Relationships with Funders: Helpful or Harmful?

I was having a quiet debate (i.e., we weren't yelling at each other) with a colleague about the benefits of relationships with funders, particularly foundation program officers. While I understand the reasons that establishing relationships with funders is helpful to nonprofits, especially in a community like Cleveland in which there are more than 1,500 established nonprofits, I also wonder about the potential harm of such relationships.

My biggest concern with the whole relationship issue is what happens to the nonprofit when the relationship ends, usually because one party leaves. Sounds like a personal relationship, doesn't it? But it's true. What if the staff person or the program officer leaves? I know that whoever takes over does their best to play catch up, but in reality, in larger metropolitan areas, that can take months. I never want to be in a position that my absence harms an organization. You can argue that is jut the nature of the beast since most nonprofits have only one or two development staff and the turn over of those staff is fairly high.

But that is exactly my point. If the relationship is between the grant writer and the foundation staff, that relationship, from the organization's perspective, has the potential to benefit the staff person more than the organization in the long run. This is where the debate got a bit heated (although we still weren't yelling at each other). She was perfectly fine with this because she has benefitted from those relationships. She has been able to take them, along with her skills, from one job to another.

Yes, I do see the benefit, and yes, I too have used my relationships to my advantage and have taken relationships from one job to another. One can argue that part of the skill set that an employer is paying for is in fact one's relationship with potential funders. This brings up another issue, this one dealing with the justness of larger nonprofits have that benefit over smaller nonprofits who may not have a grant writer on staff. Let's forget the adage "that is life" and truly take a look at this. In Cleveland, with more than 1,500 nonprofits, the number of nonprofits with grant writing staff is so small that most development staff in Cleveland either know one know personally or by name. So, in some respects, those nonprofits with development staff, already have an advantage because they have those relationships. The problem is that it becomes easy to confuse nonprofit size (and having a grant writer) with organizational quality.

Interestingly, during my nearly 15 years of grant writing, I have been fairly successful submitting cold proposals to local, regional, state, and federal funding sources. In some respects this makes me wonder about the criticalness of establishing relationships prior to and in between proposal submission. Most grant writers have been told to never submit cold request, mainly because of the funder's tendency to view such requests as part of a mass mailing.

So, my colleague and I decided to agree to disagree and to begin the dialogue through this blog as well as the inaugral issue of Global Writing Solutions' Grant Writing Matters e-zine which will premiere July 1st. We very much look forward to what you have to share on this issue. We would also like to consider the funder perspective.