Foundant is collecting responses to its annual The State of Grantseeking Report!

Responses are due by March 31, 2022. The State of Grantseeking Report is an invaluable resource to both organizations and funders!

We have to be honest – 2022 has been nuts. The prevailing sentiment from our development colleagues is that the fundraising landscape looks very much like a Magic 8 Ball that’s always landing on “Outlook hazy, try again later”. Stock market fluctuations and inflation are provoking serious questions about giving trends, while the insidious nature of new COVID-19 variants continue to leave us all in event planning limbo.

At the end of the day, diversification of revenue sources will be critical to weathering whatever storms we face as a sector: natural or man-made. Our advice?

—> A.B.A.: Always Be Applying (yes, we know that’s poor grammar). Up your grant seeking efforts and apply to enough opportunities that you are statistically closer to success.

—> Change Up Your Story: Develop new, compelling narrative for your proposals, annual reports and appeals, website, social media platforms, etc. that illustrates how critical you have been to making sure your community had their basic needs met during COVID, and how you’re ready to help them face what’s next. Make sure to center your community’s and clients’ voices!

—>Increase Your Asks: We don’t believe in being shy, and we certainly don’t believe donors get to stay comfortable while you’re out here stretching every dollar and putting out fires 24/7. Funders have to hear from the non-profit community how both COVID and this crazy inflation we’re experiencing is wrecking havoc on your ability to deliver programs and meet demand. Ask for more, explain why carefully, and ask for multi-year commitments.

—> Stay hybrid: If COVID-19 is going to be something we have to live with, then fundraising has to stay resilient and flexible. Keep a healthy mix of in-person and virtual events on the schedule this year. And don’t feel bad at all about cultivating relationships with donors over Zoom – if we’ve learned anything at all during the pandemic, it’s that virtual meetings give us the ability to meet with donors more conveniently, wherever they happen to be.

What does it mean to honor Black History Month? Each February, our social media feeds are filled with reminders of the contributions and sacrifices Black Americans have made to our society, and the injustices and violence inflicted on them simultaneously. It is a time of reflection on racism and oppression’s role in the founding and shaping of the United States.

To truly honor history requires an acknowledgement of what must be done today and in the future to achieve equity and justice. In this regard, both the for-profit and non-profit sectors have much work to do. KDS is no exception, and we are looking at our own policies, practices, culture, and pathways to advancement to see where we can and must do better.

One of those areas is in how we write, and the words we choose to use in the proposals we develop. We’ve been learning from our clients, our colleagues, and our own staff that the words and phrases (and even grammar) we use frequently can reinforce white supremacy, and sabotage efforts to achieve equity and inclusion.

We are also examining how to respond to clients who are looking to us to write their organization’s statement on Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, and Inclusion for grant proposals. To be frank, we dread these requests, because the answer we give makes a lot of people very uncomfortable and angry:

We can’t, and won’t, write about the work you haven’t done.

Questions pertaining to DEAI policies and practices are now commonplace from private and government funders. We sometimes struggle when we’re faced with creating DEAI language for grant proposals that aren’t supported by deliberate, intentional work to audit and root out the inequity within an organization. Tough conversations around the difference between incidental effect vs intentional action have happened much more frequently with our clients in the past 2 years.

Our practice at KDS is to follow the sound guidance of the Grant Professionals Association: “If your organization has not implemented DEI strategies, it is important to be transparent about this during the grant application process. First, identify the challenges your organization faces in implementing such strategies. Then, describe the proposed solutions. ”

And if your organization has been mulling over whether DEAI training is something you really need to do, we cannot be more emphatic about this: Yes, it is. Because there is always something you can learn about yourself. It probably won’t be a pretty process, and the things you learn will most definitely not be easy to swallow. But it will make you better: a better organization, a better ally to your community, and a better partner.

And it’s the right thing to do.

• Funder has a connection to your mission because it benefits their community, and enhances their regional visibility.
• Increase your community network of event participants, volunteers, individual donors, and collaborators.
• Long-term relationship building with the funder (very important).
• Application process may be less taxing or require less staff time.
• Engage hesitant board members in fundraising that they are comfortable with.
• Regional funding should become a bridge to national funding. Leverage support from regional funders and then make your case to national funders and seek greater amounts of funding.

A message from Christina Kazanas, Principal, Kazanas Development Strategies:

Change is inevitable. Anyone not living on a deserted island since March of 2020 knows what I’m talking about. There has been pivoting and scrambling and re-innovating and all the other pandemic-ing we’ve done to keep our doors open and yeah…we’re all exhausted. I’m exhausted. Let’s take a nap.

Except we can’t, because just when it looks the coast is clear and things can get back to a fraction of the normal we used to have, we’re realizing that “normal” was…actually pretty horrible. Hunkering down and remote working has revealed some terrible truths about our economy, and now we’re at a Day of Reckoning about it:

-Too many people work too much for too little.
-Employers don’t respect work/life boundaries or quality
-Everything is getting more expensive.

All three of these facts are converging into what I truly believe is the closest thing to a general strike that our nation will ever come to. Labor is withholding their labor until they can get what they need from employers to do more than just survive.

And I think they’re right.

Since I went solo and rebranded the company, it’s been a roller-coaster. The plans I had for 2020 to expand our service offerings and our workforce fell off a cliff when COVID happened – like most everyone else’s plans. Through a lot of sleepless nights and financial sacrifice, we made it and are in a great position as we close out 2021. I found a fantastic team of crazy-talented women who have bought into our mission 100% and I could not be more thankful to them for their work, their patience, and their advice.

Going into 2022, I know that I can’t rest on the model of business that got us here. Something has to change. Again.

Beginning January 2022, Kazanas Development Strategies will implement some incredible and progressive changes to its work policy that I feel will make KDS a better employer, and more effective at what we do for the non-profit organizations who hire us:

-We’ll be transitioning all of our current staff positions to full-time and recalibrating salaries so that no employee is paid less than the living wage for the state or county they live in (based on 1 adult and 1 child in the household).

-We will be shortening our full time work week to 4 days/32 hours, and giving all employees a Friday-Saturday-Sunday weekend.

-We’ll be offering a flexible start to the work day so that employees can choose what works best for their needs. They can choose to start their day between 7am and 10 am, and will put in an 8 hour day based on that start time.

-We will be implementing an honor-based Paid Time Off leave policy – full time employees are able to take the time off that they need for vacations, wellness days, bereavement, days of sloth and slack, whatever… without having to accrue that time first, and with no prescribed limits on the amount of time you can take off in a year. The policy carefully outlines the conditions that must be met to get time off approved, and will be coordinated with state paid family leave programs and our long term disability plan.

-We’re not quite there yet with offering full group medical and dental benefits yet, but we will be offering a monthly stipend towards the purchase of a health insurance plan through an ICHRA.

-Remote work has always been a cornerstone of our company’s model…that will not change. We have invested in a better work productivity and communications infrastructure that maximizes both remote work and a shorter work week.

As a woman-owned microbusiness, it is always a struggle to afford the typical benefits that larger businesses provide as SOP. KDS has had to get creative and responsive to our employees’ needs, and to the changing demands of the labor force to stay competitive and retain high quality personnel. After some fits and starts, we think we’re on to something that makes us an attractive employer. More importantly, it’s a positive step towards making us a good employer.

And moreover, the changes we’re making are grounded in science and emerging best practices. This article from Planio helps explain the benefits for everyone involved.

I’m really excited about this. Our staff is excited that someone’s listening to them about what they need as workers, as parents, and as human beings. And we are confident that all of these changes will result in improved performance for our clients.

 

KDS has instituted some exciting workplace policies. We were thrilled to hear that the Congressional Progressive Caucus endorsed the 32-Hour Work Week Act. CNBC has a segment on it here:

We’ve noticed that while there’s a ton of support right now for transitioning to a 4-day work week, there’s a scarcity of online resources with practical suggestions for implementing this change on a daily basis, and a dearth of practical suggestions of how staff will need to manage their time and client expectations.

Always looking to further dialogue on how to improve work/life balance, KDS will be documenting our own transition to a 4-day work week, and sharing our challenges and wins with you. We’d love to see this become a widely adopted practice, and ideally just one of many to prevent #non-profit and #microbusiness staff burnout and improve retention in a non-exploitative way.

Doulas4CT, a statewide collaborative of Doulas, community voices, advocates, community organizations and allies, received a $76,811 from the CT Health Foundation for their Doulas Advocating for Equitable Maternal Care project. The project goal is to ensure that doula services are authentically integrated into the healthcare delivery system. The project focuses on upcoming state policies that must be informed by doulas so the certification process represents the spirit of the doula profession and provides a sustainable payment model to increase access, particularly for women of color. The project builds capacity for Doulas4CT and provides a model of compensating for doula’s knowledge to address maternal health disparities among women of color. The United Way of Coastal Fairfield County is the fiscal sponsor for Doulas4CT.

Right now, between holidays and seasons, it feels like a good time to reflect and check in with the priorities we set for ourselves a few months back. At the end of summer 2021, KDS met for a half day retreat at The Mothership (aka District New Haven Cowork) on the future of our firm. There was laughter. There was innovation. There were hard decisions. There was a giant 12 foot tall whiteboard. There were so many tacos. At the end of it, what emerged was a really exciting vision for how to restructure KDS for future success for ourselves and our clients. What’s coming up in 2022 is so exciting for us, and we to share it with you!

Really, what’s happening is that we’re in a growth phase. Ramping up, especially for a microbusiness like KDS, can be super-bumpy and awkward, with fits and starts and spasms. Like a teenage boy at a school dance. Or Elaine on Seinfeld.

Our first priority was to staff-up and create some more bandwidth/headspace for Christina to develop new business relationships and think big thoughts. This fall, we created two full-time positions and are bringing on a third in the new year! We have been working with our human resources partners at the Human Resources Consulting Group on some incredible forward-thinking workplace policies and tactics to attract, retain, and manage talent.

We’ve made great strides towards fully integrating our technological resources and train all of our team members on best practices in using them. We have completed data migrations, documented our processes, and engaged a consultant (Nick at Ask A Nerd) to help us with our tech and software troubleshooting.

We also decided to stroll on over to the 21st century and get our social media game going. KDS has engaged with Janice Cupee and her firm Cerasee Media to set a digital marketing strategy and develop content for our various platforms. With our Communications and Operations Manager, Phoebe Zinman, they are refining KDS’s voice and vision. We are finalizing content for our long-awaited website re-launch – stay tuned for that baby! We’re so proud of how she’s coming along!

With great growth comes great responsibility – we want KDS to be a place where the best want to come and stay! We’ve developed internal on-boarding processes to make the entry into KDS as smooth as possible for both employee and our clients. And we are implementing some incredible new workplace policies and benefits in 2022 that are designed to provide more of what people want and need for themselves and their families: time off.

Way back in August, over tacos, we identified the ways in which we wanted to improve and expand our capacity, to work better and not harder, to champion work/life balance in a field that is notoriously deficient at prioritizing that, to cement new working relationships, and to plant seeds for future growth. From our vantage point here, in the early days of December, we did pretty well. We checked the boxes on our to-do list and got a return on our investment in infrastructure. But more than that, we affirmed our vision for what KDS can be and the changes that we can help enact in our own communities.

In order to see the change, we have to be the change. And we’re just getting started

 

Last Tuesday, we attended Blue Avocado’s webinar: Social Transformation for Your Nonprofit with The People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. The panelists were engaging and informative and the dialogue centered around the idea that for anti-racism work to be more than a shingle that’s been hung outside your organization in the last couple of years, you must take accountability within the organization (and Board!) for how exactly you are reinforcing systemic racism, as well as have organizational principles that will guide your organization’s work around undoing racism.

One thing that really struck us was how they addressed grantwriting in particular as a place where *linguistic racism* exists. Examples of things to avoid included the terms “minority neighborhoods” and “at-risk.” KDS loves the Progressive Style Guide that was created in 2016 and we hope another updated version will be created soon. In the meantime, this is a topic we’ll continue to explore and revisit.

Watch the whole webinar here.

“And if we’ve used money to harm, we can flip that paradigm and we can use it to repair. And that’s how money can be this sacred thing. It can be a life-giving force. And if we are liberating resources and moving resources to where the hurt is the worst in our communities, and that is the communities of color. … You have to explore and find, and figure out what your super power is. What’s your place of influence and how can you wield that influence and how can you wield it towards justice? Towards reconciliation? Towards truth?”  – Edgar Villanueva

Last week we attended an amazing conversation between Angel Acosta from the Garrison Institute and Decolonizing Wealth‘s founder Edgar Villanueva. This quote from Edgar really gets at the heart of what the liberation of wealth and resources can look like.

To be similarly inspired and motivated, catch the whole recording here.