Being Realistic About Your Capacity to Carry Out a Funding Strategy

Once the strategy has been developed, it is necessary to analyze how your resources match up with the work you will have to do. I advocate doing everything possible to commit resources in order to not miss out on any available funding. In this section, I will be more specific about how you can determine your ability to take on the ambitious project of applying to multiple grant sources. Obviously, if your analysis shows that your organization is unable to carry out the strategy fully, it would be foolhardy to try to do so. You will need to look at the manpower, skills, capabilities, and experience contained within your organization. In addition, your budget needs to be large enough to give you the proper equipment and supplies with which to work. If lack of funds does not allow you to purchase modern technology which will make your job easier, it is more productive to think about how to improve that situation first. Building organizational capacity takes time. Throw away your preconceived ideas and see the big picture.

The advantages of making a structured analysis of capability are as follows:

• Being prudent about committing resources will allow the organization time to develop capacity naturally and without pressure.
• The funding will probably be approved eventually anyway.
• The organization will avoid any missteps which will give funding agencies a poor impression.
• The organization will be able to focus on “first things first” and build its strengths in order to prepare for a productive fund-raising effort/

If an organization tries to take on a major grant seeking effort before it is ready, the following chain of unfortunate circumstances is likely to occur:

• Staff will feel overwhelmed and therefore perform poorly.
• This will lead to a lack of credibility with the funding agencies.
• This will in turn impact your ability to get future grants.
• All of these unfortunate events will cause poor morale among the team.
• None of this has gotten the problem solved.

This can be summed up in one sentence-be ambitious and work hard and do things in logical steps as you are able.