A non-profit organization requires a lot of patience and hard work to grow and thrive. It is undoubtedly not a job meant for the faint-hearted. When you are trying to make a difference and have a goal for your non-profit, even small things can go a long way. To run a non-profit organization, the importance of funding cannot be denied. And grants are an excellent funding choice. With grant tracking software for non-profits, it is possible to go ahead as far as funding is concerned.
Why are Grants Crucial for Non-Profits?
Many people think of grants as free money. The truth is that they are. Grants are money that you won’t have to pay back and hence are incredibly important for the success of any non-profit. As a non-profit, you are dependent on the benevolence of others to finance your cause and meet your mission goals. Unlike loans, with grants, there is no need to pay them back.
Of course, getting grants will mean quite it of paperwork to be done. Here are reasons why grants are important for any non-profit.
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Financial Help
This is obviously the main requirement of grants for a non-profit organization. Any such organization is built and run on a premise that it serves a cause. No matter what your own non-profit is working for, domestic violence, or the plight of stray dogs, you need money to make things happen.
And that is exactly what a grant provides. Whoever gives the grant is helping you financially to meet your non-profit goals and objectives.
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Makes a Difference
There is no point arguing against the fact that non-profits have the power to bring about real change in the social and community sector. Grants can help make a difference and are therefore remarkably important for the success of any non-profit venture. It allows the organization to make a real difference and make a name for itself as far as the particular cause it supports is concerned.
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Improve Facilities
Grants are also useful to fund a few of the things your non-profit organization may need. For example, it can make work easier for employees and volunteers. It can help build a room for the purpose or get the furniture and computer equipment needed. Money is crucial and a big grant can make the functioning of your organization so much easier.
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Do Social Good
The importance of grants cannot be ignored in the purview of doing social good as well. There are so many instances we see in the world around us where a little can go a long way. That is what non-profits focus on and grants can make these social good instances happen.
Benefits of Using Grant Tracking Software for Non-Profit Organizations
Now that you know why grants are an essential part of the non-profit life, here’s how a good piece of software can be of incredible help.
#1: Email Marketing
Can you imagine getting funded without doing the marketing for it? Impossible, right? That is why software can be beneficial for email marketing. Invest in software that makes email marketing a breeze and allows you to create email marketing messages that will make people notice your organization.
Smart wording is essential in creating such an email marketing campaign and software can go a long way in making that happen.
#2: Grantee Portal
Another very important feature of such software is that your organization will get a grantee portal. You want to make the process of giving a grant as easy as possible. Whether it is a company or an individual who will be making the grant, the process should be quick and effective. They should not have to work hard at trying to make sense of it all.
With a grantee portal right on the software, you will be able to access all the information regarding the concerned grantees. For instance, if you have sent a grant proposal to 3 grantees, you will be able to view all the proposals right on the software itself as well as the following emails and communications.
This makes the whole process very easy for you and your employees because all the information is available in a centralized location. For instance, if there is a volunteer who has just joined your non-profit, she will be able to see all the data on a particular grantee instantly and without troubling any of her co-workers.
#3: Easy Work from Anywhere
Are you a non-profit organization that lets employees work from anywhere they are? Whether some of them work from their homes or from another remote location, giving them access to high-quality grant software for non-profits makes it very easy for everyone.
All the data and information are available in a centralized location and employees as well as volunteers can access it anytime they need it. So when there is the need to reply to a grant proposal email, any of your employees can draft a reply and send it for easy communication.
It certainly makes remote work possible and exciting.
#4: Graph Generation
It is also extremely easy to make graphs on the performance of grants with software. When you use a selected piece of software, you are given graph generation tools that make data tracking easy. Making graphs on paper and pen is certainly an arduous task none of your employees or volunteers would want to spend hours doing it. But it becomes a much easier task when you utilize the software for it.
#5: Streamline the Grant Process
Getting a grant is asking for a good chunk of money from an individual trust fund or an organization. The process of being approved for a grant may be a long and time-consuming one, to say the least. That is why using software certainly helps.
It helps to streamline the process of being approved for a grant. It can take tens of letters for a single grant to be approved and this can involve quite a bit of work on your side. The software makes the whole process much more streamlined.
#6: Communication with Grantees
Communicating with grantees is another very important aspect of any organization looking for grants. Communication can be done easily and effectively via the software itself. All queries of grantees can be answered through it and the whole process is centralized.
#7: Big Increase in Efficiency
The software just increases the efficiency of your non-profit organization by a huge margin. It makes life easier for your employees and volunteers and lets you concentrate on the more important tasks. A lot of the work processes get automated which means that you or your employees don’t have to spend a lot of time on mundane tasks.
Choose the Right Piece of Software
The grant tracking software for non-profits you choose must have the following things:
- It should be made specifically to meet the need of non-profit organizations,
- It should have a dashboard for the grant process so you can use it.
- It should have the best data management tools that allow you to do a lot more than track data. Big data is extremely relevant to any non-profit of today’s times and that is why you need it. Data management for grants should be used not just for grant tracking, but also understanding how grant funds are being used. Trends and outcomes should also be addressed and the integrated grant data management process should also be more effective.
- Highly mobile responsive is also something desirable. You want software that makes the dashboard easily viewable on mobile devices and smaller screens. This will allow your grantees to view all manner of data so that they have an easier time in approving the grant.
As you can well see, having such software at your disposal is a good way of doing more. You want your non-profit organization to work at fulfilling the cause and its mission goals. Trust a good piece of software to make it possible.
