The Design Educators Community hosted Successful Grantwriting and Fundraising, a pre-conference workshop October 9th at the AIGA Gain conference held this past week in San Francisco.
The workshop was led by Shoshanah Goldberg-Miller, who has over twenty years of experience in nonprofit administration and corporate sponsorship, and teaches courses in cultural policy, media management, arts administration and grant writing at The New School, Hunter College and Columbia University.
Dr. Goldberg-Miller shared valuable insights and resources during the two-hour workshop such as a basic understanding of fundraising in the nonprofit world, including income sources and motivations of donors. Goldberg-Miller stressed the importance of mission match: finding connections between funding opportunities and projects, and aligning people’s giving with their values and interests.
The workshop provided an introduction to effective proposal preparation for grant-seekers including an overview of research resources and techniques for effective writing and budgeting. Goldberg-Miller discussed how to craft narratives that will encourage prospects to truly care about your organization, which includes being clear about what distinguishes your work from others in your field. Participants were encouraged to be thorough in crafting research grant applications, including an explanation of how project goals and outcomes will be achieved and evaluated (and the important difference in project outcomes vs. output), how findings will be disseminated, and how data and resources will be made available.
Some online resources shared in the workshop:
Guidestar: gathers and publicizes information about nonprofit organizations
Foundation Center: the leading source of information about worldwide philanthropy sources