Rants About Grants

What Grantseekers Can Learn from Lance Armstrong

  

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It was hard to miss the news last week that Lance Armstrong finally admitted to doping during his legendary cycling career that included seven Tour de France wins.  The admission was a significant let down for many people who not only believed Armstrong’s claims of innocence, but also idolized him because of his incredible athletic achievements, his successful battle against testicular cancer, and subsequent good work done by Livestrong, the cancer support organization he founded and championed.

There may not be much of a silver lining in what has undoubtedly been a spectacular fall from grace, but here are a few lessons that grantseekers can learn from Lance Armstrong:

• Don’t do illegal, immoral, or prohibited things.  That may seem obvious, but there are some pretty critical ways nonprofits can get in trouble, like spending restricted funds for a purpose other than what was designated by the donor.  (There are other, obviously illegal things, too, like stealing money from the organization.)  Don’t do them.  And keep a keen eye out for others in your organization who might be at risk of doing something illegal, immoral, or otherwise just wrong for your organization.

• If something goes wrong, don’t lie about it.  In the process of running a grant-funded program, something may well go wrong.  Things frequently do.  When someone on your team makes a mistake, or something unexpectedly bad happens with a grant-funded program, come clean about it immediately to the funder.  Don’t hide it and hope the funder never finds out.  Getting caught in a lie will only compound the problem, and pretty much sink any chance you might have of receiving future support from the funder (and possibly from any other funder, if the word gets out).

• Winning at any expense isn’t worth the cost.   The old adage that cheaters never prosper rings true in the grantseeking world.  Misrepresenting your organization’s abilities, or doing something that undermines your competition will only come back to hurt you in the end.  Yes, grants are competitive.  Yes, you need to do something to make your proposal, organization, and programs stand out, but do it honestly, and by highlighting your strengths rather than misrepresenting them or denigrating others
• It’s not always a good thing to be interviewed by Oprah.  Several nonprofits had great success after Oprah appearances.  While Oprah may no longer be the primary aspiration for publicity-seeking nonprofits, many nonprofits still seek that one big media break that will make their organization a household name.  But not all publicity is good publicity.  Appearing on a major media outlet – or being interviewed by a celebrity interviewer – can bring both fame and infamy to your organization.  Just be sure that the publicity you’re seeking is for the right reasons and that the coverage will be positive, otherwise it can do more harm than good to both your grantseeking efforts (if the foundation has heard of you because of a negative news expose, you’re not going to get that grant) and to your organization as a whole.

Feel free to add any other grantseeking lessons learned from Lance Armstrong in the comments.

PhilanTech Update - We've Been Busy

  

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Immediately after writing a blog post about the need to blog more regularly (just as grantseekers need to communicate with their funders more regularly), I then didn't blog for two months.

But I have a good excuse!  (I know.  You're saying you also have good excuses for not communicating more regularly with your funders.  And we're both wrong -- we don't have good excuses.  We should be making the time.)

We at PhilanTech have been busy bees lately.  In addition to working with our happy clients and growing their ranks with new grantmakers and grantseekers using PhilanTrack, we have:

• Released a new feature for grantmakers - integrated review functionality within PhilanTrack;
• Added grant research for grantseekers, through a partnership with GrantStation.  Now, within PhilanTrack, grantseekers can search GrantStation's 7,000+ current funding opportunities;
• Worked with GrantStation (speaking of GrantStation) to publish the State of Grantseeking Fall 2011, based on responses to our semi-annual survey.  It will be released broadly on Monday, so stay tuned!
• Developed some other educational resources around grants that will be released in the coming months.  And we're working on more, too;
• Been selected by the Pipeline Fellowship as its first investee.  We're super excited to have a talented group of investors backing our efforts to help the nonprofit sector.

Contact us to learn more about the review functionality for grantmakers or research functionality for grantseekers.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jelene/3399436299/