Tag Archive for: passion

Why International Grant Professionals Week Matters

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By Danny Blitch, MPA, GPC

Founder of #IGPW and #IGPD

 

The Grant Professionals Association didn’t exist when I drafted my first grant proposal. The Grant Professionals Certification Institute wasn’t incorporated either. Heck, my first grant proposal was written, awarded, and implemented more than five years before those 22 famous attendees met at the Holiday Inn Chicago Mart Plaza for the first GPA national conference. Maybe I would have gone, but I wasn’t invited.

 

Back then, I didn’t know anyone working on grants in the Midwest. Few of you who are reading this article know what it was like to see your colleagues return from professional conferences energized and eager to show off their new found skills – knowing you had no conference in your field. Only a few of us had a network of more than a handful before the #grantchat community existed. We discovered RFPs on our own, searched the card catalog at the library, and happily attended every grantor workshop we discovered. It didn’t matter if the grant opportunity was a perfect fit or not. We learned from the grant-makers. Yes, we soaked it all up, but we longed for the peer affirmation, too.

 

That’s why I worked with so many of you to start #IGPW and #IGPD. International Grant Professionals Week is for us, for you, for all grant professionals. It takes a special breed to raise money for a good cause. Like you, my eyes have gone blurry staring into the blank space beneath the questions, with little idea of what to type. Collectively we know how emotionally challenging it can be to ask our friends, family, and strangers for money. I also remember the euphoria of giving every penny of those funds away to other people!

 

It takes great fortitude to muster a community around a common goal. The pain we feel is real when our passion does not get us funded. Somehow we still feel obligated to schedule the meeting to share the bad news. I have stood there wiping away the tears of my partners before dabbing my own eyes. Why do we do this work? Our passion for good causes and great people knows few bounds.

 

My fellow grant professionals, you are amazing, every day. You will do it again tomorrow, all of March, and every day next year. We are in “this” together. We are writers, program staff, grant-makers, accountants, executive directors, employees, consultants, and volunteers. Together grant professionals make social change happen, and without you, the world would be a lesser place.

 

Join me every day, March 14-18, 2016 as we educate, engage others, acknowledge our partners, and celebrate the grant profession. Why? Because #IGPW matters… to all of us.

 

How 100 Years Sparked a Giving Platform that Connected Donor’s Passions with Changed Lives

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By Becky Jascoviak, MBA – GPF Board Member and Grant Writer at Kids Alive International

 

Kids Alive International, the organization I am blessed to serve, is celebrating 100 years of ministry this year. It’s an incredible milestone that very few companies reach, let alone non-profit organizations. What do 100 years look like? In 1916…

  • The Eiffel Tower was the tallest building in the world.
  • Crossword puzzles hadn’t been invented yet.
  • Only 23% of the world could read and write.
  • Average life expectancy was only 48.

 

At Kids Alive, 100 years look like this: what started as two little orphans taken in by a missionary couple in China in 1916, has now become nearly 7,000 children in 15 countries worldwide. We provide loving homes and promising futures to children who have no hope, a family for one who has been abandoned, an education for one whose father only made it through 2nd grade, a supplemental reading program for a refugee child who has been out of school for three years, and above all, love.

 

It’s why I do what I do: connecting people of passion to the people and projects that will light their fire for a change in the world; connecting donors and dollars to desperate, displaced people. And for 100 years, Kids Alive has faithfully provided people the opportunity to connect with abandoned and abused children through a variety of giving programs including individual child sponsors, service team building labor, and project and program proposals for major donors.

 

As the 100th Anniversary approached, we sought to create a donor program devised to spur the ministry on to the next century – a future-focused appeal, rather than simply a celebration of the past. A three-year plan called the Next Century Initiative was established along with a new fund called the Independence Fund. These two programs, in tandem, provide a way for donors to help build the facilities and infrastructure needed to care for more kids, as well as provide a pool of funds to provide for ongoing needs of our students as they grow into adulthood.

 

Within the Next Century Initiative, there are tangible building projects such as schools, care centers, and residential homes, within each of our countries. Also, there are programmatic funding opportunities such as education, training, and discipleship. This balance allows us to speak directly to the passions and desires of each donor. A vast majority of our donors give to site-specific programs and projects. Perhaps they sponsor a child in the Dominican Republic; they are also inclined to want to make sure that the student has a classroom conducive to learning.

 

We started in 2013 gearing up for 2016 with a quiet phase of donor cultivation and specific major donor proposals. Designed as a three-year giving plan, this program garnered a substantial foundation on which to build the public phase, including extra or special one-time grant giving, matching campaigns, and some fully funded projects. We then expanded to our mid-level donors and a broader reach of grant funding positioned in support of sustaining the ministry long-term. These two phases together have yielded over half of the $6 million we hoped to secure through the Next Century Initiative.

 

It is 2016, and we are off to the races with our celebration events around the country – the truly public phase of bringing the field here to the donors. We’re hosting large presentations and small intimate donor circles, we’re presenting at conferences, and donors are going out of their way to connect with their passions through special gifts.

 

How will you celebrate your next milestone?