Raising Money for Your Idea

Gali Cooks, the Executive Director of the Kaplan Family Foundation came to speak to us about the grant making process.  She spoke about grants from the organization and foundation perspective, those writing and those reading the grants.  She spoke very well in the short time we had with her.  While the grant proposal and process of analyzing the grant is lengthy, she made sure to cover all of the key points in order that we give us the best possible overview.

First we discussed the content of a proposal, from the grant makers perspective - what should a good grant proposal include?

   1.  The problem

   2.  How does your organization plan to fix it?

   3.  What is the long-term impact it will have?

   4.  Who else is working with you to achieve these goals?

   5.  Who are the other funders?

Then we discussed the grants from the other side of the table, the grant making process:

What should the grant makers, foundations or philanthropists, look for?

   1.  She stressed the importance of looking at who the leaders are.

We discussed how, especially in the non-profit world, that when funding a project or initiative, the leadership is so important, probably even more important than the product.

Non-profits' goals are to build community and a better society, Gali called it "Tikun Olam in its purest form." But this means that leadership should not be alone - leaders need a team backing them.

   2.  What is the intended impact?

What are you goals? Who are you trying to effect? Who else is trying toachievesimilar goals and how are your plans different? What does/will success look like?

   3.  Have any goals beenachievedthus far?

   4.  What is the structure of the organization? She stressed the importance of having the right people; an organization is all about the people.

          a.   Who is doing what?

          b.  Hierarchy and capacity - is there enough staff?

   5.  Financial information

Delve into what the organization has previously been spending on and what exactly they're asking for, with a detailed budget.

We then proceeded to do a grant making case study so we could get some hands-on experience of the process.

The session was very successful, as our time was used wisely, each fellow definitely learned something new, we had the opportunity to ask questions, and we got hands-on experience.

Contributed by Shanee Ovadia, JSET Fellow '08-'09