Requesting grant dollars can be quite intimidating, especially when you’re new to the grant seeking process. When it comes to nonprofit grant writing, there’s not a formulaic approach or “one-size-fits-all”. Rather, you need to customize your approach for each funder you pursue.
Rachel Waterman is here to help! Rachel is the CEO and Founder of GDS Grants. She is a GPA approved trainer and presenter on various topics related to grant writing, research & management, but her favorite "things" are data collection/outcome measures and systems for scale and efficiency. She helped develop the grant management software GEMS Grant Easy Management Software.
In this episode, you’ll learn Rachel’s best tips to:
About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:
Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.
She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.
Julia’s online courses, webinars, and keynote talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and how to do effective marketing in the digital age.
Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
Requesting grant dollars can be quite intimidating, especially when you’re new to the grant seeking process. When it comes to nonprofit grant writing, there’s not a formulaic approach or “one-size-fits-all”. Rather, you need to customize your approach for each funder you pursue.
Rachel Waterman is here to help! Rachel is the CEO and Founder of GDS Grants. She is a GPA approved trainer and presenter on various topics related to grant writing, research & management, but her favorite "things" are data collection/outcome measures and systems for scale and efficiency. She helped develop the grant management software GEMS Grant Easy Management Software.
In this episode, you’ll learn Rachel’s best tips to:
About Julia Campbell, the host of the Nonprofit Nation podcast:
Named as a top thought leader by Forbes and BizTech Magazine, Julia Campbell (she/hers) is an author, coach, and speaker on a mission to make the digital world a better place.
She wrote her book, Storytelling in the Digital Age: A Guide for Nonprofits, as a roadmap for social change agents who want to build movements using engaging digital storytelling techniques. Her second book, How to Build and Mobilize a Social Media Community for Your Nonprofit, was published as a call-to-arms for mission-driven organizations to use the power of social media to build movements.
Julia’s online courses, webinars, and keynote talks have helped hundreds of nonprofits make the shift to digital thinking and how to do effective marketing in the digital age.
Take Julia’s free nonprofit masterclass, 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media That Converts
Take my free masterclass: 3 Must-Have Elements of Social Media Content that Converts
Julia Campbell 0:02
Hello, and welcome to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell. And I'm going to sit down with nonprofit industry experts, fundraisers, marketers, and everyone in between to get real and discuss what it takes to build that movement that you've been dreaming of. I created the nonprofit nation podcast to share practical wisdom and strategies to help you confidently Find Your Voice. Definitively grow your audience and effectively build your movement. If you're a nonprofit newbie, or an experienced professional, who's looking to get more visibility, reach more people and create even more impact than you're in the right place. Let's get started.
Julia Campbell 0:52
Hi, everyone, welcome back to nonprofit Nation. I'm your host, Julia Campbell, really excited to have you here today to talk about actually, shockingly to most of you one of my favorite topics, how to get your grants funded, How to Find Funders how to write compelling grants, how to know exactly who to pitch and when. And we have a grant writing grant funding expert with us today. Rachel Waterman is the CEO and founder of Gds grants with over 25 years of community development and grant writing experience. Her career has encompassed a broad spectrum of professional experiences, including serving as a Peace Corps volunteer, and a lot of you know that I was also a Peace Corps volunteer. So go Peace Corps, a nonprofit, Executive Director, community organizer, city, master planner, researcher, and my favorite piece of this bio, Mayor of the City of Lake Worth Beach, Florida, and that's in South Florida.
Rachel Waterman 1:55
It is Palm Beach County.
Julia Campbell 1:57
Amazing. Well, Rachel, welcome. So excited to have you here.
Rachel Waterman 2:01
Thank you. So excited to be here with you. And great to meet another Peace Corps volunteer.
Julia Campbell 2:07
Yes. So how did all of these experiences kind of gel together and get you into the work that you're doing today?
Rachel Waterman 2:15
You know, life takes his twists and turns, but definitely there have been some common threads. And interestingly enough, I wrote my first grants as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Julia Campbell 2:26
Oh, me, too.
Rachel Waterman 2:28
There you go. Yeah, you know, I found myself out in the middle of nowhere, and I was assigned to help farmers with, you know, their crops, and I was not going to go there, it was like, I'm not going to risk these people's livelihood. So the one thing I found that I could be of service was I was able to be a connector of the community to resources. So I brought resources into the community, I brought them out to opportunities for learning in other parts of the country, we got a grant to bring a group of our farmers clear across the country to a Japanese Technical Center to learn some new techniques. And I also wrote some grants to bring some money into the community. And so that was really my first experiences as a grant writer. After that, I stayed in program implementation, I was really a program person. I worked in various nonprofits in the program as a direct program person. And you know, every time I would have an idea or want to expand my programs or services in some way, I would say, oh, would it be great if we could do this? And, you know, my supervisor would say, yes.
Julia Campbell 3:41
Let's write a grant for it.
Rachel Waterman 3:44
So find out through my early career as I, I got the opportunities to write, to write grants, in addition to whatever my other responsibilities were. And as I had some successes with it, as it would have it, I got more grants given to me to write. So basically, I I never really had a job as a grant writer. My positions were other things. But grant writing always sort of popped up its head when I was with Palm Beach County and working with their county wide community revitalization team, I developed the grant program for neighborhoods to submit for grant funding from the county. I reviewed the grants. I wrote grants on behalf of the County for infrastructure development. So even though I was never really, quote, unquote, a grant writer, grant writing was always a common thread. And so in 2009, at the height of the recession, I was laid off as executive director of a nonprofit. My boy didn't give me much warning. And so overnight, I found myself with two babies and diapers, and no salary, no severance pay. Nothing. And so I got to be creative with how I was going to bring home the bacon. And so it was during the hiring freezes, the government was on shutdown, you couldn't get a job as a substitute teacher. So there I was with, you know, 15 years of nonprofit experience management all the way up to Executive Director and really just kind of found myself in a pickle. So I started reaching out to people I knew to say, Do you need me consulting work, and really, my passion is data. I'm a data girl. So I like doing the impact analyses, economic impact, our Social Impact Program, outcome measures, designing a system, all that stuff. But, or a and the thing that people needed to work with was some grant writing. And so you know, I had always done grant writing, and I had a reputation within my professional circles as someone you know, that got good results. And, in fact, had been doing the grant writing for the organization. And I was also trying to be an executive director for which I don't recommend. And so really just reached out and, you know, one by one people found out I was available or found out about the results we were getting, and it's been 12 years, 13 years, what what year is it 212 13 years now. And we've grown the firm to, you know, be a nice team that really welcomes people in at all levels of grant writing experience. And we really pride ourselves on on training, we run a boot camp every summer, which we are in the throes of right now, which is exciting. It's like 120 hours of training are 180 hours of training and 240 hours of teamwork and a whole bunch of stuff. And since three months of intensive boot camp, and grant writing A to Z, we do that every summer, enables us to help provide some pro bono services because we get some little extra heavy lifting every summer. And we also train we don't charge for bootcamp. So we're doing that.
Julia Campbell 7:13
You know, so funny about your story is we have such a similar story. So I was laid off from my development director job when I was eight months pregnant with my daughter 12 years ago. And then I started freelance grant writing. And similar to you asking people, you know, do you have any work? Do you have any, like kind of grant writing development work? And I liked it. Like you, I also really liked data. And I found that grant writing was just something like you said it, I feel like, it's like, oh, let's have any problem. Let's do this. Let's do this. And what I would love to talk about today is how to make our grant writing more strategic and effective. So what are some of your top tips on on how to make it more strategic and less, like, let's just write a grant for this?
Rachel Waterman 8:02
Well, I think step number one is finding the right grants to apply for, um, funded research is super important. I know people like to just put in one button and get this big list and they go Go for it, you know, and, and that's really not, it's not a great use of your time to make makes much more sense to take the time to really be selective and go after the right grants. And there's way more opportunities out there than you have the time or resources to go after Anyway, don't There's, I really believe there's no reason to go after poorly aligned sources. It's just a recipe for disappointment for for staff and for supervision. So that's number one. And before number one, of course, we need a good program with quote, with good results with data that's meaningful, and that we can have confidence in. I think it's really important. The, you know, the grant writers are not miracle makers. We need good material to work with a quality program that has good results for an organization with a good reputation in the community. And I'm sorry to say this, but it's important to have some base of funding in order to attract new funding. I know that's a real catch 22. But from a grant writing perspective, you need to show that there's other people already supporting your initiatives, before you reach out to people that are beyond your immediate circle. I think that's really key. You want to show that you are responsive to to funders,
Julia Campbell 9:40
how can we conduct this effective funder research because I remember people coming to me and saying, oh, there's this local foundation. Let's just go write a grant to them. But they were not aligned at all with what we were doing.
Rachel Waterman 9:54
Yeah. And it's interesting to me because I'll do workshops on funder research and inevitably They all have at least one person, every workshop say, Oh, this is so great, you know, we used to just write to everyone. And I'm like, really?
Julia Campbell 10:08
What a waste of everyone's time.
Rachel Waterman 10:10
It's such a waste of everyone's time. So, you know, I'm happy to get the word out there, that strategy is essential. As a strategist, you don't realize that people don't know, strategy. Because your whole brain works that way. So strategy is super important. You know, if you don't know how to do research, you can take a workshop, and I'll be honest with you, you're not going to learn everything you need to know in taking a workshop. But you might learn enough to know, do I love this? And do I have, you know, the aptitude for this because it takes a special kind of person, you gotta be happy to run down wormholes and rabbit holes and be a little bit tedious and time consuming. And some people love solving a puzzle in that way. And some people are like, Oh, my God, get me out of here. And so I think it's important first to know, is this something that you love? Or could learn to love? And if so, then it's worth the time to invest in learning how to do it really? Well? If not, it's worth the time to just pay someone who's good at it for a list, go to a grant writer who's willing to do a release a list for you whether or not you're contracting that for writing or not, because it's important, you could the time that you're wasting, lack of research skills could be put toward producing proposals. And I'm a firm believer that, you know, grants is a numbers game proposals low is money in, you know, even if you never get any better any more effective at the writing, if you produce more, more money's gonna come in the math is there, it's about how many proposals can we produce? Effectively, you know, still at quality, because the more we can produce and get out, the more money that will get in.
Julia Campbell 12:09
So what makes a great grant proposal? And what are some of the absolute key elements to include? And then I think a second part of the question is, what should we leave out? Or what can we leave out?
Rachel Waterman 12:22
I liked that question. Can I start there? Yes, sure. So I think it's like, you don't need to be overly honest. It's not lying. You just don't have to talk about some things. Right? Some things you don't need to be bringing up. So I think if you approach it in that way, that your proposal is really like your first day, think about what what do I want them to know about me? How do I show them that them giving me funds is a way for them to reach their objectives? Right, as a funder, I really see a grantee as a subcontractor. You know, the funders, the foundation has these established priorities or mission or objectives. And they're not going out there doing it themselves. They're using their money to accomplish those objectives. So they really need to partner or subcontract with a nonprofit, or direct service organization to accomplish their objectives. So they're really looking for who's going to be the best partner who can turn my money into wine. And so I approach it from that perspective, like, why are we your girl? Why am I your girl? So that's my approach, like, why are we the right choice for your investments slash partnership in reaching these objectives? And so that's where the alignment of objectives is important, as well as your ability to reach them.
Julia Campbell 13:54
I think that what's so important about what you said is making the case for partnership. So rather than looking at grants as a handout or something that where they're just going to give you the money, and then never you're never going to talk to them again. How can you build a partnership with this funder? That's a mutual win win. So what are some of the best things to include in a grant proposal that will help show that we would be a great nonprofit partner to work with?
Rachel Waterman 14:26
Okay, before I answer that, I do want to reference back to the funder research. Oh, yes, absolutely. It's also important that you're looking and doing your research determining if the potential sources you're identifying are year over year funders are funders that are looking to develop a partnership, or is this funding source that you've identified, like just for an innovative solution, a one off type of thing? Because I personally, we sometimes we have something that lends itself to that one off charter type of thing. But typically nonprofits are looking to fund programming that's going to run year after year. And so you need to look carefully for funders that are open to developing a partnership, because it takes so much longer to identify and build a relationship with a funder than it does to keep it. And so you have to, if you're going to have to look for all new funders every single year, you're just spinning your wheels, you're you're not moving forward at all. So it's really important to know that the whole purpose of grant writing is to build partnership, because you need that partnership so that you can grow your programs over time, and be more and be responsive to the community that you're serving. Otherwise, you know, even standing in place is going to be a challenge, and you're gonna burn through your grant writers. So results are important program results outcomes, not only that you have good outcomes, but that your data collection, analysis and communication, demonstrate that you really are collecting metrics, and that you have strong fiscal controls and protocols in place. funders want professionally run organizations. And this is where some of the quandary of nonprofit world comes in. And that sometimes it's the smaller nonprofits that are really close to their, their service populations and doing a lot of work. Sometimes the larger nonprofits have less of a touch on the community, but they're more professionally run and have access to larger sources of money. This is where small nonprofits need to have a moment of reflection. And knowing that if you really want to be able to fund this mission, we've got to professionalize the organization. And it's, it's this it's a it can be, it can be an exciting process. For some nonprofits, it can be a painful process. But it's a process that, from my experience, I see all nonprofits go through of getting over that hump of finding the balance between still being community based but professionally run. And I think that's important to be able to offer to funders.
Julia Campbell 17:37
So when you say professionally run, what are some of the things you think funders are looking for specifically?
Rachel Waterman 17:44
So the data collection, the fiscal controls, a board, that that isn't stagnant? A board that reflects wealth, wisdom and work?
Julia Campbell 17:56
Do you think that funders are changing? Do you think that they are looking for more ways that they could give discretionary income? Or are we still stuck in this? We still stuck in this very specific program focused funding? Kind of, we're stuck in this cycle.
Rachel Waterman 18:14
I think we're starting to see some shifting. I think the focus on programs and outcomes is still very strong. And I see a emerging focus on things, of course, like diversity, equity and inclusion, innovation, and the importance of scalability and transferability. People are looking for solutions that can be more universal in their application, I believe.
Julia Campbell 18:49
What do you recommend for an organization? And I've been on the end of this and you've been writing grants for years. How do you answer the sustainability question, the question that says, how will you sustain this funding after this grant runs out?
Rachel Waterman 19:05
If this is an ongoing program, you should have sustainable program partners, as well as a list of identified potential sources and should be able to share that with your potential funder. If it's a new program, there needs to be a thought out creative funding strategy, of which developing ongoing funders is only one piece. Maybe there's a social enterprise component, a fundraising component, maybe the organization has some reserves are a particular board committee or a foundation or an endowment that they're looking to support this initiative depending on the importance of the initiative to the central bank shins of the organization?
Julia Campbell 20:02
No, I totally agree with that. I think that the sustainability question throws a lot of nonprofits, because the mindset isn't there. They're coming from a scarcity mindset. So they're thinking, Oh, well, I'm asking for this money. Why is the next question How am I going to get the money again next year, it's sort of, we should just be able to have this relationship or have this partnership. But your point about building these partnerships long term, and having your eye on a long term, prize, and relationship with a funder, I think is incredibly important. And to be honest, it kind of ties back to how nonprofits view social media, email marketing websites, a lot of what I do, they look at it much more as a transaction. And what can I get out of this? And how can I milk this quote, unquote, for all of the all that it's worth, where if you really do look at it as this community as this sort of cohesive relationship where it's a win win for both sides, I think it's going to not only open doors for you with other funders, because funders talk to other funders. But it's also going to enable you to create these longer term relationships, and potentially go to this funder for more money, or for different programs after this.
Rachel Waterman 21:23
Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, when I will come up, when I work with a new client, we identify what we call a leader per lead program, which is the program that's a really easy sell to new funders. And we look to rotate out some of our longer term funders who are supporting that lead program. And we say, you know, this is an organization of their funding you now for many years, they're supporting you as an organization at this point. And so you can go to them and say, We, with your support, we've grown this program, and we've been successful now at leveraging your money and bringing in all these new partners. I don't need your money for this program anymore. But I really need it over here. And so we do that very strategically. We look at what's the program, that's a real easy sell. And is it 100% fully funded? And are there funders in there that we could go to, and move that funding around? Because we want to, again, we want to lead with our best foot forward? Grant strategy. It's a strategy.
Julia Campbell 22:31
It's really, it's like moving annual funders into major gift donors. I mean, it's really like, it's a serious strategy.
Rachel Waterman 22:39
Yes, it's a serious strategy. And if you take the time to think about it, in its entirety, you'll get better results. The other thing I wanted to capitalize on something that you had said was having this broad base of funding partners, the concept of sustainability, there's an element of security in there, right? It's like, how are you gonna make it over a bump in the road? And by you having a diverse mix of funders, you've sort of diversified your risk, right? What if a funder, if you have only one or two program funders in the funder changes, you know, they have some board me there's a shift and board members, they change their priorities or focus, and you know, 12 months later, or last time, you could, you could find yourself with no money, and people to serve in whatever whatever it is that you're doing. So it's important to have a mix of funders, I like to compare it to your investment portfolio, retirement portfolio, I wouldn't have all of my retirement portfolio in one fund, because of the fund goes up on my I'm in trouble. But if I have my money in a variety of investments, I can weather the storm of any one investment changing.
Julia Campbell 24:02
I just really want to pull out also, I want to really emphasize what you said about having a dedicated strategy for each funding partner that comes into your organization. That piece of information, I think is going to help so many organizations and certainly would have helped me, I'm thinking of a specific organization I worked with for four or five years when I was just starting out and what you said about having that sort of draw that LEED program, so the easiest, low hanging fruit that everyone really wants to fund. And then when a funder has clearly committed to your organization and demonstrated that they're in, they're in it for good, they're determined to help you succeed, then you can bring them along and say, Well, we have other things to offer as well. And we're so excited that we were able to grow this program. That's just one of I think that tip is going to help a lot of now prophets, a question that I have about grant reporting. What do you recommend? I mean, what do we what do we absolutely need to put in there? How important are stories? Should we focus on data? You know, what should we leave out?
Rachel Waterman 25:16
So, reports are near and dear to my heart. I love reports. In fact, I think reports are many, many asks, I really appreciate reports. In fact, even if I'm not required to submit a report, I do want anyway. Because the year that I'm a grantee, I have the funders audience, I have their ear. You know, we work so hard to get funders to listen to us. So I don't know why when we have when we are their grantee, and we have a direct line to a person a phone number and email, why we would have any feelings of resentment or frustration about having to submit a report now, while the reports are arduous and tedious. And listen, you're asking way too many questions, some of you funders out there, but the concept of reporting I absolutely love In fact, I just sent out two courtesy reports today. And for me, reporting is an element that's reflective to your as much of your program as to the grant and the grant requirements. So for example, one of the programs I just sent a report out today was on a school based program. So the school year is just completed, and we've got our, our, you know, assessments done, and we're able to see what our outcomes were for this school year. So we have the data. So anytime I get impact data like that, I'm gonna send it out to all of my funders for that program, regardless if I have a report due. So that's one thing I want to keep my funders up to date. And I want to remind them of my successes and remind them that I was a great choice for them to partner with to reach their objectives, that through our work, we are reaching their objectives. The next thing about reports is I want to make sure that I am setting up my next request. So in the report is my opportunity, they always ask you that question about challenges, right? What have been your obstacles, your challenges? That to me is my favorite question, because that's when I can tell them what I'm going to ask them for money for next. So let them know, Hey, this is what's been going great. This is the area of need that we're seeing right now, this is the area of improvement, there is no shame in having somewhere to grow. You know, whether it's a capacity thing a staff need a data need a technology need to reach more people to expect whatever it is, you know, there's a service miss a gap in service by you showing that you're showing your responsiveness to your people, you're showing the value of the investment that you've made in this organization. And you're already letting them know, Hey, this is what we need money for. I really pride myself, every once in a while, we will submit a report and we will get a new check. I will not even need to have to write a new application. And that to me, is the top you know when I get a check on a report. And the reality is like why do I have to write a new application, you've known how the program's going, give me your report, you know what we're working on. And you know what we need money for. So really, if you write a good enough report, and even if they asked you to write an application, you should have most of it already done, your analysis will be done from your report.
Julia Campbell 28:41
I love that there's no shame in having in showing room to grow. I think that's something that a lot of nonprofits need to hear. So just to wrap it up, tell me about this grant easy management software. It's called gems, which I love that name. What is it? And yeah, how can nonprofits use it?
Rachel Waterman 29:03
So gems, grants, easy management software is a grant management software, you can find it at Grant Management made easy.com. And we're going to have a coupon for your listeners for a free month on their subscription. So I'll get that to you. You can put it in your show notes. Grant easy management software, essentially grew out of our recognition that grant writers are underpaid and overworked. Burnout is high. And we wanted to create a way for us in our firm to be able to generate more income without passing on that, that cost to our clients. You know, we could be the best grant writers in the world but if we become too expensive, the organization will just go to a cheaper ground writer. There's you know, there's only so much you can you can make in grant writing and we were already not sleeping. We're working 24 hours a day. So we're like the only way to make more money is to produce more proposals, the only way to produce more proposals is to have a really tight system. So you need a system to scale. So we created a system that would allow us to scale. In the first year of having the system in place, we went from writing 100 proposals to over 350. In the first year, most of that I was writing by myself. And so we've put this system in place where we're able to generate a lot of proposals, and high quality, we're almost always the highest scoring proposal in a in a batch, we really pride ourselves on, you know, most of it is time management. And so gems is a online software solution very affordable, that you can store all of your information in one place from last year's grant archives to the portal to log in quickly my login information, I say that within three clicks, you can find any information you need for your organization, your funder information, your grants, information, grants, and progress, excerpts that you like research that you'd like to include all in one place. It's really wonderful for grant consultants, because you can give access to each of your clients to their own work plan. So you're working in complete transparency, it increases the confidence of your clients, they can see what you're working on at all times. And no more silly questions that take my time because Oh, do you? Do you remember when we turn that in? Or? Or what did you ask for? Do you have a copy of that budget? Or do you have a copy of the war check, it's all in one place. It's all at a click of a button. So really, we're able to maximize our time by minimizing the time that's wasted on on a lot of those other tasks. I even have a client i She told me that she brought on the new advancement director. And she's actually using the grant management system to train her new staff. She said, login, go find these five grants, you know, they were like the bigger ones we wrote about programs, she's like, read them, that'll tell you what you need to know about the programs, I'm so excited. My clients really use the system now takes a little bit of time to, you know, encourage them to log into one more thing and use it but my clients now win an award letter comes in, they upload it right in the system, they'll tag me, here it is I can get a thank you letter out or they can however you work with your clients, but it's seamless. Everybody's in one place for nonprofit organizations. Also, the subs annual subscription for an individual organization is $480 a year, it's ridiculous to get yourself organized.
Julia Campbell 32:43
Development jobs, high transition.
Rachel Waterman 32:46
That's right. And every time the development person transitions, how many funders do you lose, I can tell what year an organization lost their grant writer by their 990s. I can, I can see it. So this preserves your institutional memory. Plus, it allows you to have protocols in place where everybody knows what's going on at all times. You can supervise your employees, you can grow your team, you can finally get help. Because grant writers too often all the informations in your head, or an executive director who's doing all the grant writing, it's all in your head, you can't even get someone to help you. Now you can actually get someone to help you because the information is somewhere else. I have people that prep my applications, they go right in these login, they set it up in the system, they cut and paste all that basic information, we run a course that's called How to write a grant one business day or less. Because I think over 90% of the apps we do we get done in less than eight hours. You know, even the big ones we can do in about 72 hours or less. Because we're organized, everything's at our fingertips, we're not looking for anything.
Julia Campbell 33:52
I used to use an Excel spreadsheet with different columns. To say this is when the grant is due. This is the status. This is where the contact information. I should show you my crazy Excel spreadsheet that I used.
Rachel Waterman 34:08
One of our slogans for jams is divorced your spreadsheet. And the executives, they hang on to those spreadsheets like we find that hung on to hers with a death grip. She was not letting go even though we had everything in the system, the spreadsheet, you spend more time updating the spreadsheet than you do doing the work
Julia Campbell 34:26
Cultivating the funder.
Rachel Waterman 34:28
That's right, because the spreadsheet is not built for this. And so you have to constantly be updating it. And you wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat. Did I miss that report? Did I update the spreadsheet? So yes, we one of our slogans is divorce your spreadsheet, let it go get it into the system, and really free yourself to cultivate new funders to write more proposals and bring more money in for your programs.
Julia Campbell 34:57
Well, Rachel, thank you so much. We're out of Time, but people can reach you at GDS grants.com and Brant management made easy.com. Absolutely. Thanks so much for being here.
Rachel Waterman 35:13
Thanks so much for having me.
Julia Campbell 35:22
Well, hey there, I wanted to say thank you for tuning into my show, and for listening all the way to the end. If you really enjoyed today's conversation, make sure to subscribe to the show and your favorite podcast app, and you'll get new episodes downloaded as soon as they come out. I would love if you left me a rating or review because this tells other people that my podcast is worth listening to. And then me and my guests can reach even more earbuds and create even more impact. So that's pretty much it. I'll be back soon with a brand new episode. But until then, you can find me on Instagram at Julia Campbell seven, seven. Keep changing the world you nonprofit unicorn