Prospecting for Funds

First step: Figure out what you want to do, and find a partner (a foundation, a corporate giving program, a government grant program) who has the resources and shares your interests.

1) Decide on something you want to do. It has to be important enough to you that you will be willing to spend much of the rest of the course to explore it. It might even be something that you would actually seek to fund and implement. You have to know enough about it to be able to write a reasonably detailed, defensible plan (or be interesting enough to you that you will be willing to research enough to write such a plan). Sketch out these ideas, using the “Program Mapping” format (based on one in Foundation Fundamentals). Post your “Program Map” to the D2L Discussion Board, under “Writing Projects: Prospecting I”

2) While you are gearing up to research grant opportunities for your idea, do yourself a favor. Your first research project is to search for scholarship opportunities which would be appropriate for you. Provide a list of the search strategies (and keywords) you used, the number of initial hits you developed before you refined your list, and your “final” refined list (you don’t need to investigate these funders—unless you want to). Post this work to the D2L Discussion Board, under “Writing Projects: Prospecting II.”

3) Develop your research strategy.

a) Write a short statement explaining whether you will use a subject, geographic, or types of support approach, or some combination of the three.

b) Provide a list of the search strategies (and keywords) that you used, and the number of initial hits you developed before you refined your list.

c) Find at least 3 really good foundation matches and develop a “Prospect Worksheet” (p. 42 in Foundation Fundamentals) for each one. In addition to the Foundation Center resources, you might look at the various grants indexes and Internet Prospector (http://www.internet-prospector.org/project.html ), or others of the resources listed by our library. As you refine your search, you might want to research prospective organizations using GuideStar (http://www.guidestar.org ).

d) Find at least one good government match and develop a “Prospect Worksheet” for that one.

e) Find at least one good corporate match, and develop a “Prospect Worksheet” for that one.

f) Post these five worksheets to the D2L Discussion Board under “Writing Projects: Prospecting III.”

MSU