Selected Engagements.

The organization had petitioned the same federal program twice and been declined on both occasions. The program itself was sound; the writing was not. I reconstructed the narrative outward from the statement of need, realigned the logic model to the rubric the program’s reviewers actually apply, and revised the budget narrative to demonstrate sustainability beyond the grant period. The proposal was funded on its third submission. The organization has since renewed with the same funder and extended the program to a second site.

The organization had been pursuing grant opportunities as they surfaced rather than cultivating a deliberate funder pipeline. I prepared a funder landscape report ranking foundation, corporate, and government prospects by fit and giving capacity. From that report we selected three priority funders and submitted letters of inquiry. Two advanced to full proposal stage, and one, a private foundation with no prior relationship to the organization, funded the request in full.

The founder had been told repeatedly that her proposals were “not quite what we fund,” without a shred of actionable feedback to work from. Her proposals were strong; they simply were not calibrated to the particular funders receiving them. I devised a funder strategy aligned to her program’s actual positioning, identified a foundation whose priorities genuinely matched her work, and wrote to both the funder’s stated criteria and its unspoken preferences. The request was funded within three months of the engagement’s start.