I develop grant proposals and strategies to help nonprofit agencies bring energy, innovation, and opportunities to their organizations, people, and communities.

Have you had to look someone in the eyes and tell them we can’t help?

Have you had to meet with staff and tell them they can’t be paid because we’re out of money?

Have you wondered about a better way of helping people?

I’ve had those questions and experiences too.

I worked for 13 years in Washington, DC, for House of Representative members. People came to us as a last resort; People who had no other options but to appeal for help with housing, food, job training, saving or expanding a business, creating community centers, and on and on.

Every day people came seeking solutions. I had a small part in helping to get many of them addressed—better education, job training, food, housing, tax relief, helping businesses expand, improving community services and development. I also worked with many organizations navigate the maze of government bureaucracy to obtain grant funds.

I’ve worked with nonprofit organizations when major donors or a fundraising campaign came up dramatically short and hope is lost. I’ve also had my pay cut or frozen when a funding source decided to reduce its spending.

And, I’ve worked in and with organizations that do the same thing every year for no other reason than that’s what they’ve always done.

When I moved back to my hometown, met and married my wife, I wanted to make a difference in my hometown. I was tired of working with numbers and problems that were so big that no amount of money seemed to be a lasting answer. I wanted to make an impact in my community.

A friend at our local university came to me one day and said, “Mark, you worked with grants and stuff in your job in Washington didn’t you?” I said sure. “Well, there’s a group here in town that is looking for someone to help them with some grant work. There’s no pay with it, but they are really struggling with getting a community performing arts center built. Do you think you could help?” Sure, I said.

A life journey had begun. Writing has always been a passion. So, writing grants seemed to be a way of extending that passion into something worthwhile.

When I finished work on the performing arts center, we had raised nearly $2 million from grants for a rural community of 30,000 people. Today, that performing arts center hosts hundreds of events and community celebrations every year. What a way to see the impact of your work!

However, the work wasn’t easy. We sent out hundreds of applications—using the time honored shotgun approach to fundraising. We hoped that out of the hundreds of applications we sent out, at least a couple would come back with a check.

Even though we were successful with that campaign, and I was hired on by the local school foundation to write grants for the public school district, I knew that if I kept using this shotgun approach I wouldn’t be very successful in making my community better.

Why? Because pursuing grants is more than just putting words on paper and throwing them up to the wind and hope they find a home. Obtaining grant funding is about developing systems to identify funding sources; crafting proposals that tell a story and convey the impact of the project or program on people in a logical way; and developing and maintaining relationships with funding sources

By developing these systems, I’ve written grants that have brought in more than $14 million, created jobs, and altered the landscape of services and opportunities in our small community. From these systems, I’ve identified funding sources and developed approaches that work.

How? By persistence and looking for innovation. By having a passion for creating opportunities for organizations and people, and using systems that can produce results. Success can be found beyond the written words.

Back in the old days, sending out a letter or holding a fundraising event one could expect a contribution. Using this approach, many nonprofit organizations multiplied the letters and events in the hope that it could raise more money. Sadly, nonprofits spent more time raising funds than helping people.

Ah, the old days. Or, is it today?

Look at the mailbox or look at caller ID for the 800 numbers, or check out the Internet solicitations. Our mailboxes are full of people asking for my dollar. What organizations receive my contribution? I contribute to organizations that I have a personal connection to from our work together.

That is the same approach with grants: one has to establish a relationship beyond the words. Certainly, the words are the closure of the deal and progress can’t be made without the words on paper. However, there’s more to it than just the words—it’s the relationship, the passion, and the ability of getting the job done. It’s about having tools at hand that can bring the energy, innovation, and opportunities to people that may not have hope or abilities for a better tomorrow without YOU.

When other people in my community learned of the success I’ve had with grants, I would get calls asking for my help. I was offered board positions with nonprofits because they thought I could bring in millions for them too.

So many times, my heart was torn because the work of these groups is vital to so many. Yet, I also had a family and responsibilities. So, I taught others how to write grants. I showed them some of the systems I developed—many of them from hard luck experience.

And, I saw people take those lessons and systems and create new opportunities, innovative solutions, and energy to organizations and people.

It was then that I saw the value of my work was beyond the words and figures printed on paper. The systems I developed and taught to others, brings change for the good! I realized these systems made a real impact on problems, and if I could share these systems with others the impact I can make will stretch beyond the words I string together in a grant proposal for a single organization.

These systems have proven to work—as shown from $14 million has been raised for a small rural community’s nonprofit networks and school systems. If these systems can work in this small environment, imagine how they will work in your community—regardless of size!

When I work with people, I’ve found that many of them will leap before looking. They may spend hours or days working on a grant proposal they have no way of obtaining, managing, or are even eligible to receive. They also write themselves into a corner, fail to answer the questions raised in the application and just go completely off-track.

I’ve also seen groups write for a grant, get funded, and then have no idea what to do next. Or, the grants are so poorly mismanaged the grant that the grant funder asks for its money back.

Or the organization writes a grant, gets funded, and then decides that it will do whatever it wants with the money—even going so far as to fund things that have no relation to what the grant funder gave them the money to do.

I’ve also seen organizations running in place and never making progress. They start a process and then it dies because its staff has so many other responsibilities and other activities that they think an investment into a grant process is wasted. They may have tried it before and it simply didn’t work.

In my work with small rural organizations, many of them look up and down the street of its organization and see no opportunities—no major business or big money foundations. All they see is a bar and a gas station. What hope does it have to make a lasting difference?

What hope do you have to make a change? What opportunities can you help provide to people and organizations struggling the make a major change in the community? What new or innovative approaches can you bring that will make a lasting impact? How can you bring new energy to people and organizations that have become frozen in time?

I started Goldstone Grants to help bring change to a larger audience–to bring energy, innovation, and opportunities to nonprofit organizations and people. From the start, I’ve found others who share my passion, and today we can help others by are able to bring the change that

Sign up for a free grant consultation session. We can visit about your hopes and dreams, your experience with grants, what change you want to make, and the struggles you’ve had in the past. I then share with you the opportunities that can help make a difference, show you the approaches I’ve taken to overcome similar barriers, and how we can work together to make a difference.

If you think you are ready to charge forward, enroll in my grant training sessions. We work together to understand the grant award process and develop a system that works for you to identify funding sources, develop grant proposals, create a submission and tracking system, and craft a management system that blends with your current financial controls.

These sessions don’t stop after the training ends. I stay with you as a mentor/coach to help you implement these systems, answer questions, and be a sounding board as the nervousness of taking the risk for change turns into confidence. I am with you as you transform your organization and create higher abilities to sustain the change the nonprofit brings to the community and the people it serves.

We can also be your in-house grant specialist. You can shadow me and see how my approach and systems work and see how I take what you’ve been doing and help bring it to another level of vitality and impact. We work together to identify the goals and expectations you want from me, and what I need from you to make us successful.

You can also enroll in our free subscription service. You will receive weekly posts on topics that will help you find out about emerging trends in social philanthropy, grant development strategies, and breaking news that can impact the organization’s effectiveness.

We take a long-term approach—we want to help you make lasting changes, develop systems that bring innovation, energy, and opportunities to the organization and the people it serves.

E-mail me today at: mark@goldstonegrants.com. Enroll in our free subscription. Check out the services we offer: http://www.goldstonegrants.com/services/