Summer is the perfect time to tackle three important tasks to prepare for next year’s grant season.
- Review solicitations from the previous grant season to identify future opportunities. A good place to start is to review the solicitations in the Past Funding Opportunities in SJI’s Funding Toolkit. Solicitations rarely change significantly from year to year to so the time invested in reading old solicitations will pay off in the future.
- Identify partnerships you need to build to expand your application opportunities. Courts are not eligible for every grant opportunity nor are they always the strongest applicant choice. But there are many solicitations where the court can be the beneficiary of funding, directly or indirectly. Courts can and should partner with other organizations. Now is the time to reach out and begin those conversations, especially when building a relationship with an organization that would be a brand-new partner.
- Collect data now to build your statement of need for next year’s applications. Every solicitation requires a statement of need. If you don’t have current data (i.e., data that is less than one or two years old) that makes a compelling case that your court/community is in need, use the summer to build this evidence. Your statement of need can be strengthened by conducting surveys, hosting focus groups to collect qualitative data, or using an intern or staff to gather data that you may not already have. These activities often take months to complete. Using the summer months to start building your case will pay dividends in next year’s grant season.
