Why You Need a Grants Consultant (and Not Just a Grant Writer)
What is a Grants Consultant?
In the world of nonprofit organizations and businesses seeking funding opportunities, grants play a crucial role in securing financial support and are an important part of a “healthy” portfolio of funding. However, navigating the complex landscape of grants can be a daunting (and time consuming) task, requiring expertise, research, and meticulous planning. This is where a grants consultant team like ours comes into the picture. In this blog post, we will explore the role of a grants consultant and shed light on why it is more beneficial to hire an expert team that includes a grants consultant rather than relying solely on a grant writer.
A grants consultant is a professional who specializes in providing strategic guidance and assistance throughout the grant-seeking process. As grants consultants, we possess a deep understanding of the funding landscape, including the different types of grants available, application requirements, and compliance regulations. A grants consultant acts as a partner, working closely with organizations to develop a comprehensive grants strategy that aligns with their objectives.
What Does a Grants Consultant Help With?
Enhanced Efficiency: An expert team can streamline the entire grants process, ensuring deadlines are met, and reducing the time and effort required from your internal staff. Our team takes what you already have off-the-shelf and gets proposals organized, ensuring that your input is focused on where it makes the most impact: directing the strategy for the grant, confirming the funding requirements and details, and ensuring accuracy, rather than pulling together all the information and drafting the narrative from scratch every time.
Developing and Refining Grant-Appropriate Funding Needs: Not all of an organization’s funding requirements are a strong fit for grants. A grants consultant can help determine which organizational needs (e.g. programmatic, capacity-building) have the highest likelihood of lining up with what grant funders are interested in.
Grant Research: A grants consultant conducts extensive research to identify relevant funding opportunities that match an organization's mission, goals, and requirements. We stay updated with the latest grants and funding trends, ensuring that organizations have access to the most current opportunities and can stay abreast of innovations and changes in the funder landscape.
Strategic Planning: Developing a solid grants strategy is crucial for success. A grants consultant assists in creating a roadmap, outlining which grants to pursue, the best approach to take, and how to align proposals with the funder's priorities. We take it a step further, applying our project management professional expertise to the grant application process.
Proposal Writing and Editing: While grant writers focus primarily on crafting compelling proposals, a grants consultant brings their expertise to the table throughout the application process by providing valuable input, guidance, and editing to ensure that proposals are strategically impactful, highlighting what organizations need to get funded, and tailored to meet the specific requirements of funders.
Compliance and Reporting: Grant awards often come with compliance regulations and reporting requirements. A grants consultant helps organizations navigate these complexities, tracking requirements, and ensuring that all necessary documentation and reporting are completed accurately and in a timely manner.
How is a Grants Consultant Different from a Grant Writer?
A grants writer is one person primarily focused on crafting well-written grant proposals. They excel at putting ideas into words, highlighting an organization's strengths, and making a persuasive case for funding. On the other hand, a grants consultant or team of grants consultants like us takes a broader approach.
For less than the cost of one full-time grant writer, we bring a whole team (including a grant writer) to the table to refine funding needs and priorities, conduct research, guide the overall grants strategy, assist with compliance, project manage the grant-seeking process, draft the proposals, and provide ongoing support throughout the grant cycle. In other words, a grants consultant is a comprehensive partner, working alongside organizations from start to finish.
How to Know When You Need a Grants Consultant vs. a Grant Writer:
Small or Limited Team Capacity: Perhaps you can imagine this all-too-common scenario: a senior leader in your organization spends nights and weekends pulling together the complicated components of a grant application due in a few days. You know it’s not the best use of their time, but you can’t miss the opportunity to win the funding! It’s hard to get out of the cycle of crashing to pull together grant proposals on a shoestring or at the last minute. If you’re a small or spread-thin team and find that grant writing responsibility often falls on the shoulders of the people in the organization with the least time to spare, you are a great candidate for thinking about outsourcing your grant-seeking to an expert team of grant consultants.
It’s Difficult to Find Grant Writers that are a Good Fit: We have worked with many organizations that struggle to find one grant writer that is a good fit for their organization. Perhaps they have a hard time taking on all of the disparate tasks that need to get done, keeping trains running and applications submitted on time, and generally gelling with the organization. Full-time grant writers can also be expensive, and missing the mark with a hire can cost organizations precious time and resources. Hiring grant consultants instead allows for a whole team’s worth of expertise and experience, with the flexibility of consulting arrangements. Working with a team also allows for a multiplication effect, with a group of people tracking and executing all the necessary elements at the same time: research, strategy, project managing the application process, writing the best possible narratives, and tracking back-end compliance. It’s a bang-for-your-buck that’s hard to find in one person.
Complex Projects or Complex Applications: If you have a project that requires multiple grants, or you are seeking complex funding opportunities like government grants, a grants consultant can provide the expertise needed to navigate the intricacies of the process effectively. Government grants in particular can take a gargantuan effort to prepare, align, and project-manage, and an expert team like ours can do the heavy lifting, leaving you to focus on the strategy.
Research and Strategic Planning: When you need guidance in developing a comprehensive grants strategy that aligns with your organization's long-term goals, or you want to know what other grant opportunities might be out there that you haven’t had time to research, a grants consultant can provide valuable insights and help you maximize your chances of success. We do a full environment scan at the outset of every engagement and refresh our research all the time to make sure you’re not leaving any opportunities on the table. Based on what you already have on your radar and any new funders we find, we develop a pragmatic plan to execute on your grant application strategy.
Compliance Support: Many grants have strict compliance regulations or reporting requirements, and keeping tabs on everything you have to do can be a real time-suck. A grants consultant can ensure that your organization remains compliant, and in good standing with funders.
Why is it More Cost-Effective to Hire an Expert Team that Includes a Grants Consultant?
While hiring a grant writer may seem like a cost-effective option on the surface, it often overlooks the broader requirements of the grant-seeking process. By hiring an expert team that includes a grants consultant, organizations benefit from a comprehensive approach. The team combines grant research, strategic planning, proposal writing, compliance management, and ongoing support. This integrated approach increases the likelihood of securing grants, reduces the risk of missed opportunities, and ensures that the entire process runs smoothly, ultimately saving both time and money in the long run.
In the competitive world of grants, having a grants consultant by your side can make a significant difference in your success. While grant writers play a crucial role in crafting persuasive grant proposals, a grants consultant offers a more comprehensive and strategic solution. By combining expertise in research, project management, and compliance, grants consultants can significantly improve your organization's grant-seeking efforts. Investing in an expert team provides cost-effective benefits, ensuring efficiency, increased success rates, and enhanced compliance.
When it comes to winning grants for your organization, for less than the cost of a full-time grant writer, you can optimize your chances of success and maximize the impact of your grant applications by hiring a grants consultant like Capacita to be your outsourced grants team.