Speaking At the Center for Nonprofit Success Meeting
Last month I stuck my neck out and signed up to join a panel discussion about finding sources for grant support. As it turned out only two out of three of us showed up: me, speaking for searching for grant funders and Jessica Balsam, a prospect researcher offering insight into her work. I had pumped myself up to succeed in giving a cogent presentation without my usual warbling due to nerves. As it turned out, I had almost no negative reaction and in fact mostly enjoyed myself.
My offering concerned the “search for the white rhino,” by which I meant the search for the rare and off-the-beaten-path grant source. I have a good amount of experience doing this, mainly out of desperation, when all the best known grantors don’t pan out. I have often found myself going back to the original challenge of the research, which was to find points of connection between the program or project needing funding and the resource pool of funders available on the Internet. I do this only after exhausting the databases, such as the Foundation Center, which are easily exhausted because they use search tools with limited vocabularies. The objective of my talk was to show ways of engaging the power of the Internet to net some unexpected grantors.
I had prepared a short written document that I hoped would serve as the basis for the information I was going to present. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to take into account people’s innate laziness. In short, the audience – all twelve of them – had not taken the time to look at my materials, let alone read them attentively.
To make a long story short, I spent 45 minutes discussing creative ways to look at a project, its vocabulary, and its funding requirements. I was nearing the end, when someone in the audience raised his hand. He said, “when are we going to get to the grant making organizations. It’s been 45 minutes.” Evidently I had exhausted him and my time, just as I was getting to the best part of my talk: the Cluster.
I love the Cluster. I use the Cluster. The Cluster is a great tool.
Essentially the Cluster is a method for discovering creative connections between words. It’s used in Creative Writing classes for the purpose of defining new characters or to develop plots. I’ve found that it’s a great way to find new words to search with on the Internet. It works very simply. You start with a word that is on the top of the list when you describe your project, such as “Education” and you connect that to another word that comes to mind, such as “hats,” whether it has any apparent connection to the first word or not. And so it progresses. Finally, after you get tired of the whole thing, you discover that you have a whole new set of terms to search Google with, that may lead to unexpected sources of funding. It works.
But I guess I didn’t present it well, because no one asked me any questions, except the guy who wanted me to move along.
If I had it to do over again, I would go at the Cluster first.
My offering concerned the “search for the white rhino,” by which I meant the search for the rare and off-the-beaten-path grant source. I have a good amount of experience doing this, mainly out of desperation, when all the best known grantors don’t pan out. I have often found myself going back to the original challenge of the research, which was to find points of connection between the program or project needing funding and the resource pool of funders available on the Internet. I do this only after exhausting the databases, such as the Foundation Center, which are easily exhausted because they use search tools with limited vocabularies. The objective of my talk was to show ways of engaging the power of the Internet to net some unexpected grantors.
I had prepared a short written document that I hoped would serve as the basis for the information I was going to present. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to take into account people’s innate laziness. In short, the audience – all twelve of them – had not taken the time to look at my materials, let alone read them attentively.
To make a long story short, I spent 45 minutes discussing creative ways to look at a project, its vocabulary, and its funding requirements. I was nearing the end, when someone in the audience raised his hand. He said, “when are we going to get to the grant making organizations. It’s been 45 minutes.” Evidently I had exhausted him and my time, just as I was getting to the best part of my talk: the Cluster.
I love the Cluster. I use the Cluster. The Cluster is a great tool.
Essentially the Cluster is a method for discovering creative connections between words. It’s used in Creative Writing classes for the purpose of defining new characters or to develop plots. I’ve found that it’s a great way to find new words to search with on the Internet. It works very simply. You start with a word that is on the top of the list when you describe your project, such as “Education” and you connect that to another word that comes to mind, such as “hats,” whether it has any apparent connection to the first word or not. And so it progresses. Finally, after you get tired of the whole thing, you discover that you have a whole new set of terms to search Google with, that may lead to unexpected sources of funding. It works.
But I guess I didn’t present it well, because no one asked me any questions, except the guy who wanted me to move along.
If I had it to do over again, I would go at the Cluster first.
posted by Schultz and Company | 11:16 PM
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