The world of obtaining funds through grants can be so confusing and time-consuming. Between prospect research, developing relationships, grant writing, and stewardship, it can feel overwhelming. Join me in today’s session with Gauri Manglik, Co-Founder of Instrumentl, to discuss trends she’s seeing, how to be grant-ready and how her platform might help streamline the process.
For my listeners, Instrumentl is offering a special three-week trial and $50 off your first month. Visit instrumentl.com, code: LOWDOWN50
Quote from Gauri: “We recommend trying to submit at least two grants a month”
Connect with Gauri
Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/gaurimanglik
Episode Transcript
RHEA WONG 00:05
Welcome to Nonprofit Lowdown. I’m your host, Rhea Wong. Hey, my podcast listeners. This is Rhea Wong with you once again with Nonprofit Lowdown.
RHEA WONG 00:13
Today I’m talking with my guest, Gauri Manglik who is the CEO and co-founder of Instrumentl about how to be grant ready, and especially in this environment, you can not be too ready. So welcome, Gauri.
GAURI MANGLIK 00:25
Thank you so much for having me.
RHEA WONG 00:26
Before we jump into the details of being grant ready, tell us a little bit about yourself because you actually have an untraditional road into the nonprofit sector.
GAURI MANGLIK 00:34
Yeah, totally. It’s very serendipitous, I would say. I started my career in computer science and technology. I studied computer science in college. I started my first tech company out of college, actually out of a class.
GAURI MANGLIK 00:46
We started a company in the consumer mobile space. It’s very different than the nonprofit space. And we built an app. And then my team got acquired by Airbnb. So I moved from New York out to the West Coast.
GAURI MANGLIK 00:58
I worked at Airbnb for a couple of years. It worked really great, product and design and engineering talent there. And towards the end of my time, there I met my co-founder, Angela, who is also my wife.
GAURI MANGLIK 01:09
Now, it was my girlfriend at the time. And she really had the domain experience and the knowledge and the insight to see that grants and funding were a huge pain point. And originally, she started from the academic space.
GAURI MANGLIK 01:22
And then she and my other co-founder, Catherine, had experience in the nonprofit space as well. He also had experience giving out grants at a funding organization. And they just felt like this whole process was very inefficient.
GAURI MANGLIK 01:33
And I was just kind of advising them on the side and then eventually got more and more excited about being able to bring the kind of like great technology and great product experiences into the nonprofit tech market.
GAURI MANGLIK 01:45
Because it’s super inspiring to be able to serve this customer base. And also from my vantage point, I saw there was a lot of room for improvement, especially in the grant technology space.
RHEA WONG 01:56
Oh, preach that. I mean, as someone who has done grant writing and grant research, anything that we can do to make it more efficient, we should do it, particularly because especially nowadays, I think foundations are more and more invite only.
RHEA WONG 02:12
So it becomes this exercise in frustration of like, I see that the option of opportunity. I have no idea how to get into that. So alright, but before we get into that. I think that we have complete newbies listening to this podcast, what are the key elements to being grant ready?
GAURI MANGLIK 02:34
There are the basics, right? There’s like getting making sure you are incorporated, making sure you have a board of directors that’s involved at the organization, making sure you have a clear mission statement, what the organization is going to be doing from a program’s perspective.
GAURI MANGLIK 02:48
But then the two things that I think are very important because you can have all those things down and not be grant ready. And that’s the place I see most organizations in when they’re trying to decide if they’re ready for grants. And that’s the first is having.
GAURI MANGLIK 03:00
And I guess maybe I’ll zoom out for a second. And I’ll say it’s worth noting that from a funder’s perspective and institutional funder, so like a funder, like a corporation or a government entity or a private foundation. It’s going to tend to be more risk averse than an individual donor and a very intuitive way to understand that is either they’re going to tend to give larger sums of money.
GAURI MANGLIK 03:20
They’re gonna also have more of a process behind it. There’s a bit more accountability on their end to make sure that they’re giving out their funds in a sensible way to organizations that are doing good work.
GAURI MANGLIK 03:28
So because of that risk aversion that comes from these institutional funders, the bar is unfortunately a bit higher in terms of where the organization has to get to in terms of what they can demonstrate in terms of a track record.
GAURI MANGLIK 03:39
A funder is going to give you $100,000 versus like $10. They’re going to want to have some sort of confidence that you or your organization, your team has done similar things or is capable of kind of taking that money and turning it into the outcomes that you’re saying.
GAURI MANGLIK 03:54
That’s important that you have some sort of like a minimum demonstration of success that you can show. And the other piece is that you have this flywheel. You have the capacity, the organization has to have a positive flywheel in the grants process overall.
GAURI MANGLIK 04:07
So that you can receive these funds, you can execute what you said you were going to do, and then turn that into a great report like keep in touch with that funder so that you can ultimately continue to build that strong relationship with that funder, as well as be able to demonstrate success to other funders.
GAURI MANGLIK 04:23
So those are the couple things at a high level that I would advise folks to keep in mind when they’re thinking about if they’re grant-ready or not.
RHEA WONG 04:30
Okay! There are two things that I really want to lift up here because I hear this all the time from people who are starting nonprofits. They say, well, we’ll just get grants like it’s this thing like they’re just gonna fall out of the sky. Right?
RHEA WONG 04:42
So I think we need to dispel that myth number one, and then number two, I’d love to go here for a second. There’s a little bit of a chicken and egg problem here, right?
RHEA WONG 04:49
Because as we know, foundations and other institutions are unless they’re specifically startup funders will often not fun unless you have metrics in place to demonstrate that you can do the thing you say that you’re gonna do.
RHEA WONG 05:04
But without the funding, you actually won’t have the metrics. So how do we get into the chicken and egg problem?
GAURI MANGLIK 05:10
Yeah! So here I like to borrow from… This is a common thing that also happens in the profit world. In the startup world. Startups are trying to get funding, but they need to be able to demonstrate something.
GAURI MANGLIK 05:18
And there’s a concept in the startup world called a minimum viable product. And I think you can think of it similarly in the nonprofit space, like a minimum viable program. So what is the smallest way that you can kind of concentrate your efforts to demonstrate that what you’re pursuing is worth pursuing and that there’s truly a need?
GAURI MANGLIK 05:35
That’s what you want to demonstrate. It doesn’t have to be a fully fleshed-out version of your program, it just needs to be something to demonstrate the key things that you’re doing. So what are the ways in which you can like reduce that scope?
GAURI MANGLIK 05:46
That’s the only lever that I think you really have. That’s where I would start, can you reduce the geographies? Can you instead of implementing the full-scale program? Can you start with some sort of way to get a survey out there to prove that there’s a need out there?
GAURI MANGLIK 06:00
What is the smallest thing that you can execute given your limited resources and bandwidth so that you can demonstrate that data? The other thing I would say is that when you’re getting started with grants.
GAURI MANGLIK 06:09
Because it is like a chicken and egg kind of flywheel, not only having the data, making it easier to win grants better, having more grants obviously makes it easier to win more grants. So you want to start with the easiest, smallest grants at the beginning, when you’re just getting started, where there might be more local funders that you have a relationship with, or just like smaller grants that may not be ROI positive
GAURI MANGLIK 06:29
If you think about it on just that, like one single grant basis. But they help you to start building up that flywheel so that future funders will feel more confident in funding you down the road.
RHEA WONG 06:40
Yeah, and I’d love to add two points to this too similar to say a profit or tech round. There are friends and family around, right? So before you can go to VCs, before you can be sure that they really look among your friends, family, and community to start small-scale fundraising to just get started.
RHEA WONG 06:57
And then the second thing is oftentimes with funders, the funding groups, so if you can identify who sort of the lead funder is, who will be the one that validates you, that can be helpful to get other groups of the other funders in the group.
GAURI MANGLIK 07:13
Yeah, those are great points.
RHEA WONG 07:15
Okay, so here we are. August 2022. A lot happening with the economy, a lot is happening with the stock market, and potentially endowment. I’m wondering, what trends are you seeing across the philanthropic universe when we think particularly about what’s happening with the racial reckoning? And a lot of the statements that foundations made around BIPOC, and dei and so forth? What are you seeing?
GAURI MANGLIK 07:44
Yeah, well, there’s a lot happening. And there’s a lot that’s being talked about. In terms of what the actual changes are, I think it’s like, there are some things that you can see, and some things that you can’t see.
GAURI MANGLIK 07:52
Foundation giving in general has been increasing every year since 2013. So overall, it’s on the rise, definitely within 2020 with COVID.
GAURI MANGLIK 08:00
And more of the Black Lives Matter movement, there was like just more giving, and also more transparent giving, more expedient giving, that was great to see more nonprofits apply for grants in 2020 than ever before, and more nonprofits, one grant as well.
GAURI MANGLIK 08:13
So I think some things just kind of fundamentally changed there. And a lot of conversations got started. And at that time, there was kind of worried about the economy at that point, too. And foundations really stepped up to provide more funding, which was great to see.
GAURI MANGLIK 08:29
I think what is not clear yet. It’s how this current potential downturn is going to impact foundations from our end. From a grant-seeking side, we haven’t seen too much changing honestly, and nonprofits are still putting out applications.
GAURI MANGLIK 08:44
They’re still considering grant opportunities, grants to be a great source if they’re grant-ready. And I’ve heard of one instance of a foundation that said that they were going to kind of slow down because of the downturn, but it really hasn’t been any sort of trend that we’ve seen yet.
RHEA WONG 08:58
I’m interested. So let’s talk a little bit about the functionality of Instrumentl but I’m also interested in the datasets that you’re collecting. Because across all of the different funders and grant seekers, I’m sure that there’s some interesting data that you’re looking at. So let’s talk a little bit about what Instrumentl does. And then let’s talk about data sets.
GAURI MANGLIK 09:18
Instrumentl as a whole is an end-to-end platform to help you be more successful with grants. We do help you with everything from prospecting, to doing a deep dive on those funders and opportunities to tracking those opportunities in a grant calendar and easy-to-view pipeline to reporting and collaboration.
GAURI MANGLIK 09:33
So you can do that all in one place. And we work with over 2000 nonprofits. We find that if they use us, they’re able to almost double their output of grants while actually saving time on a weekly basis, which is really gratifying and satisfying just to see in terms of impact.
GAURI MANGLIK 09:48
For Instrumentl, it focuses on the grant-seeking side. We are actually on the funders. All the information that we get from the funders, they’re not from users like that funder user on Instrumentl. We actually get all that data ourselves.
GAURI MANGLIK 09:59
And so there are two sets of data that we have on the platform. One is data on active opportunities. And the other is data that we collect through 990 tax filings that helps us understand what funders have done in the past.
GAURI MANGLIK 10:12
And that’s for private funders. So on the active opportunity side, that’s information that will come from that we like kind of scrape and parse through the public web websites.
GAURI MANGLIK 10:22
And that will be from government funders, private funders, corporate funders, which we then bring into instrumental, and categorize in a way that makes it easy for you as a nonprofit to know which one of those opportunities is a match.
GAURI MANGLIK 10:36
And then on the 990 side, that’s going to be again, available for private foundations. They fill out a tax filing every year called form 990. And one of the things that they have to do in that form is they have to list every single grant that they’ve made in the past year.
GAURI MANGLIK 10:50
And so we basically take that data, a structure that data, and help build an understanding of who this funder likes to fund. And a lot of those funders don’t have websites. So you can’t go to the website and find that out.
GAURI MANGLIK 11:00
This can often be the only source of insight into what this funder is what I call implicit preferences. And then we take that past giving, those paths giving preferences, and we use that to match you with those relevant funders as well.
RHEA WONG 11:13
And does your dataset include DAFs donor-advised funds for those out there who aren’t familiar with the lingo, which is essentially individual foundations?
GAURI MANGLIK 11:23
Yeah, they do. But usually, they’re often kind of bubbled up to the foundation level. So like Schwab has a foundation. So we’ll include that which ends up not actually being super helpful because you need to actually know the individual daps themselves.
GAURI MANGLIK 11:36
I’ve not seen a great solution for that yet. Something that’s on our radar and open to feedback in terms of how we can actually expose more of those daps to make it easier to connect with the right fund the right funds.
RHEA WONG 11:46
Yeah, I think it’s a big issue around transparency and trying to figure out how to do your research jobs. I mean, you can’t really answer because there’s a level of opacity, which I think is a little bit frustrating for grant seekers. On the grant-seeking side, are there any interesting datasets or trends that you’re looking at that you could share?
GAURI MANGLIK 12:05
Yeah, I would say that one of the things that that I see just in being in this in this space for so long is that, just like the use of technology. It has increased quite a lot, especially on the tracking side. When we started, we talked to a lot of people that had.
GAURI MANGLIK 12:18
They would show us physical calendars behind their desks or their physical, whiteboards that they had. And that was like their grant calendar. That’s how they were tracking. And we were initially unsure if that was going to be a big enough pain point for them to want to like move to the cloud.
GAURI MANGLIK 12:31
But now we see like, that’s like a key pain point that nonprofits want to solve is actually making sure that they’re tracking this information in a way where they’re building up their institutional knowledge at the organization and overall, being more strategic.
RHEA WONG 12:44
So can you talk a little bit about grant-seeking behavior? I’m wondering if you have any data around conversion rates, or if there are any profiles around like, smaller organizations are better casting a wider net, or smaller net, or anything that would help guide our audience?
GAURI MANGLIK 13:00
Yeah, I would say that when you’re getting started with grants, we see that you need to have the right combination of being intentional, while not like totally casting a huge net, where you’re not able to be personalized, and also having enough shots on goal.
GAURI MANGLIK 13:14
So we generally recommend folks to try to get to at least two grants a month in terms of pipeline and give them at least two years is what I generally recommend. But I would say like six to nine months at minimum to start to see an impact from or start to see a positive ROI from the grants that they’re putting out.
GAURI MANGLIK 13:31
So the key message here is that it can take longer than you might expect to actually hear back from funders. They can their feedback into your process, and then improve yourself.
GAURI MANGLIK 13:40
So that until it actually turns into an ROI-positive channel for you. In terms of success rates, that really varies, it’s always good in the beginning to assume a very conservative success rate when you’re building out your model and like how much you want to have actually applied for it to hit a certain goal. So I would start with a one-in-20 success rate.
GAURI MANGLIK 13:57
And then as you get data that proves that to be wrong, hopefully. Then you can bump that up. And I see organizations that are able to get to one out of 10. And even some organizations that have been doing this a long time getting to like one out of five in terms of success rates.
RHEA WONG 14:11
And are you collecting any data around the strength of relationships off the platform? So in other words, I think a lot of folks may cold email or cold submit a proposal. But as we know, this is a relationship business. And so obviously, one success rate is improved. The more you have some kind of relationship with a program officer. I’m wondering, is that data that you’re also collecting?
GAURI MANGLIK 14:34
Yeah, we don’t have information on the relationship that happens outside of instrumental. But I will say that from a positioning standpoint, I would encourage folks to like almost a default to expect that they need to try to build a relationship with every single grant application that they’re putting out.
GAURI MANGLIK 14:49
And sort of default, expecting that they can apply cold, and applying cold should be kind of the last scenario the last tool in your toolbox if there’s really no way to kind of get in touch with the funder or build out really finish up with a funder.
RHEA WONG 15:01
So let’s talk about this trend that I’ve noticed where foundations are increasingly invited only. So it certainly speaks to relationships. But how would you recommend that organizations that don’t have a prior relationship, try to crack that door open to get an invitation?
GAURI MANGLIK 15:17
Yeah, I would say the first is to continue to try, to crack that relationship through an introduction. If it’s not clear to you how that happens in your immediate network, like with your board.
GAURI MANGLIK 15:26
Try to go one level deeper on LinkedIn, and see if there is anybody else that could make that connection. I think the other piece that I don’t see people trying enough is that I recommend folks try to actually get some intel and just start with like information gathering on what it’s like to work with that funder from previous grantees of that funder.
GAURI MANGLIK 15:46
And that’s information that will tend to be public. And I wouldn’t reach out to those grantees and say, hey, I need an introduction to this funder. Can you help me out? I would just reach out and say, hey, like I saw your work with this vendor, we’re considering them, they seemed like a good fit.
GAURI MANGLIK 15:57
Would you mind talking to me for 15 minutes about what your experience was, and seeing what strategies they took to build that relationship and actually build a relationship with that grantee?
GAURI MANGLIK 16:05
And if it seems like you’re able to get to a positive place in that conversation in that relationship, then it could make sense and you’d have to use your judgment there to see if they would be willing to make that connection.
RHEA WONG 16:16
Well, let’s talk about funders because I can tell you, the most frustrating thing I ever heard when I was grant seeking is we’ve changed our priorities, or we’re making changes to the portfolio. I’m wondering, is Instrumentl able to help us keep on top of the changing winds is it work?
GAURI MANGLIK 16:36
That is something that we do regularly. So like if you save a grant on Instrumentl, you might get an email from us in six months that says, hey, the funder, like changing their priorities.
GAURI MANGLIK 16:44
They change our deadline. We’re keeping you up to date, we’ll even like to indicate that to you on your tracker now.
GAURI MANGLIK 16:49
But oftentimes, funders will not make that public make their changing priorities public, which is one of the like, very kind of logistical reasons why, like kind of base reasons why it’s a really good idea to try to get in contact with them just to say, hey, like, this is who we are, this is what we do.
GAURI MANGLIK 17:04
Does this do you think that this is worth our time to pursue this grant application? Or do you think it’s like worth it’s a good idea for us to like, kind of meet and build a relationship, but it’s good to get that validation from the funder, because you don’t know, they might have put that website up a year ago and never updated it.
GAURI MANGLIK 17:18
Things have potentially progressed in their own minds and their own learnings. And you don’t know what the like latest most up-to-date information is unless you try to actually get that directly from the source, or from other people that have worked with that funder.
RHEA WONG 17:29
Yeah, that’s such an important point. And actually, I would love for people to go back to my interview with Carol Argento of the Hayden Foundation because she does talk about it from a funder perspective that she is willing to take phone calls.
RHEA WONG 17:40
She does want people to ask questions before they spend a bunch of time filling out an application that may not be a fit, right? So I think the key message here is, don’t be afraid of people. Pick up the phone. Call them. Talk to them.
GAURI MANGLIK 17:53
If you think about why a lot of funders are going invite-only, like, the reason that I hear for that is that they’re trying to not waste. A lot of nonprofit time that for nonprofits that aren’t a good fit.
GAURI MANGLIK 18:01
They want to reduce like just like this kind of a lot of applications because they feel I think a bit guilty that there’s a lot of applications out there that they’re not going to fund. A lot of people that are applying aren’t quite a fit.
GAURI MANGLIK 18:12
So they care about making sure that you’re not wasting your time. And if that’s the place that you come to the initial conversation from and make it a very low-lift kind of answer for them to just tell you if you’re a good fit or not, that can be a good way to just start the conversation.
RHEA WONG 18:25
Yeah, it’s interesting, too. I think there’s there’s a bit of tension between going for grants that are very squarely in your funding area. And then maybe being a little bit creative about things that may be adjacent, but also could be fundable. Right?
RHEA WONG 18:40
So I think it’s a little bit of an art and a science there. Like I wouldn’t recommend obviously, applying for grants are definitely not a fit. But there are some times that you can sort of look at the programs that you’re doing in a slightly different way that might be fundable.
GAURI MANGLIK 18:58
Yeah, I think that I have that type of nuance, I think tends to come with experience to really be able to look at a funder who they funded in the past and be able to, like read between the lines, and even potentially get some information from the funder itself.
GAURI MANGLIK 19:09
But when you’re just getting started, I tend to recommend folks to go more with like, okay, it’s like on the nose. But as you get more experience, certainly there are a lot of ways to expand your range by being more creative and like thinking about other angles and another positioning for your programs.
RHEA WONG 19:25
Yeah, absolutely. Because I’ve also been on a foundation at the grant-making Foundation, and we definitely get applications where it’s like, did you read what we do at all? So that is frustrating. So I know, we like being in the prognostication business.
RHEA WONG 19:44
As you look six to 12 months ou. Gauri, what do you see? Like if you had a crystal ball, what might we see coming down the pike in the next six to 12 months?
GAURI MANGLIK 19:55
Yeah, I from what I can see. I would say that grants and institutional funding are great and will continue to be a great source of income for nonprofits that are grant ready.
GAURI MANGLIK 20:04
I think that there’s starting to be a bit more sophistication in the grant-seeking world with more knowledge, and more information sharing in the grant-seeking world. We put out a lot of free information that other folks are doing so as well, trying to get everybody to feel if they’re a good fit for grants so that they can confidently move forward.
GAURI MANGLIK 20:20
We’ll hopefully see more conversations around diversity, equity, and inclusion and actually more change there. I know, there are a lot of conversations, you might know more about this than me even but like on fixed the form and other types of things that are going on.
GAURI MANGLIK 20:33
So far, it seems like those are kind of still in the process of being executed. And hopefully, we’ll see a breakthrough there in terms of maybe a more streamlined application process.
GAURI MANGLIK 20:42
And I think we’ll also hopefully see folks kind of understanding the kind of capacity requirements to pursue grants and kind of not falling into the trap of thinking you can apply to like one grant a year or like just kind of an ad hoc application and actually setting aside like 20% 30% of somebody’s time or more of somebody’s time to make it a more systematic process.
RHEA WONG 21:05
And going to the question about the platform. So I know that there might be folks listening who have no experience with grant writing, is there anything on your platform that are like templates or tutorials around what makes a good grant application?
RHEA WONG 21:18
Because I think so often, with grants, it’s really how well you write, and we can’t expect that everyone sort of has the same level of the facility. So question there.
GAURI MANGLIK 21:29
Yeah, we have tons of free resources. If you go to instrumentl.com/blog, we have a webinar almost every two weeks with experts that come in and teach folks about different aspects of the grant writing process. We’ve had an LOI writing workshop as well.
GAURI MANGLIK 21:43
We have tons of templates that are on the blog. So if you’re not quite ready to like dip your toes in and actually like start submitting grants, you even just want to start learning about it and start to see if it’s the right fit for you. So definitely check out our blog.
RHEA WONG 21:56
Anyway, let’s talk brass tacks here because I know a lot of the folks listening to this are in small shops, right? We don’t have a grant writing department. We don’t even have a development department.
RHEA WONG 22:06
We’re aiming at two grants a month. Do you have any recommendations around how much time folks should set aside either per month or per week to really focus on this?
GAURI MANGLIK 22:17
Yeah, what I tend to say is the minimum would be like 20% of a full-time person’s time. So like, if you’re a development director, kind of doing many different things, or an executive director, and you want to actually apply for grants if you can’t really allocate like 20% of your time, then you might not be ready to actually like…
GAURI MANGLIK 22:34
It might not be worth it. You might be better served to actually spend that time on other things until you can work up to a place where you have more capacity internally to pursue grants.
RHEA WONG 22:43
That’s so interesting. And for those out there who have listened to any amount of time that my recommendation is, as an ED, you should be spending 65 to 80% of your time fundraising. I know blows people’s minds, but 65 to 80% of your time y’all. otherwise, I don’t know what you’re doing.
GAURI MANGLIK 22:58
Well, this is specifically for grants.
RHEA WONG 23:01
So within that time, some of it can be grasped. Actually, frankly, this is obviously dependent on the size of your organization. But to my mind, as an ED, your value add is actually not reading grant or value at as being the face of the organization out there making relationships happen.
RHEA WONG 23:19
So to the extent that you can delegate grant writing to somebody else who can be behind the scenes, the better you are. I mean, I used to say this, like when I wrote my own grants, I was like the world’s most expensive grant writer, right?
RHEA WONG 23:31
Like, that wasn’t where I should have been spending my time. So all they say is that if you can delegate, which actually is a good point, do you have a sense of how many folks on the platform are on staff versus consultants versus grant writers?
GAURI MANGLIK 23:49
We work with the grant writer and grant writing consultants directly as well, at about 15% of our base is consultants that work with multiple nonprofits, and then the rest are full-time staff members within those organizations.
GAURI MANGLIK 24:01
And then who those staff members are is really quite, it’s really quite a range. We do have EDs, we do have development directors, and we do have dedicated grant writers, but it kind of spans the board because we work with all sizes of organizations.
RHEA WONG 24:14
Alright, I’m just going to put in a PSA here, which is for folks listening, when you think about spending money or expenses, it should be for one of three things. It should be either to increase revenue. So to your point around guard is instrumental and possibly delegating to a grant writer.
RHEA WONG 24:37
It should be to give back your time, or it should be to increase operational efficiency. So if your expense falls into one of those three categories, then it’s a good expense. And if it doesn’t, then you should probably not expend the money.
RHEA WONG 24:47
So very as we’re wrapping up anything that we’ve missed anything else that you wanted to talk about with respect to the wild world of foundation grant writing?
GAURI MANGLIK 24:57
Yeah, I think the biggest thing is like it’s kind of the main topic that has Before talking about being grant ready, I think the biggest piece of advice to consider is just really truly making sure that your grant ready so that you don’t kind of run into a situation which I see quite often, where people are really disappointed and really kind of low morale on grants.
GAURI MANGLIK 25:17
Because they may have gotten started too early with it. And they didn’t really have all the puzzle pieces filled out. And they’re scrambling to write one grand a month, or they’re not really able to have the data yet.
GAURI MANGLIK 25:27
And so they kind of get down on the whole grants process. And you don’t really don’t want to get to that place because you could be missing out on a potentially great channel for you down the road.
GAURI MANGLIK 25:33
So my biggest message is to really, potentially slow down on deciding if you want to actually pursue grants now and really do the more upfront work of making sure you’re grant-ready before going full-on into that investing.
RHEA WONG 25:47
Yeah, and the other thing I just want to plug here, too. I think that budgets can be an afterthought in the grant writing process, but budgets are actually hugely important because budgets tell a story. And you want to make sure that your budget is telling the right kind of story.
RHEA WONG 26:01
So for more tips on how to make budgets tell a good story. I do have an interview with… on this podcast. So Gauri, I’ve been asking this question is sort of a fun question. But if you had a metaphorical billboard that you could communicate anything to the world, what would be on your billboard?
GAURI MANGLIK 26:20
Oh, wow, that’s such a big question. Oh, man, it’s hard not to just say cliche here. That’s really challenging. Maybe the first thing that comes to mind is the thing that I look for is like, it’s just something around unknown unknowns. Like, you don’t have everything right now. And there’s stuff you don’t know. And it’s good to be always seeking that.
RHEA WONG 26:45
Awesome. And actually, we have a special treat for our listeners. And we’ll make sure to put it in the podcast notes as well. But Instrumentl has generously offered. So you usually have a two-week trial period.
RHEA WONG 26:58
For listeners of Nonprofit Lowdown, if you use my link, I’ll put it in the chat and put it in the show notes. You get three weeks. And if you use my special code, you get $50 off your first month’s subscription. So there’s no reason not to try this out.
RHEA WONG 27:11
So I’m going to put it in the chat and make sure folks listening to the podcast check out the notes because you will get hooked up. Alright, thank you so much for being here. And thanks for all you do. Hopefully, this will make people’s lives easier.
GAURI MANGLIK 27:24
Yeah, thanks for having me. This was fun.
RHEA WONG 27:27
It was fun. Alright, take care, everyone. Have a good one.
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