Partnerships in Grant Success
Authored By: Aoife Ryle, Development Manager
In today’s funding landscape, collaboration isn’t just a buzzword; it’s a necessity. Funders are increasingly looking for projects that demonstrate the ability to leverage partnerships for broader, more sustainable impact. When done well, partnerships can elevate a proposal and give your project a significant edge. But not all partnerships are created equal, and experienced funders can quickly tell the difference between a surface-level collaboration and a meaningful one.
Why Funders Value Partnerships
Foundations and government agencies are prioritizing collaborative efforts that reflect the complexity of the challenges nonprofits are trying to address. Whether it’s housing instability, food insecurity, or educational access, no single organization can tackle these issues alone. Funders want to invest in teams that demonstrate a shared vision, complementary strengths, and a plan for collective accountability.
A strong partnership can:
Extend reach and community credibility
Maximize resources
Bring together diverse expertise and lived experience
Create knowledge-sharing opportunities
Reduce duplication of efforts
Improve data collection and storytelling through shared evaluation
Surface-Level vs. Deep Partnerships
A surface-level partnership often appears in a grant application as a simple list of names or a collection of generalized letters of support. These arrangements may be well-intentioned but lack meaningful cohesion and collaboration. To a funder, this can look like a checkbox exercise that reflects a relationship of convenience rather than strategy.
In contrast, a deep and meaningful partnership is evident through:
Collaborative design: Partners co-create the project concept, ensuring that goals and activities reflect multiple perspectives and strengths.
Shared measurement: Organizations agree on success indicators and collectively track progress, ensuring learning and accountability across partners.
Mutual benefit: Each partner gains something (resources, data, expertise, visibility, etc.) and contributes something valuable in return.
Integrated communication: There’s a clear plan for coordination, conflict resolution, and joint decision-making.
Funders can spot the difference through proposal language, structure, and tone. Deep partnerships are reflected in shared outcomes, joint budgets, and co-authored narratives, not just acknowledgments in a partnership table or letter of support. Deep partnerships are often created organically and in response to community need, not in response to a specific grant opportunity.
How to Strengthen Collaborative Design and Shared Measurement
Start early. Bring partners into the program design phase, not after the proposal is drafted and budgets are finalized. True collaboration takes time.
Define roles and responsibilities clearly. Clarify who is leading, who is supporting, and how each will contribute to success. Who is responsible for each specific activity, outreach, or evaluation measure?
Align goals and metrics. Identify shared outcomes that matter to all partners and the communities served.
Document processes. Funders appreciate transparency. Show how you’ll communicate, make decisions, evaluate progress, and overcome challenges together.
Tell a unified story. A strong proposal reads as if it were written by one team with one vision, not stitched together from multiple voices.
Final Thoughts
The most compelling grant proposals show that the partnership itself is part of the innovation. When organizations move beyond transactional relationships to truly shared strategy and measurement, they create greater impact. Partnerships built on trust, transparency, and shared accountability don’t just win grants; they deliver lasting change.
What is the threshold of retraumatization?
The rise of Lived Experience Councils, Community Advisory Boards, and other mechanisms for community input is undeniably on the rise. Our team has increasingly incorporated these governing bodies into interventions about elder abuse, childcare, and kinship programs.
Some funders are now mandating that community input be baked into the very foundation of program design, that the community being served is co-creating solutions, and is compensated for their time.
Although fair payment is undeniably a step in the right direction, how do we fairly thank and acknowledge individuals who are willing to share their stories, time, and expertise? Does financial compensation adequately appreciate the possibility of retraumatizing individuals?
Many say that by sharing a few stories and understanding the pain, trauma, and injustice a select number of community members experienced, we can create programs and interventions that benefit all.
Early in my career, I helped design a program involving Child Protective Services. Part of that work involved individuals sharing their experiences working with the agency. Although the information gathered undeniably helped, it also deeply hurt certain individuals who shared their experiences again, no matter the financial benefit.
Financial compensation is not the only factor of respect. Community-driven governance bodies should be carefully designed to stop, alter, or pause projects occurring in their backyard. Our team advocates asking yourself the following questions when designing a program to consider if a community-governance body is needed:
How did the community provide insight into the making of this program?
How is the community able to give feedback on the program?
If the program or intervention is not meeting the community’s needs, can it be altered or paused until community members have time to evaluate?
Creating, supporting, and strengthening these bodies is one way to ensure retraumatization is carefully managed and information gathered benefits the individuals that an organization is trying to serve.
Overlooked Opportunity in the Grant Proposal: The Needs Statement
Hi, I’m Larissa, a Development Associate here at Ivanhoe Development, where I focus on writing grants and the foundational piece that leads to excellent grants: program design.
I’d like to highlight a critical piece of a grant proposal and a key insight from my perspective as a grant writer and grant review panelist—one often overlooked in its importance—the Needs Statement.
I once came across a social post that stated something like, "The Needs Statement in grant proposal applications should be eradicated. Do we really need to describe how horrible things are in today’s world, where everything is burning around us?”
While I sympathize with the sentiment, I couldn’t disagree more.
Needs Statements (or Needs Assessment, Problem Statements or Justifications—whatever the funder wants to call it) are the backbone of the proposal. In this for-profit business world, we understand the gravity of the question—what problem is this product or service solving? Here, it is easy to see that an invention or new idea needs a problem to justify its existence. In the nonprofit world, the question is no less critical. Without understanding the problem we are concerned about, we cannot create a program to address the situation. Not only does the Needs Statement build the foundational logic for your program activities, goals, and strategies, but it also presents an opportunity for the organization to demonstrate an aspect of programs that is increasingly emphasized: community engagement.
Funders at the foundation, state, and even federal levels are including questions in grant applications like, “ How do you involve the community in planning, program design, and implementation? How do you identify the community’s needs? How do you integrate Lived Experiences? Describe your community engagement strategies.”
These “bottom-up” program design approaches, which emphasize starting with the community's needs, understanding their worldview to shape programming, and sharing power in decision-making, are becoming markers and expectations of effective nonprofits.
Though funders are now stating and emphasizing this more explicitly, the Needs Statement has always been where these questions inherently existed. It is in the Needs Statement where an organization demonstrates the depth of its connection to the community. This is where the funders meet the program’s target beneficiaries, learn how well the organization understands their challenges, and why the proposed program is the best solution. As someone who has sat on grant review panels and read endless needs statements, I find that these answers often shine a bright light on which organizations actively engage the community to shape programming and which aren’t.
However, I have also worked with enough nonprofits to know that many nonprofits are doing some form of community-engagement work, but may fail to articulate or highlight this effectively in the proposal. Weak Needs Statements will only have overly broad data and demographics (only citing national data or research), outdated data, a narrow understanding or one-sided perspective of the issue, or unsupported claims that lack data or context. The best Needs Statements are crafted like funnels—laying the contextual foundation for a broad understanding of the issue and how your organization or program fits within it, narrowing down to more localized data. The stand-out Needs Statements paint as complete a picture as possible of the target beneficiary, combining quantitative insights (demographics, statistics) with qualitative elements (quotes, stories, case studies) gathered by the organization or partners for the specific proposed program.
Here are three simple questions that an organization can consider when crafting their needs statements or reflecting on their approach of community inclusion in program design:
How do we identify needs?
What are all the ways your organization gathers feedback and uses that feedback to shape solutions? Is there more informal processes? Does the staff know where to collect and record participant feedback? Does leadership review this regularly? Does your organization organize formal group listening processes? Is there a community board? Are there multiple pathways for a community member to offer feedback or ideas?
The strongest and stand-out approaches go beyond gathering feedback—they continuously share back insights back to the community to ensure there is alignment and a shared understanding of the issue.
How do we generate program ideas and solutions?
This question gets at the germination of program ideas—the format and process of this is particularly important to consider here. Does your organization design and project and then ask the community for input or feedback, or are there ideation sessions with the community before developing the project? Your organization may fall anywhere on a spectrum, from keeping the community informed about project ideas, to collaborating with a deeper, more formal partnership.
How do we decide what program to implement, and how we will implement it?
This question addresses the concept of power. Who ultimately decides which program will be implemented and how? Consider the format and process of your program design and implementation—this might include the type of touchpoints and frequency of contact with the community when implementing the project, the structure of the decision-making leadership groups and meetings.
These questions help get at the heart of community-driven work and what we at Ivanhoe are passionate about doing—strengthening your connections to the community so you can steward your financial investments responsibly and effectively toward the needs of your community.
Speaking at EES: Understanding European Evaluative Perspectives
Ivanhoe Development (ID) remains focused on serving communities in the United States. However, the opportunity to learn about global evaluative perspectives is an invaluable addition to our work.
ID was invited to speak at the European Evaluation Biennial Conference in Italy this year. We presented a session entitled “Program Maturity: How Grants, Evaluation, and Design Intertwine.” It detailed our holistic approach to nonprofit development and the resource constraints that face resource-limited, community-based organizations (CBOs). Our interactions with this global community identified some evaluative barriers that exist regardless of geography. They include:
1. Evaluative Brevity:
Survey fatigue remains an insidious issue within the evaluative space. Whether it involves asking Syrian refugees about their safety concerns or measuring economic growth from cash transfer programs in Malawi, surveys remain tedious and taxing, resulting in low data quality and transactional interactions with community members. At ID we have two standing surveying rules: 1) a survey’s length can always be cut by 20%, and 2) survey brevity respects our participant’s time and expertise. We believe that creating efficient, time-effective evaluative tools is a mechanism of respect.
2. Financial Catalysts:
Money often drives the quality and depth of evaluation, forcing organizations to compromise their goals or tool diversity to complete projects. Within our context, most CBOs may only spend 3-5% of their annual budget on evaluation. The solution is not to simply bemoan a smaller budget. At ID, we have a two-fold approach: 1) advocate to funders about the importance of evaluative activities and the need to provide specific funding for them, 2) create tools that can perform “double-duty” to gather quality evaluative data and also serve to support other activities as needed.
3. Qualitative Appreciation:
No matter where you are, numbers have historically been prized within the evaluative context. “Clear-cut” data and “more rigorous” quantitative methods have always taken center stage. While numbers do provide incredibly useful information, trends, and patterns, they do not tell the whole story. Qualitative methods such as storytelling, photovoice, and interviewing are gathering momentum (please note that these methods have been used to make decisions since the dawn of time, but within the Western context, these “tools” are relatively new) due to their low barriers to entry and freedom of expression.
ID continues to hold to our most central value: humility. We remain lifelong learners and deeply respect our evaluation peers and clients. Our team looks forward to applying what we have learned to our everyday work.
To check out our work, please see examples here or information about our training series here.
Building Economic Models: A Week of Progress & Innovation
Hello, I'm Connor Liebman, a Data Analyst at Ivanhoe Development. I'm excited to share with you some of the innovative work we've been doing in economic modeling. At Ivanhoe, we've been working hard to refine our economic models to better serve our clients. Our goal? To provide tools that demonstrate the fiscal impacts of programs and highlight the significant savings and positive community impacts.
Let's take a look at what we've accomplished this week.
The Foundation: Consistent Templates
We started by developing a consistent template for our economic models. This template is the backbone for all our economic models, ensuring uniformity and ease of comparison. Here's what we've included:
1. Fiscal Impact Analysis: This section quantifies the financial implications of running various programs. We assess costs, revenues, and net fiscal impacts, clearly showing a program's financial performance.
2. Program Savings: Here, we highlight the direct and indirect savings the programs generate. This includes cost savings from preventive measures, efficiency improvements, and reduced dependency on public services.
3. Community Impact: Beyond the numbers, we emphasize the broader positive impacts on the community. This includes improvements in health, education, and overall quality of life.
Scenario Comparison: Showcasing Value
A key feature of our models is the ability to compare scenarios with and without our client's involvement. This comparative analysis underscores the value added by our clients' programs, offering a compelling narrative for stakeholders and funders.
1. Baseline Scenario: We establish a baseline that depicts the current state without the program's intervention. This serves as a control, allowing us to measure the program's true impact.
2. Intervention Scenario: We then model the scenario with the program in place. This includes all anticipated financial and non-financial changes resulting from the program's implementation.
3. Impact Assessment: By comparing these scenarios, we can quantify the program's effectiveness and demonstrate how our clients' initiatives lead to tangible improvements and cost savings.
Customization for Clients: Flexibility Meets Consistency
While consistency is critical, we also recognize the need for customization. Each client has unique needs and operates in different contexts. Our models are designed to be flexible, allowing us to tailor them to specific client requirements. This week, we've enhanced this flexibility, ensuring our templates can easily accommodate various program types and community contexts.
By developing consistent, customizable, and impactful economic models, we empower our clients to demonstrate their value clearly and convincingly. We're excited about these refined models' potential to help our clients achieve their goals and make a positive difference in their communities.
As we refine our approach, we can't wait to see the real-world results these models will help our clients achieve. And speaking of real-world applications, let me give you a sneak peek into how we're putting these models into action.
Putting Our Models to Work:
Our recent work has focused on developing two key types of economic models that demonstrate the power and versatility of our approach:
Public Service Cost Analysis Model: This model aims to provide detailed cost estimates for public service responses to various community situations. It breaks down expenses into personnel time, equipment usage, administrative costs, and support services. By offering a comprehensive view of operational costs, this model helps public agencies understand the financial implications of their services and identify areas for potential cost savings or resource optimization through nonprofit outreach programs.
Health Services Impact Model: We've developed a model that analyzes the economic impact of expanding primary care services to underserved populations. This model projects potential cost savings by comparing preventive care expenses against those of emergency services. It also has long-term benefits such as improved chronic disease management, reduced hospitalizations, and increased productivity. The goal is to demonstrate how investing in accessible healthcare can bring significant economic benefits and improved community health outcomes.