One of the biggest questions I hear from freelancers is: How do I find clients? 

I have been a freelance grant writer for nearly 20 years and trained and mentored hundreds of other freelance grant writers. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about what really works for finding and landing clients. 

The key is investing the right amount of time in different types of lead generation. 

Lead generation might sound daunting, but it’s just a technical way of saying “letting people know about your business and services.” 

A “lead” is a prospective client – someone who has learned about what you do and might be interested in your services, either now or in the future. 

Overall, there are three main types of leads based on how long it will likely take them to convert from a prospect to a client. So you have short-term leads, medium-term leads, and long-term leads. Generating these different types of leads takes very different types of activities – which we will cover in this article. 

Finding Short-Term Client Leads for Your Freelance Work

Short-term leads are those you get directly from your personal network. These folks come to you with a lot of trust through personal referrals. Your first clients for your freelance business usually come from short-term leads. 

If your freelance business is new, you always want to start by focusing on short-term leads first, as they can often turn into clients surprisingly quickly. 

To find short-term leads for freelance grant writing, here are tried and true strategies: 

• Tell friends and family about your freelance services and ask them to send you referrals. (We often refer to this one as ‘low-hanging fruit,’ since asking people that know, like, and trust you is the easiest and quickest way to get warm leads.) You can reach out to friends and family with a simple note, such as: “Hi NAME, did you know that I am now writing grants for nonprofits? I am so excited! Would you do me a big favor? If you know any people who work at nonprofits or sit on boards, would you send an introduction email? If not, no worries, just please keep me in mind the next time you hear someone talking about nonprofits. Thank you so much!”

• Share on social media. Using social media to talk about your business can generate both short and long-term leads. In the short term, it’s something most people can do right away. It also feeds into your friends and family knowing about your business since, when starting out, most of your followers are friends and family. You don’t need to start a new Instagram, LinkedIn, or Facebook page for your business right away, either. You can simply change your title to “Grant Writing Consultant” and put some posts on your personal accounts! This is good because it will nudge your friends and family members who are your warmest referrals. One word of caution: don’t go down the rabbit hole of ONLY doing social media for marketing. You want to have time for a variety of marketing strategies to figure out what works best for you.

• Contact nonprofits you know. This is very simple if you come from the nonprofit world, have kids (because they are sure to have some activities with nonprofits like sports, acting, and other activities), or have ever interacted with a nonprofit. Give a call and see if you can set up a meeting with the Executive Director to discuss grant writing services and how you might be able to help out. 

For many folks in our Freelance Grant Writer Academy, their first contracts are actually with former employers. Nonprofits almost always need grant writing support – and are also almost always understaffed. So be sure to cast your ‘friends and family’ net wide enough to include your former colleagues with whom you had good working relationships. 

If you’re interested in the full breakdown of how to get started as a freelance grant writer, check out our guide to starting a freelance grant writing business. 

Generating Medium-Term Client Leads for Your Freelance Work

Medium-term leads can take longer to generate, and fewer will ‘convert’ to becoming your clients, but they are still very valuable. Luckily, there are many ways to get in front of this audience. 

• Develop your professional network. Reach out to professional acquaintances who also own or work at businesses, and ask them for a swap referral call where you each brainstorm 3-5 people to do email introductions to. As an example, you might need a bookkeeper so you could refer yourself to the bookkeeper in exchange for them sending an intro email to two or three nonprofits they work with. These types of ‘warm’ referrals are gold!

• Collaborate with others in your field. You can team up with other grant professionals, nonprofit professionals, and other peers to be on their podcast, do joint webinars, or other collaborations. Working with other aligned professionals can open up the world to their developed lists in exchange for some of your knowledge. You don’t have to have decades of experience for this to work. In our Freelance Grant Writer Academy, many folks who are new to grant writing have buckled down on causes they care about and become quasi-specialists about grants for certain cause areas. They can offer a short 15-minute presentation for someone else’s audience about that topic – adding value for their partner and getting in front of a fresh set of potential clients. 

• Speak at conferences, events, or online programs. Find out what events are happening in your community or cause area and see if you can become a speaker. For example, Laura in our Grant Professional Mentorship program has been a speaker at state-wide events to talk about grants for her specific cause area. This has been great to get clients and to be seen as the go-to grant writer in her cause area.

• Host a training (in person or online). Creating a grant training you can offer in your community or for your cause area online is a great way to get clients. Not only can you charge for the training, you can pitch your direct grant writing services at these events, too! People who enjoyed your training will want you to write their grants! Even if you taught, “How to write a grant,” attendees may realize just how much goes into it and see you as the expert, and then want to hire you.

• Create a newsletter. First, you want to build an email list, so this would be done after you have some business cards and have started building your referral network. But you can then post on your social media channel about your newsletter that talks about specific types of grant writing. You can send weekly emails out to your list and have a Call to Action (CTA) at the bottom of every email to “book a sales call!” with you. 

• Invest in ads. You can create ads to send people to your newsletter, training, or more. But do know that advertisements (whether on Meta, in newsletters for local or state associations, in the paper, or other places) can take a while to work and need continual data and refinement. I would only recommend this if you are building up your business and have made at least $50k in revenue.

Investing in Long-Term Client Leads for Your Business

Long-term leads are even ‘colder’ than medium-term leads. This means it takes more energy (and often money) to reach these client prospects and convert them into clients. Because of this, long-term lead strategies are designed to generate MANY leads (vs just a few). 

However, if you really want to scale your business and revenue up significantly, you will eventually need to invest in generating long-term leads. You will want to: 

• Create a website. A website is so important to have as a freelancer, but it is a long-term strategy. I see freelancers who still haven’t done the short-term leads start here, and it always makes me cry out, ‘NO! Not yet!” You can just have a LinkedIn profile at first, and a place to book clients (like Calendly). You can even use Canva now as a quick website. Why do I recommend waiting to create a professional website? It’s because people often spend way too much money and time on websites, instead of focusing on getting their first client. Do the low-hanging fruit first! 

• Learn to use SEO (search engine optimization). SEO is how you get people to find your business and services using online search. Once you have honed your offers and landed some clients, it’s a good moment to spend time learning how to drive traffic to your website and offers. But doing SEO well does take time. When I first invested in SEO, I spent way too much money on a large corporate SEO agency. They were great, but they weren’t used to working with freelancers, and it didn’t work out too well. Plus, I was still refining my services and my messaging. That’s why it’s so important to be confident and settled in what you want to offer before spending time or money on SEO. 

• Start a YouTube channel. I love YouTube and have a YouTube channel (shameless plug there!). YouTube has its own search engine, which can help leads find you easily. However, before I had really locked down my agency systems, I started a YouTube channel and spent way too much time developing content without a real strategy or refinement in my offers. I took a break from YouTube to really get my offer and messaging down. Now I am back on YouTube, and have the revenue from clients to hire an editor, and have clear messaging and time to create videos.

• Create a podcast. Creating a podcast can be an easy, low-lift that isn’t as expensive as hiring an editor for YouTube (video editing is more expensive!). You can also have more informal editing for podcasts, and listeners are more forgiving. I started a podcast in 2017 and have never looked back. But it is a big project. You need to have consistent content that you create and publish consistently. If that is too much, another way to be in the podcast arena for marketing is to be a guest on other podcasts. You just need to show up and offer quality content and value in an interview. One of the benefits of being in my programs is that you get invited to be a guest on the #1 grant writing podcast in the world: Grant Writing & Funding. 

Deciding HOW to Invest Your Energy in Finding Freelance Clients

The amount of leads and marketing you need really depends on the network you currently have and how many clients you want to have.

Ask yourself: How big do I want to grow my freelance business? 

If you are looking to build up to $100,000 per year on your own, many freelance grant writers only need to stay within the short-term lead generation area and maybe do a couple of medium-term marketing strategies. 

If you want to build a larger grant-writing agency, hire multiple grant writers, and potentially create an online grant-writing course, then you will need to do short-term, medium-term, and long-term lead generation. 

But be careful that you don’t spend too much, too soon, on your marketing. You don’t need to pay high-end, premium prices for all of these items before you get clients. A big mistake I made in the past was spending way too much on SEO before I had clear services. 

Instead, start with the low-hanging fruit and then, if you want to build up more, slowly do so by using the business profit you have already secured. 
If you’re interested in learning more about how to start your own grant writing business, check out our Freelance Grant Writer Academy. Our program is one of the fastest and most reliable ways to learn how to replace your full-time income with part-time hours by writing grants from home.

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