Grants can have a dark side, too

Friday, February 22, 2008

Juan Carlo / Star staff Herb Baehr, left, of Santa Paula is congratulated by Jane Marcus, a volunteer for the River Valley Club, for getting a math problem right at El Buen Pastor United Methodist Church. Nonprofits are chasing grants for funds.

Carrie Roberts figured out early how to win grants, the strings-attached gifts coveted by charities, PTAs and big government alike.

Roberts was a struggling graduate student in Canada in the late 1980s when she landed her first one, $800 for a laser printer to copy her research results. She struck again with proposals that helped fund the domestic violence shelter where she worked nights. From there, it was just a short jump to real gold: a $1 million grant for a youth development group in South Central Los Angeles.

Now Roberts, a mother of 2-year-old triplets who lives in Fillmore, is one of perhaps half a dozen people in Ventura County who make their living in the field.

“I’m like a nonprofit doctor,” she said.

She writes grant proposals for clients, teaches classes to aspiring grant writers and helps nonprofits improve their organizations so they can qualify for the cash.

Among her clients is the Santa Clara Valley Hospice/Home Support Group, which wanted to find the money to open an adult day program in the Santa Paula area. She helped the agency find $370,000 in grants for the program that started in a local church in 2006.

Her career may be a sign of how vital grants have become. But it’s not the only tipoff: Classes in grant-writing are the most popular offerings in a nonprofit management center operated by the Ventura County Community Foundation. They top accounting, board leadership and new ways to use technology.

Although most donations to charity still come from individuals, grants from private foundations, businesses and government are tempting nonprofits.

Governments use services

Government agencies are in the chase as well: Two-thirds of the Ventura County Public Health Department’s budget of $35 million is composed of grants from state and federal agencies.

Even the granddaddy of workplace campaigns, the United Way, has had to get in the game. David Smith, chief executive officer of the United Way of Ventura County, said some corporations favor targeting money to particular causes through grants.

“We are going to need to spend even more attention focused on grants than we have in the past because the whole workplace-giving environment has changed significantly over the last few years,” he said.

“As you have companies that are developing their own charitable giving foundations, they may no longer be doing workplace campaigns. As companies downsize, as they have in Ventura County, they may be contributing less.”

Grants began to grow in importance in the prosperous 1990s. A lot of money was coming into foundations, and their portfolios were growing with the booming stock market, experts in the field said.

Nonprofit specialist Doug Green said the “dark cloud” was that many charities became overly dependent on grant funding, neglecting bread-and-butter fundraising from donors.

“Instead of having a broad base of support from the community who were all giving on a regular basis, they were depending on a few institutional funders,” said Green, who teaches nonprofit management at Pepperdine and California Lutheran universities.

He doubts, though, that there will be much of a downturn with the lackluster stock market. Each year foundations must give away 5 percent of their funds to maintain their nonprofit status with the Internal Revenue Service, a calculation that’s based on a multi-year average, he said.

Still, the competition for dollars has tightened, Green said.

He ties that to the growth in nonprofits — the number of tax-exempt charities in Ventura County has more than doubled in the past 10 years to 2,300 — and tougher standards. The foundations are looking for measurable outcomes as well as nonprofits that promise to make real change.

“They are becoming much more choosy,” he said.

Ventura County groups send grant proposals to a bevy of grant makers, including local cities, county, state and federal governments, corporations and philanthropic foundations.

The tightening competition means no credible source is overlooked. Grant writer Dorie Zabriskie of Ventura said she combs the newspaper, picking up the names of funders in advertisements that charities run to thank their supporters.

She visits GuideStar.org, a Web site that posts the financial filings of foundations.

“I can look and see what they give,” she said. “Their guidelines might say one thing, but their reports might say something else.”

Other funding essential

Grants may look easier to get than putting on fundraisers or winning over thousands of contributors. But there are downsides, managers say.

Grants rise and fall and run out, can be spent only for certain things, and often require reports and audits.

And unlike individual donors, grant makers often won’t pay for the front office.

“A lot of grants don’t want to give to administrative or operating expenses,” said Kim Stroud, executive director of the Ojai Raptor Center. “We applied and received a grant for $35,000 to build our new cages, but the roof over my head is leaking.”

Linda Henderson, director of the county Public Health Department, said the restrictions may not fit with changing community needs.

“I think accountability is good, but the problem is when you can only use this money for this type of service,” she said. “Human beings aren’t like that.”

Foundation officials say they try to be flexible, but that agencies should do their homework to find the right fit.

“There’s really no secret,” said Karen Escalante-Dalton, who reviews grant proposals for the California Endowment, which gives away $160 million annually.

“Demonstrate that there’s a problem and propose a sound strategy for addressing it that is in alignment with whoever you’re trying to get funding from,” she said.

Even volunteers can win at that game if they’re prepared and committed.

Volunteer Betsy Held took three days of classes in May, then wrote some winning proposals for the Ojai Raptor Center. The former court reporter found there was a lot involved, from providing budgets to proving the center was sustainable.

Three of the four applications she wrote for grants succeeded, pulling in almost $14,000 for the small nonprofit dedicated to saving injured, displaced and orphaned birds of prey.

“I just told the story of the raptor center,” she said.                       Back To Main Site