Why I’m pursuing experience in fundraising & development through grant writing
My purpose is to braid kindred intentions into a brighter future. I imagine I’ll do that in many ways over the course of my life. Grant writing to unite impact-driven organizations with the altruistic necessity felt by funders is perhaps the most practical, pre-blazed pathway for me to pursue.
Backstory: What brought me to grant writing?
tldr: moral fatigue in the corporate sector led me to a bridge job, then to mission-driven work.
One of my earliest memories is of holding a purple Crayon to a piece of paper, learning how to write my name. My desk was a little wooden footstool My mother sat at her desk in the living room of our apartment. She was a single mom and an editor. After succeeding, I declared myself the next writer in the family.
I spent my early education and career writing stories, poems, academic essays, and editing search-engine-optimized landing pages and the templates that won the zero-sum game of Google’s page one. I’ve ghostwritten thought leadership blog posts and countless marketing campaigns. I’ve collaborated with creatives, statisticians, and technical experts on product presentations and quarterly reports. Most of my professional writing experience took place in the corporate sector—which I intentionally exited in the spring of 2022.
Marred by headlines that the FTC sued my former employer for millions of dollars and scarred by a John Oliver expose in the war for data privacy, moral fatigue compounded by interior issues brought my ascendent career in content marketing its breaking peak. There was little comfort in my decision to leave the lucrative space of consumer data marketing. But, I wasn’t alone. There was a “quiet quitting” movement of people at odds with the angular momentum of corporate culture. Our shared ethical justification gave me the courage take a massive leap of faith. I finally gave my two weeks and lined up a bartending job at the local brewery. My once panicked heart found fluid ease pouring East Coast style IPAs and malty brown ales.
Behind the bar, I mingled with community members. I read Craig Freshley (a local decision facilitator who later became a friend), Philip Tetlock, and Martin Wolf. I kept learning, exploring, and assessing my career options. I talked with tourists from all walks of life: scientists, HR professionals, technologists, activists, and politicians. Then, in January 2023, I took a part-time opportunity to put my marketing skills to work for a local non-profit. I still work with them today!
Non-profit work has its own challenges—as I know from experience, every sector does. Chief among those challenges is securing the funds to accomplish ambitious missions. Thankfully, the organization I’ve been a part of has an excellent grant writer. (In fact, they just secured a grant to bring on more marketing help, and I couldn’t be happier and more proud of them!) My time with this organization and others taught me the importance and impact of grant work. My vested interest in the importance of decision in building a better future led me to take learn more about fundraising and development.
What I learned in a fundraising & development certification course
To explore and prepare myself for a substantial career pivot, I completed the University of California Davis’ Fundraising and Development Foundations certification course in July of 2024. Here’s what I learned in addition to how to build a case for support.
I’d get to be a team member again!
Like my past content writing roles on marketing teams, many grant writing opportunities would position me within a larger development-oriented team. My understanding based on the course and the job descriptions I’ve found is that my contribution would be to absorb and synthesize the organization’s story, mission, goals, capabilities, and vision into a variety of efficient deliverables that motivate the right funders to give during capital, comprehensive, and other types of campaigns. I also learned that those campaigns generally have 4 steps: identify, cultivate, solicit, and steward.
Charismatic, curious chameleons like me are a natural fit for development work.
Curious chameleons, a term coined by the Education Advisory Board, are 78% more likely to exceed their fundraising goals than their peers. Read more about 👉 what makes me a curious chameleon.
Macro giving trends are really interesting!
I was fascinated to learn that (according to materials provided by the course) religious organizations receive the most funding and that individuals are the largest donor group. I learned which types of gifts are most common, which take the longest to cultivate, and how each target group and donation differ in their approach.
Donors have clear rights and known motivations.
I learned about the Donor’s Bill of Rights and what most often motivates funders to give, but I also realized that this role will give me the opportunity to do one of my favorite things! I would happily spend all day digging into materials and dialogues to understand a person or entity’s vision for the future as clearly as they do. My interest in people’s goals is earnest and genuine. It’s my favorite way to connect with people and will drive me to locate and meaningfully bond with funders who possess authentically aligned interests. My ability to accurately perceive and reflect donors’ interests will become the master key I perfect with study and time.
Let’s talk about my transferrable skills
Most importantly, during my certification, I figured out how I can transition my writing expertise into the impactful role of grant writing. Here are some skills I’ve refined over the years that are essential to fundraising and development campaigns:
Researching and empathizing with target audience(s).
Parsing intent to find well-aligned interests.
Synthesizing complex information for internal and external messaging.
Adopting unique technical writing standards AND audience language.
Interviewing decision makers in a way that makes them feel understood, met, and valued.
Creating campaign assets for every touchpoint in the audience’s journey with a brand.
Using project management tools and spreadsheets to track campaign progress.
Reviewing performance data to regularly assess campaign success.
Presenting findings to new or leadership audiences.
Here’s an example that draws on my past experience.
When I arrived in my role as an SEO content editor, I immediately dug into how Google’s search algorithm worked. I learned everything about Google’s crawling and ranking technology that I could—what companies they’d acquired, research by their newly hired engineers, what linguistic talent they were looking for, what their leadership was saying on Twitter, what resources they shared, how they’d changed the algorithm over time, and what non-Google SEOs guessed would come next. Armed with all that knowledge, I made my own predictions. I integrated their prescribed guidelines into extremely detailed briefs that were tailor made for professional content writers—sharing resources to refresh writers’ on their college intro to linguistics course and providing examples on how to perfectly integrate an infinitive-form anchor text.
I can’t wait to put my boundless curiosity, attention to detail, and ability to synthesize to the task of researching potential donor audiences and building campaign materials aimed to inspire the well-intended to build a brighter future.
Are you hiring remote grant writers?
If I sound like the kind of talent you’re looking for, please reach out to schedule a call. I’d love to learn more about your organization and goals! Click the button below to connect.
Disclosure: NOT AI-Generated. No AI was used in the writing of this blog post—from outlining to edits (for better or worse). I sometimes collaborate with my AI personal assistant, whom I call Gemma, but this isn’t one of them. All of my AI-assisted articles are disclosed in the context of the article.
