Nice name, not a nice storm. This blog is about the hurricane since I live in New Bern, NC. My wife and I evacuated on Wednesday to Richmond, VA where we had family. We came home Sunday afternoon to no electricity and piles of rubble and debris everywhere. Flood waters were not far away. The[…]
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Grant Reporting
When a nonprofit receives foundation money, it is critical they provide a report to the foundation on how they spent the money. Almost all foundations require some type of report. What is required and the due date is usually explained in the acceptance letter that comes with the check. Not reporting back to the foundation[…]
Chapters and Chapters
Nowadays, many novels are written with short chapters of no more than four or five pages. I guess this is supposed to go along with the limited attention span of today’s readers. However, short chapters create a lot of chapters. How long should a chapter be? More importantly, how many chapters are too many and[…]
Who is the Nonprofit’s Executive Director?
A nonprofit operates or doesn’t based on their executive director. In many cases, the ED is the nonprofit. There is rarely a deputy making the ED the only one managing the operations. Their morals and ethical values reflect directly onto the non-profit. Everything runs based on their personality, style of management, and ability to solve[…]
Characters and Plots
I recently read in various writing articles and blogs that literary fiction is character driven and genre fiction is plot driven. This is nonsense. All stories are character and plot driven. At least the good ones. What makes a story good is the balance between character and plot. Too much of either becomes mundane and[…]
Volunteers
A volunteer’s time and services are the same as money. Nonprofits should look for volunteers as much as they look for grants and donations. It’s hard managing volunteers who can walk away at any time for no reason. A lot of nonprofit people do not talk to the volunteers and never know why they are[…]
Can creative writing be taught?
Some people in the writing industry say no. They believe you are born with the ability to write creatively. If a person does not have this birthright, they shouldn’t try writing that novel. I think this is ridiculous, highly snobbish, and arrogant. Creative writing can be taught and at any age. If a person has[…]
Build the Project’s Funding First
Before I write a grant application, I build a spreadsheet with all of the project’s funding information (revenue and allocation or expense). I use the template pictured above. Once I know exactly what I’m funding, the writing goes a lot easier. This template is only for a project, a subset of the organization’s mission. A[…]
Stories without a Published Home (showing half published, half not)
Sometimes after sending a story out for publishing and getting a lot of rejections, I decide enough is enough. For my sake and the story. I feel guilty when I stop sending out a short story. It is a strange ending to what I created. No one will ever read it except me. I keep[…]
Special Grant Requests
As I posted before, nonprofits should always keep a conversation going with people who might support their mission. This year, I was involved in grant requests from two foundations. Both foundations solicited requests outside their application period and focus areas. The first (foundation A) had a new director who wanted to expand the foundation’s area[…]
Leo Tolstoy’s “Art is an Infection”
Brenda Ueland wrote about Tolstoy in her 1938 book If You Want to Write. Tolstoy believed, “the artist has a feeling and he expresses it and at once this feeling infects other people and they have it, too.” Ms. Ueland explained that when an artist exhibits feelings “honestly and courageously” onto a canvas, through music,[…]
Branding
Every grant submission is an opportunity for a nonprofit to brand themselves. This means anyone seeing the logo (yes, you should have one) or unique acronym (you should have this, too) will know who the nonprofit is and what they do. Businesses use branding to attract customers. Branding in nonprofits let foundations and donors know[…]