How to Compose Your Grant Application's Management Plan
The management plan of your grant application tells the grant reviewer who’s accountable to whom. It clearly shows where the buck stops when questions arise from the funder. In your management plan, the [more…]
How to Organize Your Grant Application's Attachments
The attachments to your grant application go in a specific order. For most government grant applications, the attachments are compiled in the order that you refer to them in the narrative you construct [more…]
How to Submit Your Grant Application Electronically on Grants.gov
E-grants are the only way to submit your funding request to many corporations and foundations, as well as to most government agencies, especially the federal government. [more…]
Quarterly Accounting Reminders for Your Nonprofit Organization
To analyze the financial health of your nonprofit organization, the board of directors needs quarterly financial statements, which monitor the flow of revenue. Likewise, for taxes, grants, and contracts [more…]
Annual Reminders for Your Nonprofit Business
Running a nonprofit requires that you annually prepare and submit paperwork to your employees, the Board of Directors, the Social Security Administration, and the IRS. Each year, you should evaluate your [more…]
Weekly Reminders for Your Nonprofit Organization
To ensure your nonprofit’s daily activities are completed, organize a weekly to-do list and prioritize the tasks so the important ones are done first and other jobs are scheduled around them. Managing [more…]
Monthly Budgeting Tasks for Your Nonprofit Organization
As a director or manager of a nonprofit, you require monthly budget assessments to track and manage your nonprofit’s finances. Monthly meetings, which should happen after a cost-benefit analysis, should [more…]
Nonprofit Bookkeeping & Accounting For Dummies Cheat Sheet
To stay organized and on top of your nonprofit’s bookkeeping and accounting responsibilities, complete tasks that need to be done daily, weekly, quarterly, and yearly. Keep necessary financial information [more…]
Cause Marketing For Dummies Cheat Sheet
Cause marketing is a partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit. The profit in cause marketing comes in two forms. For the nonprofit, the profit is money and branding/visibility [more…]
Knowing Where to Look for Grant Funding
Before you can write a grant proposal, you need to know who’s interested in funding projects similar to the one you’re proposing for funding. Do your homework to locate as many potential grant-funding [more…]
Writing Effective Grant Proposals
To make your grant writing stand out from other proposals, you have to know how to write grants effectively. Do some research for your specific grant proposal and incorporate the following guidelines to [more…]
Grant Writing and Funding Websites
Grant websites have largely replaced weekly trips to the library as the best way of finding grant-funding opportunities. You can also submit the grant applications you write to the funder online. The following [more…]
Maximizing Your Chances at Winning a Grant
A good grant writer spends hours researching and drafting a winning grant application. You don’t want to give a funder the chance to reject your funding request. To increase your chances at winning the [more…]
Grant Writing For Dummies Cheat Sheet
Building your grant writing skills is the best way to secure funding for your organization. The keys to finding grant-funding opportunities and writing award-winning grant proposals are knowing where to [more…]
The Basics of Forming a Nonprofit
To ensure the success of your nonprofit organization, you need to start with a solid foundation. Take a look at the following fundamentals checklist so your nonprofit is set up properly and legal issues [more…]
Tax Traps for Nonprofits
Don't assume that since the federal government doesn't tax most nonprofit income that it doesn't require nonprofits to comply with tax-reporting requirements. Just like for-profit businesses, nonprofits [more…]
Nonprofit Law & Governance For Dummies Cheat Sheet
If you're forming a nonprofit, it's important to start from a well-informed base. These basic start-up guidelines can get your organization up and running smoothly, and being aware of current tax and finance [more…]
What Is Cause Marketing?
Cause marketing is a partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit. For example, you may be familiar with the partnership between Komen for the Cure and athletic shoe maker New Balance [more…]
Forms of Cause Marketing: Point-of-Sale
Point-of-sale is a very common and effective form of cause marketing. When a consumer is solicited for a donation at checkout that is point-of-sale cause marketing. Point-of-sale can take on two forms: [more…]
Forms of Cause Marketing: Purchasing, Licensing, and Message Promotion
A partnership between a nonprofit and a for-profit for mutual profit is called cause marketing. Three of the forms of cause marketing are purchasing-based donations, licensing and caused focused messaging [more…]
Benefiting from Cause Marketing
The essence of cause marketing is win-win — good for the cause, good for the company. But the benefits of cause marketing will vary. Your local food bank will profit differently than the restaurant chain [more…]
What Cause Marketing Is Not
Cause marketing is something that is clearly defined as a win-win partnership between cause and company involving specific tactics. Part of understanding what cause marketing truly is means clearly understanding [more…]
Point of Sale as a Cause Marketing Tactic
Point-of-sale (POS) cause marketing is when the consumer is asked to donate a dollar or two to a cause at the point of checkout. Because these transactions often happen at a checkout register, they’re [more…]
Purchase and Action-Triggered Donations as a Cause Marketing Tactic
In a purchase-triggered donation (PTD), a consumer’s purchase triggers a donation to a cause. This donation usually takes the form of a percentage or portion of the sales or profit going to the cause. [more…]
Digital Programs as a Cause Marketing Tactic
Cause Marketing will be changed by digital programs like the web, smartphones, social media, and especially location-based marketingservices (when consumer marketing is done through smartphones based on [more…]
