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Excerpted from the book Grantseeking: A Step-By-Step Approach. Published in 2001 and republished in 2005.

How to Follow-up?

Once you have submitted a letter of intent or full proposal on behalf of your nonprofit organization, you may not receive an immediate response from the grantor. In fact, if you do receive a response within a few days, it's almost guaranteed to be a rejection!

Most grantors are quite conscientious about getting in touch with prospects. Should a month elapse with no response from the grantor, it's perfectly all right to call. Simply say that you submitted a letter or proposal one month ago and have heard nothing to date. The receptionist will direct your call to the program officer or other staffer who oversees the appropriate program area. It's rare for letters and proposals to be lost, but it does happen.

When you speak to the appropriate staff person, inform him/her of the date that you sent your letter/proposal, ask if it was received, and offer to meet in person to discuss your request more thoroughly. Odds are that the grantor is terribly overworked and won't be able to visit with you, but you will get a positive response on occasion. It's always best to meet face-to-face with prospective grantors in order to sell your project and to allow the grantor to connect a name and a face.

It's one thing to follow up to find out whether your letter/proposal has been received. It's quite another to swing into action once you've been rejected. If you receive a rejection letter, should you respond? Most definitely.

Three Reasons to Respond

Why bother to respond to a rejection? Three reasons:

1) It may settle your mind and your stomach to discover that your letter/proposal was perfectly fine. You were turned down simply because the grantor ran out of money in your subject area.

2) If there were problems with your request, it will do you a world of good to find out what they were. This will improve your approaches to other grantors, and will increase the chances of getting money from this grantor in the future.

3) Most important, if you have the gumption to call to discuss the rejection, the grantor staff person will be suitably impressed. In fact, we recommend that clients follow this telephone conversation with a written note of thanks to the grantor staff person. This note will go in your file at the grantor office. Next year, when you submit another request, the grantor will read the note and remember that you had taken the time to call and write to him or her. This will improve your chances in year two considerably.

Finally, don't forget to thank those grantors who do give you money, and make sure to cultivate them to ensure consideration in the future. Many nonprofits do excellent work in securing that first grant, but they have an unfortunate tendency to disappear into the sunset once they receive the money.

This is very bad for two reasons. First, any donor-grantor or individual-deserves a prompt and personal thank-you. That's simply good manners. Second, the thank-you for the first grant is the first step in securing the second grant. Fundraising is a series of techniques to cultivate donors, and the most important people to cultivate are those who have already given you money. Don't stop with the thank-you letter. If you have a newsletter, put the grantor staff person on your mailing list. Invite that person to visit your program and to have lunch with you occasionally. Make the grantor feel like part of your community, and you stand an excellent chance of getting additional grants down the road!

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Copyright 2005 Zimmerman Lehman.