Sick of decline letters? Give your grant-based fundraising a reboot with three simple practices that will modernize your approach, fix common mistakes, and deliver improved revenues.

Date: March 19, 2025
Location: CCS Fundraising
1667 K St NW Suite 210, Washington, DC 20006

*Breakfast will be provided

This event contains a hybrid option. Please indicate upon registration whether you will be attending virtually. Those attending virtually will be sent a link to join 24 hours before the event.

Speaker: Liza Douglas, MPS, CFRE

Liza Douglas, CFRE, is a senior executive in Mission Advancement at the American Heart Association with a 20+ year career in fundraising and development for domestic and international nonprofits. Her superpower is co-creating high impact philanthropic programs for individual, corporate, government, and foundation funding, but foundation grants are her favorite. Liza holds a Master’s degree in nonprofit administration and CFRE certification; she is also certified AFP training faculty and an active member of the Washington DC AFP Chapter.

Today’s philanthropists are increasingly breaking old patterns and mechanisms, giving grants from all kinds of vehicles beyond traditional endowed foundations. This lively, interactive workshop is a practical examination of three common mistakes holding back grant win rates and how to overcome them, whether staffed with a team of specialized grant-writers or none at all. The facilitator, a 20+ year veteran of grant-based fundraising, provides data-backed insights and hands-on practice with grant-seeking tips applicable to organizations and fundraising teams of all sizes. The workshop is designed around three topics – each a common mistake with a “quick fix” solution: one in prospecting, cultivation, and stewardship. The micro outline for each topic includes a brief review of relevant research and giving data for context, a readily-appliable best practice solution (drawn from facilitator’s own experience, but consistent with AFP Fundamentals pedagogy), and an interactive exercise in alignment with adult learning best practice. The three topics are: 1) Prospecting: “barking up the wrong trees,” with antiquated segmentation strategies. Learners will explore giving trend data and discuss modern and diverse sources of grant opportunities, including DAFs and bundled major gifts, LLCs, family offices, corporate multi-channel giving, etc. The exercise is formulation of questions that identify grant opportunities hiding within their prospect lists. 2) Cultivation: skipping straight to solicitation. Learners will explore the application of the full donor cycle to grant funding requests, and practice specific strategies to identify and cultivate (human) funder contacts before proposal submission. 3) Stewardship: balancing compliance with collaboration. Learners will explore reporting and power dynamics in how to fulfill grant obligations while creating lasting relationships that drive new and repeat grants. Skill practice is in developing grant stewardship plans and steps. Taken together, the training reinforces a commitment to relationship-based fundraising even in grant-based solicitations that are too often treated as purely transactional, but the content is delivered via a light-hearted set of “how-tos” that can be immediately adopted and applied by a wide range of front-line fundraisers. The facilitator has over twenty years in grant-based fundraising for domestic and global nonprofits, ranging from 5-figure to 9-figure grant sizes, and has been a coach and peer trainer on related content for 15+ years.

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