Holly Rustick is a world-renowned grant writing expert and Amazon bestselling author.
Holly has been coaching grant writers how to run successful 5-6 figure businesses since 2017.
With two decades of grant writing and nonprofit experience, Holly is a popular keynote speaker for events all over the world, podcast host of the Top-Ranked Grant Writing podcast, a former university instructor, and is past president of the Guam Women’s Chamber of Commerce. She is constantly booked out to run trainings to help grant writers grow capacity, increase funding, and advance mission.
Yes ______ No _______ Not Sure _____
Search for nonprofits online or maybe you already know some by name.
The other resource you can use is Guidestar.org and put in your state or geographic area to find different nonprofits. Sometimes your city or region may also have a nonprofit resource center. This is great as they will often include the nonprofit members on their website.
Another good old place to find out what registered nonprofits are in your community is to go to the Taxation authority, such as the Department of Revenue and Taxation. To be a tax-exempt nonprofit, these entities need to file with the taxation authorities. In a nonprofit research project that I am currently working on, I went to the Guam Department of Revenue and Taxation to find out the number and types of nonprofits registered on the island. This was interested as about 45% of all registered nonprofits were rejected nonprofit status.
In any case, these are resources to show you what nonprofit organizations already exist. I cannot tell you how many times that I have had individuals come to me with their ‘great idea’ of wanting to start a nonprofit because they see a need in the community and for me to let them know that they should partner with an existing nonprofit that is already doing that work. Sometimes they may have a twist on what is being done, but a lot of times they just are not aware or they may think that the current nonprofit is not doing a good job so want to compete. In the latter case that can be fine as competition in markets – even nonprofit markets – can be good at times.
Now that you know what nonprofits are out there in your community, it is important for you to see what gaps they fill. You can do this in two different ways. First, do a large sweep and break down the organizations into categories, such as arts, conservation, education, and so forth. Next, pick the category or categories that you want your nonprofit to be under, such as homelessness. Take that specific category and check out what other nonprofits are doing under that specific category; such as:
City Homeless Shelter provides transitional housing, daily lunches, and work programs.
List out what you really want your nonprofit to do. Maybe you want to provide certain work skills for homeless people that are not being provided. Maybe you want to serve homeless families and only homeless individuals are being served.
Find out if your nonprofit will fit a unique gap. Maybe you want to serve homeless cats but there are none in your community. Do some research. Find out if there is actually even a need for what you need to do.
These are some quick questions, and not-so-quick research to do when thinking about forming a nonprofit. Take the time to do this if you have a great idea. I know, it seems like the best idea ever and maybe it is, but as Mark Twain said, “There is no such thing as a new idea. We simply take a lot of old ideas and put them into a sort of mental kaleidoscope.” Sometimes that kaleidoscope casts a new light into creating a nonprofit, but other times it means you can partner with an existing nonprofit.
You will get the grant writing system that has helped Holly secure more than $25 million in grant funding and students earn more than $100,000,000 in funding for nonprofits around the world!
Work from home and have a massive impact on your community. Set up a grant writing business so you can start getting paid to write grants.