Perhaps you haven’t been meeting your fundraising goals. Or, maybe you’ve recently reviewed your financial statements and found that you need more funds for a renovation. Regardless of the reason behind your need for additional revenue, grants provide parks and recreation organizations an excellent opportunity to garner the money they need.

However, grant applications aren’t as simple as asking supporters for donations. The application process is complex, with many requirements for eligibility and reporting you must meet. To help you successfully apply for grants, this guide will take you through the different steps and provide some tips for a great application.

What is a grant?

A grant is funding given by a grantmaker or grantmaking organization to an eligible applicant or applying organization. Similar to how you would request funds from a corporate sponsor, your parks and recreation organization needs to submit a proposal and wait for approval from the grantmaking organization.

However, grants are only given to a select few organizations every year. While there are some exceptions (most notably the Google Ad Grant), that means your organization will be competing against all the other organizations that are also applying for the grant. This means you must strategically choose which grants to apply for and submit polished applications that demonstrate why your organization deserves funds.

What are the steps to applying for a grant?

Although grant applications are complex, they can be broken down into five steps. You need to:

1. Research grants to apply for. This means researching grantmaking organizations that provide grants to parks and recreation organizations such as your own. A good place to start is your state’s websites for parks and recreation organizations, as they may list grant opportunities there.
2. Review eligibility and guidelines. Once you’ve pinpointed specific grants that you’re interested in applying for, start by ensuring that your organization meets its eligibility rules and any other guidelines and requirements.
3. Write a grant proposal. Include the name of your parks and recreation organization, your mission, what the grant will help you accomplish, and why your work is important.
4. Create a grant budget. Break down the funds you’d receive from the grant and how you would allocate it. For instance, if you’re receiving $10,000, you might say that $8,000 of it will go toward installing a new children’s playground and $2,000 toward repairing your existing equipment and facilities.
5. Submit your grant application. Submit your grant application with all the necessary supplemental materials by the deadline.

As you go through this process, highlight the reasons your organization deserves the funds over all the other applicants. Make sure your materials are clear and compelling so the grantmaker clearly understands why you need the grant and why your organization is the right choice for it. Keep your lines of communication open in case they contact you with additional questions or requests for extra materials.

How do I stay in compliance with my grant?

The grant lifecycle doesn’t end after a grant has been awarded—your parks and recreation organization also needs to stay in compliance with the grant’s guidelines. According to Bonterra, these are the ways you need to stay compliant with your grant’s rules:

• Tracking awarded funds. To demonstrate that the funds are going toward the initiatives you laid out in your proposal, your parks and recreation organization needs to monitor where the funds are allocated.
• Reporting on how funds are spent. On top of tracking where the funds are going, you’ll need to create reports that clearly show how the funds have been spent. These reports should be visually appealing and include all the information the grantmaker wants to see. 
• Communicating with the grantmaker. Stay in touch with the grantmaker and keep them updated on your progress. They want to see the impact of their grant on your organization, so keep them in the loop about how their funds are helping.

With these best practices, you’ll be able to build a stronger relationship with the grantmaker and reassure them that you’re putting their funds to good use. That may result in future grants from them in the future, so take this seriously! You can even invest in dedicated recreation management software to help streamline the process—but more on this later.

Tips for Applying for Grants

Now that you know how to apply for a grant and stay compliant with its guidelines, let’s take a look at a few tips for grant applications.

Decide on a few grants to focus on.

While it’s tempting to maximize the number of grants you apply for to maximize your chances of receiving a grant, the application process is extremely demanding. Therefore, it’s better to focus on a few grants and create extremely thorough applications and proposals for them.

To help you decide which grants to focus on, ask yourself:

• Does the grantmaker’s goal align with my organization’s goals?
• How much money will this grant give us?
• What are the grant’s deadlines and requirements for fund allocation and reporting?
• How competitive is this grant, and do we have a good chance of success?

The answers to these questions will help you whittle down the grants you’ll apply for. Plus, by applying to fewer grants, you’ll also have fewer grantmakers to stay in touch with, making it easier for you to handle any communications quickly and personalize your proposals to each grantmaker.

Purchase parks and recreation software.

Just as other organizations like schools purchase software to comply with local regulations, your parks and recreation organization may need a solution to meet your grant’s requirements.

According to CommunityPass, robust parks and recreation software comes with reporting and financial features that make it much easier to prove to grantmakers that your parks and recreation organization meets their requirements. For instance, if they only provide grants to organizations that bring in over $500,000 in annual revenue, you can use your software’s reporting feature to generate a financial report that shows that you meet this requirement.

Plus, parks and recreation software comes with various features that help with management beyond applying for grants. With the right solution, you’ll also get access to activity registration, facility management, membership management, marketing, and more.

Make your grant proposal compelling.

Combine both qualitative and quantitative information to create a compelling grant proposal that communicates why your parks and recreation organization deserves funding. Alongside articulating your need for funding and specific goals and objects, implement storytelling techniques that help you stand out from the crowd.

In terms of quantitative information, be sure to back up your goals with data and statistics. For instance, if you’re requesting funds for a capital campaign, lay out the funds that you can put toward your campaign and clearly illustrate the gap between those funds and your goal.

With both these types of information, you’ll create a compelling proposal that resonates with the reader emotionally and provides the facts to prove your trustworthiness and credibility, increasing the chances that you’ll be approved for a grant.

Grants are a great source of funding for parks and recreation organizations. When you know how to apply for them, you can maximize your chances of success. With these strategies, you’ll be ready to apply for, receive, and leverage grants to deliver a better parks and recreation experience for your community.