Grant Writing for Prevention Professionals: Building Relationships with Funders – A “Friend-Building” Process!

CEUs: Prevention, CHES
3 Hours
Domains: PS2- Fiscal Management 

Description: Collaborating effectively with funders is a critical step on your journey from having programmatic and organizational aspirations to achieving real results. Getting to know a funder helps you as a prospective recipient of funds to understand their mission, goals, and purpose for giving. This provides an opportunity for the prospective funder to get to know you and your organization's work, to get them to start believing in the work you do, and to turn them into champions of your prevention services and your entire organization. This “friend-building” process is critical to any long-term fundraising strategy. This session will help you better understand the perspectives of funders, as well as provide you with proactive strategies that will help you build long lasting funder relationships.

Learning Objectives:

1. Describe how to maximize the funder-grantee relationship.
2. Explain how to use persuasive communication skills that generate likeability.
3. Define the various and most effective ways to approach funders.

Presenter(s): Deborah Combs, MA
Deborah Combs is an experienced grant researcher and proposal writer whose work has won over $26 million in awards for nonprofit organizations in regions throughout southwest Ohio. In addition to two decades as a grant professional, she has ten years of experience as a composition instructor and English literature lecturer for Dayton-area colleges and universities, and she is also an experienced technical writer. She is a founding member and past president of the Grant Professionals Association’s Miami Valley Chapter (GPA MV) and a Grant Professional Certified (GPC) from 2009-2016. She holds a Master of Arts in English from the University of Dayton with Minors in Communication Arts and Education. She brings her broad base of experience to You Thrive Training & Consulting to produce winning proposals to private, community, and corporate foundations and county, state, and federal funding opportunities.