It’s been a while since I have written a blog or updated this site. That’s because for the last 18 months I have been writing a book based on interviews with 25 of America’s top grantwriters. It’s finished now and I’m delighted with the result and thinking about how I want to distribute it. It has been fun, arduous and rewarding. It has been a chance for me distill what I have learned about grant development from my years in the business. I have a lot of material that did not make it into the final draft and will start sharing that soon but first I want to share a very personal post with you. It felt like time to write a book because I’m ready to move on to the next stage of my life. I’ve been doing a lot of navel gazing over the last few years and distinguishing what really matters to me in this short life that I’ve been blessed with. Here’s what I came up with:

Our world

Our planet is at a crucial turning point – we simply cannot sustain our current level of growth and viciousness towards each other. I believe that our global structures are disintegrating. As a European I’m deeply aware how seemingly formidable fortresses such as the Berlin Wall and the Eastern Bloc can dissolve overnight. And, intractable centuries old disputes such as Northern Ireland can be brought to peace. I have no idea if our economic structures will shatter overnight as seemed imminent in 2008 or will slowly crumble but I do believe that they are heading out the door.

I am a radical social activist at heart. I have spent my entire adult life either fighting the system, working to change it, or collapsing in despair. It is quite clear that there are more than enough resources on the planet for every single person to eat, be clothed, and housed. And yet, that is far from the case and starvation of the most vulnerable is accepted as a part of life.
Yet, deep down we know that everyone matters, life matters, love matters. Our hearts know that a more beautiful world is possible and we are satiated when we express that knowledge in our daily actions.

My commitment in the world

I’ve been gifted many times over in this life – starting with the two most loving parents possible and moving on to an ivy-league education and living in two of the safest and richest countries on the planet. I’m grateful to have a talent for writing award-winning grant proposals and the gift of intuition. Although I do not usually share this, I am what would commonly be called a medium – between the visible world and the unseen one – the place where time and space are non-existent. In my grant work, I use my intuition as a guide when developing grants with teams, in helping to see the right direction, and understanding the best way to communicate a pure intention from our hearts to the funders’ hearts. As I’ve been sharing this gift more openly, I’ve come to realize that it is one that many, many women hold in some form and yet we’ve been trained over the eons to hide it. But our world is tremoring with birthing a new way of life and hiding our inner knowing and connectedness with the ethereal is expedient no longer.

I’ve been dealt a fine hand. Now, I’m choosing to use those gifts in service to the deepest yearning of my heart to help birth a world in which the feminine is powerfully and freely expressed, all life is honored as sacred, and people know themselves to be peacemakers in their homes, communities and world.

What do I mean by the feminine? I do not mean simply women and girls although there is lots of evidence that empowering women has deep and lasting impacts. There is no such thing as a feminine trait or masculine trait – they are just traits that we label that both men and women possess. But, I, and many other women, are feeling an urge to channel ‘feminine’ energy that is collaborative, cooperative, nurturing, slow, beautiful, gentle, spacious, and receptive. And it is also fierce love, the one that roars with outrage at the rape of our earth and our children. And many men are equally constrained feeling that they must play a dominating role instead of freely expressing their emotive compassionate natures. Our world is grossly out of balance and there is a lot of space for the feminine to be reintegrated into society. I am calling for the reclaiming, honoring, and reintegration of the feminine in both its gentle and fierce forms so we know ourselves as whole both individually and collectively. Collective healing and individual healing are two sides of the same coin. When I can open my heart to my own pain and anger it is easier to face that in the world and do what I can to be a voice for love and compassion even in the face of insurmountable odds.

So, what’s this got to do with grants?

I am no longer interested in putting band aids on systemic issues. Four years ago I had an ‘aha’ moment in which I realized that if we all freely shared our talents my job as a grant developer who moves money from one place to another would be moot. It forced me to fundamentally question my role in sustaining and training people to compete in a system that keeps inequity in place. Since then, I have been wondering if the current foundation/grantmaking model is not effective, what would work? I don’t have any answers yet but they are beginning to emerge and I’ll use this blog as a place to explore them with you. This is what where the exploration stands at the moment:

1. The IRS regulations keep an artificial divide in place between organizations for the social good and those that are focused on profit. I love that social enterprise/entrepreneurship is blossoming because this provides an avenue for sustainable socially beneficial organizations. But, nascent social enterprises are facing the same constriction of funding as non-profits.

2. Our relationship to money is at the core of so many destructive actions and thoughts. We invented money – it does not exist in reality. It is a collective agreement that we made on a global scale that pieces of paper or bits on a computer signify value in the real world. But then we seem to have forgotten that we invented it and it has a life of its own that dominates our choices and how we treat one another. This is an opportunity to change our relationship to money and the structures it has created. I have been reading a fascinating book by Charles Eisenstein called Sacred Economics that I highly recommend in which he coined the phrase ‘the world that our hearts knows is possible’. There is also a short film that explains the book’s major concepts. He argues that our financial system is dependent on perpetual growth and yet our ability to convert what was once free (childcare, entertainment, music, water) into a procured service is reaching capacity. And, Lynn Twist’s Soul of Money gives a persuasive argument for money as a spiritual vehicle, She reminds us,“If you let go of trying to get more of what you don’t really need, which is what we’re trained to want more of, it frees up oceans of energy to pay attention to what you already have. When you nurture and nourish what you do have and begin to make a difference with it, it expands before your very eyes. In other words, what you appreciate appreciates. This is true prosperity.” We have forgotten that our birthright is a beautiful earth with plentiful natural resources (including human ingenuity) that are sufficient for all of us to live freely and share our natural talents. It is time to remember.

3. What does philanthropy look like when the feminine is reintegrated, when we are one? At the moment, it is a system that is hinged on the idea that we are all independent beings separate from one another, where those who have give to those who don’t at their discretion. But would a system grounded in the knowledge that we are all expressions of an interdependent whole look like? What does it look like when it embodies cooperation, collaboration and partnership? For sure, it doesn’t look like hundreds of people spending thousands of hours writing grant applications in the hope that someone will give it the nod. Some options are already emerging –

• crowd funding through organizations such as Kiva or Kickstarter.
• Socially beneficial businesses are blossoming and new structures are emerging such as L3C that will dissolve the old non-profit/for profit divide.
• There a few true funder-community collaborations that I hope to write about in future posts.

4. As the true costs of globalized industrial production emerge our economy will become more localized. We have already seen this happening with the slow food movement and slow money is emerging too. I’m fortunate to live in one of the most progressive communities in the U.S. which is home to a local currency, Ithaca Hours. In a radically localized economy, we would reconvert things that were once free – entertainment, childcare, eldercare etc. back to the collective commons by mutual support networks and giving circles. I’ll also expand on these ideas in later posts.
Going forward, what you can expect from me and this blog is:

a) Ideas, musings and thought-provoking ideas about birthing the world that our hearts knows is possible;

b) Trainings on how to succeed in the current grants system specifically geared to visionaries and activists dedicated to creating a more heart-centered world;

c) Channelling/energy healing for visionary leaders dedicated to shining a light on what is happening in the world and/or creating the world that our hearts know is possible.

d) Grant writing services for those immersed in systemic transformation and/or dedicated to finding new and better ways of operating that expresses our spiritual nature.

What is courage?

Merriam-Webster defines courage as the “mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty.” But when I think of courage, I like to remember that the word is derived from the French and Latin words for heart  – Coeur or Cor. That means that our ability to be courageous and act despite ours fear or the dangers in front of us is directly linked to our ability to follow our hearts rather than allowing our minds to scare us half to death.

How can we be courageous in grant development?

There are constant opportunities for us to follow our hearts – its just hard to have the gumption to take them all. In our field, I think courage means the following:

• Setting a bold fundraising goal for 2010 that makes you shake in your boots a little.
• Applying to a foundation or agency that has turned you down once or twice and risking rejection again.
• Telling a co-worker or boss that you don’t think their idea for a program is strong enough to get funded and delivering it with such respect and cooperation that you develop a better plan.
• Presenting a development plan to your board that reflects what you think is in the best interests of your agency and constituency even if you know it’s not what they want to hear.
• Stretching yourself by taking on something that you don’t know how to do, such as your first government grant, and having the faith that the resources and skills that you need will emerge as you work through it.
• Speaking up when someone suggests that you cut a corner that you know is simply not ethical and facing the consequences of your stand.
• Cold calling a program officer or foundation board member about your agency and being willing to hear “Not interested” without turning it into “I don’t like you.”
• Dreaming, planning, and continuing to work towards what is possible for you and your agency and the constituency you serve even when it doesn’t seem at all feasible today.
• Treating yourself with compassion when a proposal that you and your team worked hard on is rejected.
• Taking time for yourself to read, reflect, or take professional development classes when you are short-staffed and everyone else is working really long hours. We all know that we are more productive if we are refreshed but it takes courage in our culture to appear to be slacking, AND
• Encouraging yourself to make that extra effort once in a while to meet a deadline that you know some part of you would rather not make.
• Speaking up in a meeting even if that little voice in your head tells you not to.
• Being straight with yourself and your boss about which aspects of your job you enjoy or excel at and which ones you’d like to not do, get some help with, or learn new skills for.
• Planning to begin or expand a new venture in a climate in which most people are contracting.

We associate courage with lions. I think that one reason for this is that acting courageously calls us to muster a ferocity over fear, passiveness, or our cultural norms that is hard for many of us to generate.

And yet, when we do the rewards are rich. I find that in the times that I can overcome my mind’s resistance and act from my heart, the world seems to open up a little and circumstances align to support my act of courage.

I invite you to look for ways in the next few days to act courageously and I’d love to hear how they turn out for you.

Fun, ya say?

I’m blessed to live in a stunningly beautiful part of the world with lakes, creeks and waterfalls around every corner. This evening, I was sitting on a stone in one of my favorite spots and I was musing life, the universe, and the meaning of everything… as one is wont to do on a perfect summer’s day. I looked at the water tossing and flowing through the creek bed and my mind flew to time management.

Time Management for Left Hempisheric folks

Most grant writers are left-brained people, meaning we’re highly logical, verbal and analytical. We excel at planning and strategizing, making goals, and achieving them. What we’re usually less tapped into, is the right-brain – the intuitive, musical, artistic part of life. And yet, I know that my life goes along much more pleasantly when I follow my intuition. It’s hard to do, especially when there are gazillion and one deadlines.

But, I think that is exactly the time that we need to throw caution to the wind and follow our intuitive senses.

Just like the water gushing down a stream, when we hit a rock we can keep bashing into it over and over again or follow the course, take a right hand turn, flow in completely a different direction and speed along on our journey.

“Well, Jane,” you may be thinking, “metaphors are all well and good, but I’ve got a ton of work on my desk and no time to do it, so how does this help?”

Let Time Manage You

Try letting time manage you a little more each day. We each have different ways of tapping into our intuition or internal guidance. Some people do it naturally, others of us have to learn through spiritual practice, artistic expression or connection with nature.

One of the most accessible ways is to set a really clear goal and then respond to what comes your way rather than planning every step. For example,

• If a book catches your eye, pick it up and take a closer look.
• Keep moving towards the things that you enjoy and excite you like a trail of breadcrumbs. If there is part of a proposal that you love, dive into it and you may soon find that the nasty section you didn’t want to do has been taken off your plate by someone else.
• If a website seems intriguing but entirely off-topic, indulge yourself for a moment and check it out.
• Pay attention to what people say to you as if they are each giving you a piece of a puzzle to be put together at a later date.
• Say yes to something that you really want to do but seems like a distraction – like taking a walk in the middle of the day. You may well find that you bump into someone who tells you a nugget that you can use in a proposal.
• Know that every movie you watch has a little jewel in it for you. Same goes for every magazine article and book.

If you practice following your heart a little every day, you’ll find that your life is a) more fun, b) run more smoothly, and c) that you accomplish much more.

And you may just find that you want to let go even more because flowing like water through the stream is just lot more fun than flinging yourself against a rock for years on end.

In that vein, I’ve chosen to spread a little good to our grantschampion community. Above you’ll find a short video from me and instructions on how to access a database of ARRA grant opportunities that I’ve put together. It has over 260 entries in it. I’m distributing it so that you can use the sort and filter features and get as much use out of it as possible. To access the database simply fill out the information to the left of the video.

I’m wishing that you are managing to find some time in the flurry of grant deadlines to drink in a little summer wherever you are.

That’s why I’m offering a 2 hour Recovery Act Grants Webinar on Tuesday June 16th designed to help clarify the morass and give you the information that you need to take action and win stimulus funding for your organization.

For more information please visit
http://www.grantschampion.com/recovery-act.htm -

And don’t worry if you can’t make the actual times on the 16th – it will be recorded and ready for download after the session.