As an international development non-profit, illuminAid receives some of our support through the generosity of grants. This is just one of the ways we diversify our funding to continue to sustainably scale our operations in developing communities around the globe. Grant writing can be an intensive and arduous process, but it has the potential to yield extremely impactful rewards. If you’re wondering what the grant writing process entails, we’re here to share what we’ve learned as we continue to incorporate this important approach into our development strategy.
Identifying Opportunities
The first step in applying for grant funding is identifying opportunities that fit the scope of illuminAid’s work. This is one of the most important steps in the process in order to be a competitive applicant and invest our resources wisely in the pursuit of a feasible funding opportunity. illuminAid is best suited for grant funds designated for behavior change, education and Information and Communication Technologies for Development (ICT4D) projects, especially in international contexts. Oftentimes funding priorities are focused on a particular region in need or in a specific sector (like agriculture, disease prevention or women’s empowerment), and illuminAid is able to flex and meet these parameters due to our extensive experience across countries and development sectors.
Types of Funding
In addition to identifying grant opportunities that fit well with illuminAid’s mission and activities, it’s important to consider the funding source and the scale of the proposed activity. Put most simply, there are two types of grant sources for development work: private grants and public grants (also known as government grants). Private grants are funding opportunities that are sponsored by a foundation or grantmaking entity or the social impact division of a corporation. These grants require a thorough articulation of how funds will be used to make an impact, and awards are generally smaller in size (between $10,000 and $50,000). On the other hand, public grants are funds offered by a government agency and require notoriously extensive applications: proposals can be hundreds of pages long and take 80-100 hours to complete (Source). This is for good reason — public funding requires increased accountability and transparency into funded activities and, in return, may award up to multi-million dollar grants to capable development organizations. Given illuminAid’s operating scale, we are best suited for private grants or being a subcontractor (or secondary grant recipient) on publicly funded projects. In the latter scenario, our organization can offer a specific solution to primary grant recipients by increasing organizational capacity to incorporate video into their educational and behavior change initiatives.
Forging Partnerships
Once we’ve identified an opportunity aligned with our work, we first review our Program Opportunity Brochures (POBs). We generate these POBs internally when we connect with a prospective partner doing compelling, important work in a marginalized community with limited access to funding. In these cases, illuminAid can use grant awards to make video and information technologies more accessible to local organizations that need them most. You can explore our current POBs on our website and learn more about the organizations in our network seeking funding support. Grant priorities can also prompt unique collaboration opportunities between illuminAid and organizations working in a relevant region or discipline. For example, if we locate a funding opportunity that seeks to improve education access in rural Zambia, we may conduct outreach to local NGOs that work in the area and make a partnership proposal based on illuminAid’s expertise in offering education solutions through video in disconnected areas. Then it’s time to develop and submit the grant proposal or provide letters and information to support another organization’s proposal.
Execution and Evaluation
The final step of the grant process is executing the funded project. When a grant has been awarded and we’ve celebrated the success, we now are responsible for the implementation and evaluation of the program that was theorized in the grant proposal. Regardless of the funding source, all grants require some degree of monitoring and reporting on the funded activities in order to ensure that the funds create an impact. illuminAid approaches Monitoring and Evaluation (also known as M&E) in our programs in a few different ways: qualitative surveys and quantitative data collection. illuminAid is best able to measure our unique impact through workshop participant surveys that measure trainee confidence (before and after being trained) in creating and editing video as well as incorporating video into behavior change programming. In addition, we require our program partners to record the number of videos created over the course of a program, the number of beneficiaries that participate in educational video screenings, and, when possible, the isolated impact video has made on the adoption rates of behaviors shown in videos. All of these data points help us to illustrate the ways community-led video can increase access to educational messages and improve the quality of life for individuals living in developing communities.
Make an impact
Grants present powerful opportunities for organizations like illuminAid to increase the impact of their work and for funding institutions to allocate resources to making a measured difference in the areas that matter to them. The process of pursuing grant funding requires the careful collaboration of illuminAid’s program, development, and strategy staff members, and the intentional orchestration of outside partners and priorities. A skilled grant writer is essential to our ability to pursue such funding opportunities, and we are so grateful to our team members who are dedicated to this activity. If you are skilled in writing, juggling deadlines and priorities and are passionate about using your skills to make a difference, we warmly invite you to consider volunteering with illuminAid as a grant writer.
