The Conversation That Shaped the Grant Before We Wrote a Word
My client INCIGHT won a grant from the Oregon Community Foundation, securing the maximum award amount of $40,000. INCIGHT has spent 20 years helping people experiencing disabilities unlock their fullest potential.
I want to tell you how it started, because it did not start with the application.
Oregon Community Foundation had an open call, and as part of their process, program officers were available to meet with anyone in the community who wanted a conversation before submitting.
We took the meeting.
Before we sat down with Coua, INCIGHT’s executive director Scott and I spent time in our weekly check-in preparing. We went over what we wanted the funder to understand, what questions we had, and what we hoped to walk away knowing.
What Coua gave us in that conversation was something no application portal could have provided. She dived deeper into how OCF was thinking about the work.
Things like:
Show how the community shapes your decisions and your leadership, not just your programs, and back it with concrete numbers.
Demonstrate that you have the specific capacity to respond to specific community needs.
Be precise about geography and partnerships, because vague claims of statewide reach tell a funder very little.
What Coua shared gave us a clear picture of how the foundation would likely view INCIGHT’s work, and her guidance became the backbone of our application.
A few months after submitting, OCF’s decision came in. INCIGHT was awarded $40,000, the maximum amount available.
Here is what I want funders to sit with.
Coua did not give us an advantage. She made herself available to everyone. What she gave the entire applicant pool was the opportunity to understand what the foundation needed, in plain language, before anyone wrote a single word.
That is a different kind of grantmaking than posting guidelines on a website and waiting for submissions to arrive.
Many foundations do not do this.
Many program officers are managing too many applications and competing deadlines to open that door, even for conversations where the honest conclusion is that a nonprofit should not apply.
You do not need a new process or a larger team to start. You need someone with 30 minutes and the willingness to have a real conversation about what you are looking for.
The organizations that are serious about the work will find that meeting. And what they bring back to the application will show you who they are.