps prevent serious mistakes.
To become familiar with the nonprofit incorporation procedures of your own state, write or call your State Attorney General for formal requirements, application forms, and fees. Be aware in advance that the process will take time and will vary enormously in terms of complexity from state to state.
Even though relatively few individual grant projects lend themselves to this type of formal incorporation, it is one option available to you, if you wish neither to work entirely on your own nor to seek an institutional sponsor. It is particularly appropriate for longer-term projects rather than short-term efforts.
For more information on how to form your own nonprofit organization, visit our FAQ: How do I establish a nonprofit organization?
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Posted in: Affiliation
August 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by admin
At one end of the affiliation continuum is the individual whose idea can be developed without either institutional backing or much recourse to the skills and expertise of others. Those in the fine arts — poets and fiction writers, in particular — may fall under this rubric. Also in this category are inventors with simple ideas that can be accomplished within a short time period at one location. Another group is applicants for various awards and/or prizes, e.g., architects competing for cash prizes for best design of a local firehouse; scholars applying for travel funds to present a paper at an international conference; and medical researchers, as well as those in other fields, applying for awards in recognition of past achievement or demonstrated excellence in given subject areas.
Nevertheless, even in these cases of direct grants to unaffiliated individuals, some type of influential connection is usually beneficial. It lends credibility to the applicant if the funder knows he or she was referred, recommended, or even nominated by an academic or other institution or by a mentor, teacher, supervisor, or a prominent individual in his field or community. In other words, even if you decide to go it alone, your valuable personal and professional connections still can be helpful. Do not overlook them.
Although the pleasures and rewards of working on one’s own are many, the individual applying for such grants may be plagued by doubts and fears that serve as obstacles to the development of his idea into a full-fledged grant proposal. First and foremost among these obstacles is a sense of isolation. The grantseeker applying on his own may feel especially isolated because of the lack of an existing support system, compared to institutionalized philanthropy with its conferences and journals, development specialists and computer networks, official and unofficial workshops/seminars, and other support groups.
To overcome feelings of isolation, the grantseeker should attempt to carve out his own personal network of support. It is hardly ever valid to say, “I don’t know anyone.” We all have “connections” of some sort. Sit down and take the time to explore yours. Whom do you know who can help you? Whom do you know who knows someone who can help? Talk to that person or persons.
We have created a worksheet you may find helpful in establishing a listing of your own affiliations. Download the worksheet as a Microsoft Word document or in Rich Text Format.
Other obstacles familiar to most grantseekers are envy of those already funded, competition with other applicants, and fear that someone will steal your ideas. Combat these destructive attitudes by adopting a new stance of cooperation. Again, communication is desirable. Talk to people, especially those active in your field of endeavor. Work on the assumption that there is enough funding to go around. Remember that fears and self-doubts are normal reactions to the grantseeking process. Grantseeking involves the taking of risks, which is almost always a painful process. However, most of your fears will lessen once you take the plunge.
Many grantseekers, be they individuals or representatives of large organizations, experience one final obstacle — shame of needing money. This is an anachronistic carry-over from the long-standing American tradition of rugged individualism. It is merely a question of attitude and can be easily changed. Bear in mind that we all need some form of support from our fellow humans. Society, perhaps most of all, requires the services of individuals who serve as the suppliers of new ideas and the facilitators to turn their new ideas into valuable products or services.
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Posted in: Affiliation
August 7th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by admin
One of the catchwords of the grantseeking world is affiliation. It is most probable that when you began to consider the possibility of seeking a grant, one of the first things you were told was that you must be “affiliated” in order to receive a grant. This statement is unnecessarily intimidating to the grantseeker. Thousands of grants are awarded each year directly to individuals without specific institutional affiliation. Just to list a few:
A tape collector received grants of $10,000 from the National Endowment for the Arts and $15,000 from the New York State Council on the Arts to amass a recording-tape library of various machine sounds.
The John D. MacArthur Foundation, which was formed upon the death of the insurance wizard, provides annual “no-strings-attached” awards of $500,000 paid out over five years to fellows nominated by a squad of talent scouts. The concept behind these grants is to set brilliant individuals free to work on their own ideas on a variety of subjects.
The U.S. Department of Energy conducts a program whereby inventors and small businessmen receive grants of varying amounts to develop and market their own energy-saving ideas.
At a summer Connecticut music festival, there were two composers whose works were on the program: one composer was acknowledged to be a Fulbright scholar and the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship and awards from the Koussevitzky Music Foundation and Boston Musica Viva; the other, also a Fulbright fellow, was the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Composers Grant and the Martha Baird Rockefeller Recording Award.
The Institute of Current World Affairs awards one or two fellowships of about $10,000 a year to individuals (usually in their twenties or thirties) to observe and study at firsthand foreign cultures or issues of contemporary significance. Grant money covers living and travel expenses for two to four years.
The Fund for Investigative Journalism awards about fifty grants each year, ranging from $100 to $2,000, to journalists pursuing specific investigations of a controversial or a worthwhile nature.
This list could be continued almost indefinitely. The grants listed were chosen more or less at random not because they are indicative of particular trends in grant making but rather because none of the individuals who have received or will receive these grants are “affiliated” in the sense that their grant money was contingent upon their having formal sponsors. Yet all of the recipients have many affiliations with various groups, organizations, and institutions in their daily lives. In this sense, no one is truly “unaffiliated.”
As our title suggests, none of us works alone on a desert island. Defining affiliation in its broadest context as “belongingness,” we all belong somewhere. Determining which of our present contacts or those available to us can best serve as sponsors for grant projects requiring such sponsorship is one feature of successful grantsmanship for the individual grantseeker.
Affiliation may be viewed as a continuum ranging from working almost totally in isolation to becoming an employee of a nonprofit institution in order to seek funding for your idea. Identifying the exact degree of affiliation necessary to your success is an essential preliminary step in the development of your grant proposal.
View the affiliation continuum for the individual grantseeker.
There are numerous soft edges and overlaps on the affiliation continuum. Your job is to find where you most comfortably fit in.
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Posted in: Affiliation
August 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by admin
It is said that fewer than one out of ten foundations and very few government agencies are willing to consider proposals from individuals without institutional affiliation. Corporations are reluctant to make grants to individuals unless they are related to the corporation in some way and/or a direct line may be drawn to the best interests of a particular business. (And even then, most often these are treated as business expenses, not charitable contributions.) Even in cases where grants are made directly to individuals, there is often a nonprofit organization, institution, or university “hovering in the background” somewhere. Before you become discouraged by these facts, keep in mind that although at least 90% of all grants are awarded to organizations, many of these grants — and we don’t really know how many — include hidden sponsoring arrangements whereby new groups and individuals qualify for funding under an established sponsor’s name. If you were to catch sight of these donations in a grants list, you would have no way of knowing, for example, that the $5,000 grant to the Junior League was actually for one volunteer to complete and issue a booklet on local child-care services. Also there are countless grants and awards given directly to individuals without formal institutional affiliation, which have never been formally tabulated. Thus, the statistics regarding direct assistance to individuals may be somewhat misleading.
The main reason that funders — foundations, corporations, and government agencies — hesitate to give directly to individuals is simple: it costs too much to do so. Reportedly, it takes as much administrative time and work to award a $5,000 grant to one individual as a $500,000 grant to a university. The obvious administrative strategy to keep down the cost is to give a lump sum to one outstanding group (a sponsor) whose function it is to “pass [grant monies] on down the line.”
A second reason that funders prefer affiliated applicants is that sponsors serve as a kind of buffer to dilute the funder’s responsibility in case something goes wrong. Such responsibility is of particular concern to foundation administrators, whose programs of grants for individuals have been the subject of much Congressional scrutiny in the past. Most foundation grants are awarded to tax-exempt organizations, which in turn select individual recipients to participate in various programs. Foundation trustees thereby defuse their own responsibility for the selection and supervision of individual recipients and are not as answerable in a direct way to the Internal Revenue Service, even in the case in which grantees abscond or misuse the funds. Such cases are rare, indeed, but they have been known to happen. And when they do, they generate much unfortunate publicity.
In the field of scientific research, most grants are made to support the work of individuals. Yet almost without exception, these individuals have formal institutional affiliation of one sort or another. Hence, a third reason for the affiliation requirement: Sponsoring institutions provide a wide range of facilities, equipment, backup, and administrative services, unavailable to the individual lacking such affiliation. In today’s technologically advanced society, many new ideas for scientific and other grant projects require relatively complicated procedures, too complex for one individual to conduct in his own surroundings without access to specialized facilities.
For these reasons, many funders (but certainly not all) have policies against direct grants to unaffiliated individuals. Individual applicants must apply under the auspices of a university, or other tax-exempt organization — that is to say, a sponsor. If the grant is approved, the funder’s check is made out to the sponsoring organization, which in turn administers the project, doling out funds to the individual as needed and often deducting its own usually small administrative fee.
For the unaffiliated individual, these facts are not presented to discourage you. If you decide to apply on your own, it is important that you understand the traditional reasons that funders have preferred applicants with institutional affiliation. They are based on real constraints upon the funder and are not just arbitrary.
The lesson to be learned is that individuals who seek grants should be familiar with the many restrictions on such funds. If you can, by all means apply on your own, but concentrate on funders that have programs free from such constraints or find ways to work around them. If this is not possible, a small dose of institutional affiliation certainly cannot hurt you. As we will see, sponsors are not hard to find. In fact, you probably already are affiliated with some organization or agency that could perform this function for you. With a little ingenuity you can make it easier for a funder to give you a grant without compromising yourself or your ideas.
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Posted in: Affiliation
August 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by admin
Who Needs It?
If you are an individual grantseeker, you might be tempted to say affiliation is not for me. After all, thousands of grants are awarded each year by various types of funders directly to unaffiliated individual applicants. And we know that it is possible to apply for, receive, and utilize grant money all on your own. And yet…there are many individual applicants who could benefit from some form of institutional affiliation. A number of grant ideas truly are enhanced by organizational sponsorship. Others more or less require it. To cite a few examples:
- If you are an inventor working on an idea for a gadget that will improve the quality of everyday life, but you do not require the use of high technology equipment or laboratories, you can probably apply to a government agency or foundation on your own.
- If you are a mathematician whose grant idea relies on complex computer programming and the assistance of technical personnel, you most likely require affiliation with an academic institution or research institute. Funders will want to know that you have access to the appropriate technology before they will award you a grant. They have to be sure that you possess the wherewithal to do what you propose to do.
- If you are a sculptor whose idea involves creating a statue to improve the appearance of a local park, and you already have your own studio, materials, and tools, you most likely can apply to a local corporation or family foundation directly on your own.
- If you are a poet who proposes to give readings at various elementary schools “to turn kids on” to poetry, you might find it helpful to have the local school board sponsor you. This will reassure potential funders that there is actual interest in your idea at the community level, that you will have official cooperation, and that your schedule will be coordinated in a systematic way.
- If your idea involves writing a work of fiction, and the grant you require is for straightforward expenses, then you can apply directly to funders that make such grants for works in progress. Should you have a publisher, a letter of endorsement from your editor will help. If your manuscript is complete, you can apply to one of the associations that give awards under such categories as “best short work by a new author.”
- If your idea is to conduct an oral history project by interviewing on tape those who lived through a particular event in history, you probably should establish a formal connection with a nearby historical society. Funders will want to know that you are working under the auspices of a respectable agency that will supervise your procedures, seeing that you are in touch with appropriate subjects for your interview.
- If you propose to work on a new medical theory that certain enzymes combat a particular disease, sponsorship by one of the major medical research bodies is essential. There are thousands of controversial theories about various diseases, many coming from apparently competent scientists. Grants decision makers ordinarily do not themselves have the expertise to oversee or even fully comprehend your idea from a scientific standpoint. They need to know that some qualified, prestigious body will attend to this for them.
- If you propose to travel outside the country either to gain or to share information in your field of specialization, you definitely must apply under the auspices of a fellowship program or foreign-exchange agency. In this instance, the sponsor serves to guarantee the funder that you are not just taking a paid vacation and also promises to supervise you during your stay.
- If you are a social worker, psychologist, or other type of counselor and you propose to operate a telephone hotline, a youth shelter, an alcoholism program, or other counseling service, of course, you can apply on your own to a foundation or corporation for initial funding as well as for equipment rental. However, if you find a church, community center, or local agency like the boys and girls club to sponsor you and perhaps to donate some space, it will lend authenticity to your idea, which in turn will make it more attractive to a broader spectrum of prospective funders.
This list could be continued ad infinitum. Determining whether or not you need a sponsor is up to you. The decision rests on whether you as an applicant can make it on your own, whether you want to go it alone, whether your idea lends itself to development by just one individual, and whether support services are required. There are as many types of sponsors as there are ideas for grants. As the previous examples indicate, there are varying levels and degrees of affiliation with any given sponsor. The choices concerning what kind you need and how structured or loose the relationship should be are also up to you. The individual grantseeker can and should create a sponsoring arrangement that benefits him and his grant idea, while not losing sight of the motivation of the funder.
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Posted in: Affiliation
August 5th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by admin
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