Like most people, I was hit with a wave of ‘say it ain’t so’ when I read about Hull House closing last week. The iconic mother of the settlement house concept, the model that Milwaukee organizations like Silver Spring Neighborhood Center and Journey House use in their family and neighborhood development efforts, Hull House was closing due to massive financial problems, one article stating that the organization owed millions of dollars to creditors.

That Hull House collapsed because of the poor economy is the no-brainer and maybe no-brain analysis.  Blaming the economy gives us permission to tsk tsk about how the funding world doesn’t appreciate the iconic, how donors let Jane Addams’ dream disintegrate; the economic downturn and all the excessive belt-tightening are to blame for ending Hull House’s remarkable 123-year run.

All of that may be true.  I don’t know.  All I know about Hull House is what I read in the paper.  But as a long-time observer of nonprofit organizations, I am betting that there is a lot more to the story.  Maybe some of these factors had a role in Hull House’s demise.

• There may have been a failure to establish and maintain sufficient reserves to help the organization navigate through the economic mess.
• The board may not have been sufficiently developed, trained, or supported to function as a good steward of Hull House resources.
• No one may have been able to make hard decisions when they would have saved the agency, e.g. cutting programs/sites/staff.
• Strategic alliances which might have preserved the Hull House mission and name while providing access to new resources may have been avoided.
• The organization may have focused exclusively on its service delivery and not been involved in policy-making at the state and federal level that could have influenced program resources.
• Maybe there was no decent grantwriting shop.
• Maybe they couldn’t figure out how to diversify their funding (that is, after all, what saved many of us when the stock market tanked).
• Maybe they assumed the public and the funding world knew all about the good work they were doing so they didn’t need to upgrade the outreach and communication.
• Maybe they thought it could never happen to them.

 What I’m getting at is this:  The economic downturn reached into every berg in the country.  Strong nonprofits stayed afloat.  Weak ones went under.  And like I said, I don’t know the details of Hull House’s situation.  But I do know this.  Nonprofit organizations can protect themselves – there are life jackets and life boats and survival training aplenty.  Our very own Nonprofit Center of Milwaukee is a good place to start to sharpen your organization’s skills on a lot of fronts. 

The Hull House closing left us with a lesson — If it could happen to Hull House, it could happen to any organization. Be smart.  Take stock.  And protect your organization.

A few days ago, I posted about grantwriter stress, sharing my own shameful stories about licorice and gum overdosing.  The goal of the post, so to speak, was to generate some interest in the Planners and Grantwriters Roundtable held January 25th at the Greater Milwaukee Foundation and sponsored by the Nonprofit Center.  I’m co-facilitator of the group along with Janet Peshek from Cathedral Center and Rochelle Dukes Fritsch from IMPACT.

It was a terrific roundtable.  Two great presenters: Sue Beck-Riekkoff from IMPACT Workplace Services and Ann Laatsch, Managing Attorney of Disability Services at Community Advocates.  Plus a group of initially kind of weary-looking but, by the end of the session, pretty upbeat group of about 15 grantwriters.

What did I learn?

• Unrelieved stress is like those aging leftovers in the little Tupperware container in the back of your refrigerator.  The longer it’s there, the worse it’ll be when you finally take off the lid.
• Standing on your head gives you new perspective and that can reduce your stress.  Well, not literally standing on your head but doing something that changes up your environment.  Or, if you’re a yoga-ette like Ann, actually being upside down.  You decide.
• Another good one from Ann:  in times of stress or discomfort, curl up the sides of your mouth.  I’ve tried this occasionally when I’m in an aggravating conversation with a colleague.  It doesn’t always reduce my stress but it does make the other person wonder what you’re thinking.
• Words matter.  And here, we’re talking mostly about self-talk.  If you know you’re going to have a crummy day, you probably will.  But if you rattle around in that top drawer to find your happy sweater, you can put your day in another direction.
• You control you. Don’t give other people the power to control your mood or add to your stress.
• And of course, BREATHE.  This was interesting.  Research shows that women, in particular, tend to breathe very shallowly – not good when it’s deep breathing (so you feel your midsection rise when you exhale (or was it inhale?).  Anyway, you know what I mean.  Breathe deep!

A great session.  A lot of laughs - a big stress reducer right there.  Grantwriters have a lot of stress — getting together every now and then can really help. 

Our next roundtable is April 18th (also the birthday of one of the fabulous facilitators).  Deborah Fugenschuh from the Donors Forum of Wisconsin will be our guest.

More info to follow.  But in the meantime, stand on your head and crack a few jokes.  You’ll feel a lot better!

I once was so stressed out working on a proposal that while I had a lit cigarette in the ashtray on my desk, I put a pencil in my mouth and flicked my Bic.  Since I quit smoking, I’ve been known to eat a) whole packages of black licorice (that is A LOT of black licorice, my friends!); b) whole bags of pretzels; and c) whole packages of Trident Peppermint and/or Tropical Fruit gum in the course of a proposal-writing day. 

There is gum stuck to my office floor.  Not everywhere like in a crummy theatre, but enough to raise eyebrows.  What the heck has been going on in this office? a casual observer might ask.

A deadline staring me in the face.

People who promised me essential data for a proposal suddenly getting sick.

Realizing I was following the wrong guidelines.

Knowing that I don’t know enough about the proposal topic.

Getting feedback from colleagues that is stupid and unhelpful.

Being completely and totally overwhelmed.

Knowing I will eventually do a great job but having no idea in the world how.

Always having my professional credibility on the line.

When you write a proposal, especially for something that actually matters – like places for homeless people to live or ways for parents to regain custody of their children, you tend to feel a lot of PRESSURE.  No matter how good the idea is, if it isn’t commissioned on paper as a winning proposal, it won’t be implemented.  Homeless people.  Orphaned kids.  Yipes!

By now, you might be thinking I have the answer for this.  I don’t.  But, I’m part of a small band of colleagues – the Planners and Grantwriters Roundtable at the Nonprofit Center – that gets together to talk about things like this and hear from people who have great ideas and some darn solutions.  We have a session on Grantwriter Stress coming up on Wednesday, January 25, 2012, from 9:00 to 11:00 a.m. at the Milwaukee Foundation.  The cost is a cheap $20 (about the price of 10 bags of pretzels).  Call the Nonprofit Center at 414-344-3933 to sign up.

I probably say it a dozen times in my workshops:  Writing funding proposals is a competitive sport.

And just like in sports, there’s no charity.  There’s no forgiveness of mistakes. There’s no dismissing poor performance as a fluke. There’s no fooling.  Blue smoke and mirrors just don’t work.  Sorry.

It’s serious competition and the result is winner take all.

Most proposals, especially high dollar federal proposals, are scored by independent panels of peer reviewers.  What this means is that experts in the field who have been trained to score proposals are in charge of your fate.  This refers to high level national competitions but much less so to state and local funding.  Foundations run the gamut. Depending on their size, interests, and investment plan, foundations may use a formal point process or put more store in relationships, reputation, and their program officers’ gut about certain projects.

For those of you who write proposals that will be formally scored, here are three tips gleaned from many years in the federal grantwriting business:

 1.  Read the proposal guidelines very carefully.  You’re looking for two things here.  First,  how the points are distributed, e.g. how many for the problem statement, how many for the program design and so on, will tell you what’s important to the funding source.  You need to score high in all sections.  But the point distributions tells you where to focus your planning and preparation efforts. 

Second, what are the specific criteria on which the point allocation will be made?  Proposal guidelines can be tricky, providing information about the required elements in one place and the evaluation criteria in another.  And they don’t always match.  Your job as the proposal writer is to create an integrated list of criteria.  In other words, you are going to respond well to everything.

2. Understand that each proposal section is scored separately.  This means that the problem statement, program design, organizational description are scored independently of each other.  Sure, it’s possible to cross-reference information from one section to another (a good strategy to save space in a document), but you must make sure that each section pretty much stands alone and fully addresses the point criteria.

3.  Look under the rock.  Proposal reviewers, especially federal reviewers, hide their detailed review under a big rock.  What is the big rock?  It’s applicants’ fear of criticism.  Review comments are available upon request.  So, if a panel of three peer reviewers scored your proposal, you can receive all of their scores and comments.  This is the road map for the next proposal.  It will tell you where you were weak and why.  Your competition is combing through those review comments looking for ways to improve next time.  The fools – the ones with their programs’ pockets turned inside out, complaining about the unfairness of funding sources – will write the same failing proposal next time or, if they’re really special, find new ways to fail.

Think about proposal writing like a football team prepares for a game and then reviews a loss.  They watch film.  They play as hard as they possibly can. They watch more film. They analyze their strengths and weaknesses.  They win.  (Yes, sports fans, I know I’m oversimplifying here but you get my point.)

That’s what winning proposal writers do.  I learned this the hard way so I know it’s true.  Good luck!

There are dozens of books and workshops about writing proposals. Most of them focus on how to write a proposal from the macro point of view — needs statement, project design, goals and objectives, evaluation, and budget. Absent is advice about the micro level. 

What is the language of proposals? How should the written proposal word look and feel?  Does it make a difference how a proposal reads as long as it contains the right information?

I think it makes a huge difference.

Proposals are competitive.  They’re scored by human beings – people who might be tired, rushed, bored with the topic; people who want to make a good decision and do it quickly.  If your proposal is hard to read, it won’t be read well.  It’ll be skimmed.  You don’t want that.  The proposals that are skimmed by reviewers don’t get funded. 

FIVE QUICK TIPS:

1. Write only facts.  Proposal reviewers are looking for evidence that your organization knows what it’s doing and can run a good program.  Everything you write in a proposal needs to contribute to the evidentiary pile.  If it doesn’t, get rid of it. Some folks think that this takes the heart out of their proposal.  I don’t agree.  You shouldn’t have to weep on the page.  The numbers should make the case for you.

2.  Park the adjectives.  Pretend you have only ten adjectives to use in your entire proposal.  Place them judiciously in spots where they will catch the reviewers eye and where the word is backed up by evidence.  (See #1 above) Instead of using a lot of adjectives, focus on comparisons.  Rather than saying that the incidence of homelessness in Milwaukee is extremely high compare Milwaukee’s ratio of homeless to non-homeless to several comparable cities, report Milwaukee’s ranking on a national scale, or present a trend line showing worsening stats over time. Numerical comparisons are 100 times more effective than adjectives.

3. Use a formal tone.  Many successful proposal writers use the first person as in “We run a great program.”  I think this is too familiar in a grant proposal.  An letter or email solicitation is another matter but in a formal grant proposal, the use of the first person sounds unprofessional to me. Similarly, a proposal should conform to rules of proper grammar and punctuation.  I am so formal in a proposal that I do not even use contractions.

4.  Remember that looks matter. I want to see white space in a proposal.  Yes, this can be difficult when there are severe page limitations and you don’t want to give up even a centimeter to white space because everything you have to say is so important.  Here’s a hint.  If you dump 90% of your adjectives, you will have more white space.  Critical graphics (and by this I mean graphics that are so good, they can replace text) can give the reader that white space relief while still  conveying essential information.

5. Edit. The first draft of the last winning proposal I wrote — a proposal to the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention to establish a Family Drug Treatment Court in Milwaukee County – was 10 pages too long.  Guidelines permitted only 30 pages.  I had 40.  The editing process hunted down escaped adjectives, took out the ‘chat’ and converted several pages of text into two spectacular project-summarizing graphics.  Is it the most poetic piece of prose in the universe?  No.  But the Family Drug Treatment Court is operating as we speak.

Sometimes, a colleague will ask me to read his/her proposal and I can tell in the first 30 seconds that it’s a dud.  That’s how quick a reviewer makes a decision about your proposal.  I don’t have all the answers about how to get the money but these tips have worked for me. 

Let me know if they’re helpful for you.

This is my 100th Wilberg Community Planning blog post.  So I figured it needed to be really good.  Deeply meaningful.  Something people will print out and carry in their wallets. 

But it’s not going to be because what I’m thinking about is ‘hair on fire.’  Hair on fire, to me, is about professional hysteria.  It’s about people who should know better going around the bend about a problem – usually before they have all the facts, before they’ve talked to anyone, and before they’ve taken 30 seconds to reason things out.  Hair on fire people (HOFP) can generate a lot of upsetness and take up a lot of time.

Here are 5 ways you can tell if you’re a HOFP:

1. You can’t wait to tell people about a problem and when you do, you make it just a titch bigger than it was when you first discovered it.  A big part of ‘hair on fire’ is thinking you have to be Paul Revere, that you have to get on your horse and start tearing through town spreading the news before anyone else.

2.  You want to make the problem so important and world-changing that it requires a whole group to solve it.  ‘Hair on fire’ is no fun all by your lonesome.  You really need a circle of nodding heads and at least one or two people whose reactions will be more extreme than yours so you look like a moderate.

3. You think that the distance between the situation and the end of the world is less than 5 yards.  When your hair’s on fire, you are convinced that the worst case scenario is staring you in the face.  And you kind of like that idea. 

 4.  You keep gathering evidence to stoke the fire. When you’ve got that ‘hair on fire’ thing going, everything  seems to be related to your problem.  You get gum on your shoe and you find a way to connect it to your calamity.

5.  The problem turns out to be nothing.  Eventually, even if you can’t because you’re a HOFP, someone will take a deep breath and figure out that the tornado actually isn’t headed this way and besides that, it’s petered out to a strong wind.  It’s sad not to have a crisis but 99% of the time, there’s no crisis.  No reason for hair on fire.  Demoralizing for the HOFP.

The whole ‘hair on fire’ thing would just be entertainment for a group if it didn’t take up so much time and often have repercussions way beyond the moment. When people buy into the panic, they do extreme and often dumb stuff they wouldn’t otherwise do. Sometimes, they end up paying for it for a long time.

Know any HOFP?  Give them my 100th blog post to carry in their wallet.

There are still nonprofit executives and development directors who think social media is a toy they don’t have time for.

If you’re one of these folks, here are 10 reasons why you’re an idiot:

1.  A nonprofit that is out of sight is also out of mind.

2.  The seat you haven’t taken at the social media table is occupied by someone else who is more eager and more savvy.

3.  Elected officials use social media to get their message out and to understand the world of their constituents, but, oh, you don’t want to be part of that world.

4.  People stopped reading their mail a long time ago – that’s why the U.S. Postal Service is in so much trouble.

5.  Connected people are almost always connected but if you’re not connectable, they ain’t connecting to you.

6. You know who you know but you don’t know who you don’t know but it’s those folks who might be looking for someone like you, but instead they’ll find someone like your competitor.

7. The world is hip, fast, sophisticated.  It’s not drafted, edited, reviewed, refined, and published.  Sorry.  If you can’t function well on the fly, you’re probably in the wrong business. 

8.  Funders are using social media.  And I don’t mean funding organizations.  I mean people.  Oh yes,  people who work at foundations or local government use social media as individuals which gives you a chance to get to know them as people. And, here’s a thought, they get to know you as a person as well instead of Ms. Perpetualhandout.

9. Social media gives supporters an instant brochure that can change every day.  An example: So I’m on your board, I believe in your work…..what if all I can do is point an interested donor to a website that hasn’t changed since the Stone Age.  Is this going to yield money, donations, connections, relationships?

10. And the last reason why you’re an idiot if your nonprofit isn’t visible on social media?  You are telling a huge and growing part of the community – people who use social media as their principal means of communication – that YOU DON’T CARE about connecting with them.  Sorry.  It’s harsh.  But it’s true.

Seriously.

Here’s a very cool tool in the neighborhood revitalization toolbox that hardly ever gets used.  A quick, focused community planning process can get a neighborhood certified as a Neighborhood Revitalization Strategy Area (NRSA) by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Once that happens, a bunch of benefits ensue.  First, the local Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) Administration (the entity that requests the designation) is afforded considerably greater flexibility in administering CDBG funds in the designated neighborhood.  Second, other funders – public and private – perk up their ears when they learn that a neighborhood has gone through a good planning process to set goals and objectives for the next five years.  Thus, investment increases. 

Third, neighborhood stakeholders including residents, businesses, nonprofit organizations, elected officials, law enforcement, and faith organizations have a chance to find out that their individual interests often coincide.  There’s excitement about this and a lot of energizing that results. All of the NRSA’s I’ve been involved with have developed new, robust community organizing strategies as a result of the planning process.

NRSA’s were developed in Milwaukee many years ago, resulting in 17 NSP areas.  These have functioned somewhat under the radar.  Newer NRSA’s developed in Waukesha, Kenosha, and Sheboygan have had more visible, spark-plugging functions in those communities.

 Many cities throughout Wisconsin could benefit from obtaining NRSA designations for disadvantaged neighborhoods.  I just did a presentation at the WISCAP Conference (November 15, 2011) hoping to interest folks in taking this step.  Here’s the PowerPoint if you’re interested.  NRSA WISCAP Presentation

“The trouble with facts is that there are so many of them.” (Anon.)

It isn’t really true that numbers don’t lie.  Nor is the opposite true.  Everytime you’re given a report full of numbers, it’s not necessarily intended to bamboozle you. But sometimes it is.

Recently, I used the local decision to grant status as a charter school to Rocketship Education, a California-based enterprised that has reported amazing academic results, as a teaching tool in my evaluation workshop.  Rocketship wanted to establish itself in Milwaukee by providing educational programming in several low-achieving MPS schools.

I distributed an opinion piece to workshop participants written by Milwaukee School Board member Larry Miller http://millermps.wordpress.com/2011/10/27/journal-sentinel-op-ed-rocketship-charter-schools-need-scrutiny/ that urged the Milwaukee Common Council to delay a quick vote on the charter and look more closely at Rocketship’s evaluation data.

In the very first activity of the evaluation workshop, participants zoomed in on a number of issues, most notably, the schools’ high attrition rate and the low number of students with special educational needs.  They were convinced – there was no way the Milwaukee Common Council would approve a charter for Rocketship to operate in Milwaukee without more information.

Oh really.  The Council approved the charter with only one dissenting vote, an alderperson who suggested that more analysis needed to be done because of the critique of Rocketship’s evaluation put together by Mr. Miller.

A classic case of “My mind’s made up. Don’t confuse me with the facts?” I don’t know.  It was, however, a perfect lesson in program evaluation – how policymakers’ desire to do something meaningful fast can sometimes mean giving the shortest shrift ever to the facts.  Rocketship’s got a cure for MPS?  Great, let’s not waste anytime dickering about the numbers.

We have the capacity in Milwaukee to do a lot more sophisticated scrutiny of proposals like this – a couple of major universities, a lot of public interest research organizations.  We have the ability to compare and contrast, study and analyze, and choose based on good evaluation. 

I think that before we grab hold of the life preserver tossed to us from the new boat, it’d be nice to check out whether it actually floats.

Strictly from hunger.  Ever hear this phrase?  You have to be of a certain vintage to have heard it in everyday conversation.  What does it mean?  That something is busted. Nowhere. Just seriously lacking.  Unbeknownst to me, though, until I googled the term this morning, Strictly from Hunger was also the title of an apparently very famous “psychedelic” album made by the Portland, Oregon, group Hunger in 1969. That’s their picture. 

After my husband and I simultaneously used this term to describe something this morning, he dared me to blog about it.  “So what would the actual topic be?” I asked.  “I don’t know.  Just use it as the title and start.”

So here I go — hopefully, there will be enough examples of things that are strictly from hunger that you, too, can use this colorful term in your everyday discourse.

Things that are STRICTLY FROM HUNGER:

1. Using a ballpoint point on easel paper while leading a group discussion.

2. Related to #1 – having crummy, used up markers.

3. Not having coffee at meetings.

4. Running out of copies.

5. LCD projectors with no remote.

6. Occasions where you have to show a great PowerPoint on the equivalent of a white sheet hung up with tacks.

7. Conference luncheons with no dessert.

8. Office Depot pens.

9. Knock-off Play-Doh.  Seriously, if you’re a hotshot meeting facilitator, you know the value of real Play-Doh. Don’t be fooled into buying the cheap stuff at the Dollar Store because it’s…….STRICTLY FROM HUNGER!

10.Running out of food at a community event.  This is STRICTLY FROM HUNGER because it shows failure to plan, over-concern about cost, and unwillingness to deal with leftovers.  Plus, depending on the crowd, it can be very risky.

There. See? Now the next time you see something that’s strictly from hunger, you’ll know what to call it.