Behind my back (actually in my face), while I am being traditional, organized, and old school, a revolution in fund raising is taking place. Companies are taking the lead and using their social media exposure to provide grants for non-profits. So get ready, does your school have a Facebook page?

The question for this blog is, are these real grants and do they require your hard won grant writing skills? Yes and no. The grants are real, the money is worth fighting for, but because of the nature of social media, it won’t require weeks of study, narrative development and relationship building to score an award. For the most part, these are highly competitive mini-grants, but don’t sneer at that, mini-grants have an important role to play in your overall fund raising plan. How many times have you had a project that went over budget? In those cases, you would probably tap into your city budget to fill the gaps. Don’t ignore the power of social media to help you dig for gold in the corporate grant environment, and these opportunities are proliferating all over the web.

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To establish best practices for your own grant writing experience, you need to develop good habits. For example, one habit I have when I go to conduct a search for funds is to canvass my community for existing projects that are aligned with district goals. Sometimes, a public school is not eligible for a private foundation grant because it is not a 501(c)3 non-profit organization as designated by the IRS. Many school districts create their own “friends of…” organizations just so they can have an arm that is designated in this way. But, that’s a subject for another day, and an enormous undertaking.

There is no harm, however, in joining with another non-profit in a grant endeavor that can forge a partnership for years to come. After school programs are ideal for this, if your local YMCA is writing a grant to set up an after school recreation program, why not work with them to develop an academic wing of the program, to solve some low test score problems you’ve uncovered.

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