Know and share your results

If you want to receive grants, you have to track your outcomes. This does not mean that you need a full-time monitoring and evaluation person. Although if you can afford one, please do bring one on board. But you need to have enough program tracking that you can prove to a funder that investing their money in your organization will result in real improvements for the communities you serve. And, going one step further, the community would be better served by you than by another organization.

What does your NGO do better than anyone else? Or at least, better than the industry average? What numbers or past-effort stories do you have to back this up?

There are hundreds of organizations who do micro-finance. If that’s your area, you need to be clear about what makes you better than others in that space. Is there a sub-section of clients you serve better? Is there a technology you utilize? Are your interest rates lower?

If you do maternal health care, how much have you been able to reduce hemorrhaging in birth? Or has your focus been on micro-nutrient consumption in pregnancy? Have you improved birth weight, and by how much? You dig wells:  Do your wells receive better maintenance? Are they dug deeper to weather climate change?

You’re going to want to incorporate these results into your “elevator pitch”. It will look something like this: “We build wells in East Africa to ensure clean water, thereby reducing diarrhea-caused early childhood deaths. Our approach includes community involvement in digging and maintaining the well, with a text-messaging service that allows villages to report any issues and receive ongoing support, such that our wells remain effective for 10 years longer than the average.”

To back this up, you need to have some level of tracking and follow up for your programs. If you have that, a grants expert can help you frame your results in a way that will appeal to funders.