Use These 10 Resources for Your Next Government Grant Proposal

September 2011

Applying for local, state and federal government grants is a daunting task. Knowing where to look for grant opportunities and seeing examples of successful proposals can make the job much easier.

Your nonprofit colleagues have shared the following examples and related how-to articles on IdeaEncore, the online nonprofit information exchange. With free registration, all of the items below are free for you to download, except where noted.

Practical, Easy-to-Use How-to Resources and Articles

• The U.S. government's site Grants.gov allows you to find and apply to federal grants.
• The Catalog for Domestic Federal Assistance contains a complete listing of all financial and nonfinancial programs to help your organization find the best-fitting federal assistance program.
• Social Enterprise Associates' Municipal Revolving Loan Funds discusses the ups and downs of revolving loan funds for nonprofits looking to develop social enterprise projects.
• Find out the worst and best practices in government/nonprofit contracting by downloading the first national survey about government contracting practices with nonprofits, the Urban Institute's Human Service Nonprofits and Government Collaboration Findings from 2010 National Survey of Nonprofit Government Contracting.

Examples of Successfully Funded Grant Proposals to Local, State, and Federal Government Agencies

• Grant Proposal from Family Service Association to County of Riverside Community Development Block Grant Program
• Grant Proposal from Ink People to the California Arts Council
• Grant Proposal from Ink People to National Endowment for the Arts
• Grant Proposal from Little Tokyo Service Center to the City of Los Angeles
• Grant Proposal from Little Tokyo Service Center to U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Flo Green, IdeaEncore Network
IdeaEncore Network
Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0)

Florence (Flo) Green is co-founder and vice president of IdeaEncore Network (www.ideaencore.com) which envisions a future in which every nonprofit shares what they know. Nonprofits can use our online information resource exchange to save time/money by reusing shared knowledge; by uploading files/links for others to use (for free or to sell); by making their expertise visible by "liking," rating, and commenting; and by embedding their branded online libraries—that display IdeaEncore resources—within their Web sites.

Note: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and may or may not represent GuideStar's opinions. GuideStar is committed to providing a range of topics and perspectives to our users. We make every effort to obtain articles from knowledgeable, trustworthy sources, but we make no warranties or representations with regard to articles written by persons outside GuideStar.