6 Things to Do While Waiting Your Turn
The quiet parts of life often carry the most potential. The brief silences in music can make a song. The hushed moment before a batter swings or a tennis star serves can be as heart-stopping as the action itself.
Grant seeking is no different. Some of the most meaningful experiences with funders—the turning points—come in what can seem like the endless silence that follows an introduction, an application submission, or even a rejection.
Few major grants land on the first try. You have a right to scowl during the long, often vague process, where a lack of funder communication can feel like the very core of the grantor-grantee power imbalance. Just don’t let that frustration affect your ability to persist. Otherwise, you might be giving up an opportunity to do the one thing that is most likely to make a difference: something.
You don’t want to breach any explicit funder rules or requests, and you don’t want to be a pest. What you can do is find ways to stand out from the many other people who are also hoping to gain the attention of an elusive funder. Although not foolproof, plenty of options exist for turning funder silences into your ultimate advantage:
Personalize your communications. You can be sure that your program officer’s inbox is filled with generic updates, event invitations, and newsletters. When it comes to your largest grant requests, take the time to customize your approach. Macy, a veteran fund development officer, referenced her recent letter of intent in an email to her foundation staffer and asked for a brief call. Her request turned into an email exchange, which blossomed into a series of periodic check-ins. Macy’s tailored notes addressed her contact’s exact interests. At the 15-month mark, a video meeting detailed steps and tips for a full proposal. A six-figure grant followed.
Demonstrate what it’s like to work with you. In the example above, Macy and I regularly discussed the clues each of her messages would convey to the program officer. This kind of detail is key. If you give too little thought to the timing, tone, or content of your messages, you can miss opportunities to demonstrate the kind of partner you will be. Are you rash, halfhearted, and wordy? Or are you respectful, energetic, and concise? You can guess the type of person a funder will choose to engage with.
Be direct. James, another savvy professional, knew that a sought-after foundation prioritized data collection—exactly his nonprofit’s weakness. He was determined to make a recent rejection letter reason for continued communication. He messaged his contact and got straight to the point: “Might the foundation have acted differently if our data had been more robust?” That approach won him a speedy affirmation from the funder. It also gave him the backing he needed to successfully advocate for a core discipline that his colleagues knew needed improvement. James waited 18 months to reapply to the foundation while his co-workers upgraded data systems. Along the way, he let his program officer know about the progress. His efforts eventually paid off in the form of multiple major grants.
Educate yourself. James felt confident enough about his organization’s alignment with this foundation that, despite the initial rejection, he posed a question that set him apart from the many others in his program officer’s inbox. Imagine if he had asked a generic question such as, “What do you think we might do differently next time?” He might still be waiting for a response.
Play the long game. Both James and Macy persisted over many months. They strategized and invested time proportional to the value of their potential major grants. Many of their peers give up too soon. I have seen fund development staff with a solid chance of securing major grants bow out because they assume that silence equals permanent funder disinterest. Or because they move on to other priorities. You can’t pursue all of your prospects with the same intensity, so it helps to expect that your most promising prospects are like the best cakes: They bake slowly and are almost always worth the wait.
Consider the alternative. If you have already adopted many of the tips above and a funder’s staff is perpetually unresponsive, maybe you don’t want to work with them. Again, you can base your level of effort on the promise you see in a funder. This might seem like a risky approach, but your organization incurs expenses each time you apply for a grant. At a minimum, there is an opportunity cost when you spend too much time on an unresponsive funder versus another that offers clear direction. So long as you are intentional, you can make decisions that most wisely utilize your time.
You will want ultimate clarity before you let a pause in communications result in a permanent break. That might look like a simple email asking for only a yes or no response: “While I see alignment between our respective organizations, it seems as though your Foundation’s short-term plans are taking you in a different direction. Is that correct?” Your gift might come in the form of closure—the ability to move on to more promising prospects.
You will incentivize all of the above if you have job performance metrics that reward time spent on them. At one nonprofit client, we made the case for rapport-based goals by drawing a parallel to planned gifts, which this organization received in large numbers. Most donors make bequests after years of diligent relationship-building by a nonprofit. Why expect anything less of a program officer? Even though foundation staff is not giving away its own hard-earned savings, trust still guides the process. Building that trust takes time. So, if you find yourself in a management position, reward your staff for poking at those quiet periods. If you don’t have the ability to revise job performance goals, you can advocate for such a change.
The largest private grants I have ever worked to secure involved rounds and rounds of dialogue. They involved negotiations. They grew with accumulated trust. They ended with great fanfare. And they began with periods of silence.