Your Urban and Community Forestry programs deserve support.
This short tutorial and introduction to the world of fund raising is intended to help you secure part of the vast amount of grant money given away each year by private foundations, corporate grantmakers, and government sources. Charitable donations reached a record $203.5 billion in 2000, the 13th record-setting year in a row.
Although grant seeking is a competitive activity, it's helpful to know that private foundations, government agencies, and others are actually required by law to give away money. For example, federal law requires private foundations to give away a minimum of 5% of their total assets each year. You can begin to get a sense of how much money this involves by considering just one major foundation: the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—the wealthiest in the country—with assets of $17 billion at the close of 1999, had to give away $850 million that year alone! This and other funds like it are being given away all the time to responsible groups engaged in worthwhile activities. Your Urban and Community Forestry group or organization is eligible to access money from many different sources, but you have to ask in order to receive!
The information here is intended to help you begin thinking about the many fund raising possibilities available to your Urban and Community Forestry or environmental organization, as well as some important general issues to consider about your organization in terms of beginning to raise funds. The following information provides you with an overview of important aspects of fund raising and grant writing, combined with links to sites offering a wealth of online resources.
This tutorial doesn't aim to reinvent the wheel. While many of us in the Urban and Community Forestry movement may be relatively new to fund raising and grant writing, we can rely on several well-established experts in the philanthropic field in the United States. The information here on the TreeLink site gives you an overview of some general considerations when fund raising, and then provides links to the recognized leaders in the field. These leaders and sources of information can provide you with a variety of easy to use tools for identifying potential funders and writing successful grant applications.
One major purpose of this tutorial is to connect you with the Foundation Center and the Grantsmanship Center—two of the preeminent sources of fund raising information in the country. These two groups also offer the best and most widely recognized courses on grant and proposal writing available. By visiting their web sites and using the grant writing materials available there, you can begin learning or enhancing your ability to write successful proposals and win important grant money for your organization. Links to these groups, as well as suggested readings, are provided after the following overview.
Your well planned Urban and Community Forestry efforts can be funded!
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