The Grantsmanship Center® was founded in 1972 by Norton J. Kiritz to offer grantsmanship training to nonprofit and government agencies. Before this time, no such training existed and small organizations often lacked the skills to compete for grant opportunities. The Center began as a local project in Los Angeles, but as word of its alumni's successes spread, demand for trainings rapidly expanded. Soon organizations in other cities were asking to host training programs in their own communities. By 1975, The Grantsmanship Center® was conducting more than 100 workshops a year across the country.  

Many valuable resources for grantseekers have also been produced by The Grantsmanship Center® (also known as TGCI) throughout its history. Program Planning & Proposal Writing (PP&PW), The Grantsmanship Center's® proposal writing guide written by Norton J. Kiritz, is the most widely read publication in nonprofit history. There are more than a million copies of PP&PW in print- and scores of government, foundation, and corporate grantmakers have adopted it as their preferred application format. Furthermore, The Grantsmanship Center News,® also called Grantsmanship Center Magazine, has reached over 200,000 nonprofit and government agencies at its peak. These periodicals "paved the way for the journalists who today scrutinize charities and foundations with growing sophistication and skepticism," according to The Chronicle of Philanthropy. Archives are now available at the Library of Congress.

Today The Grantsmanship Center® conducts some 150 workshops annually in grantsmanship training, as well as earned income strategies for nonprofits. Each year, thousands of new graduates join our roster of more than 115,000 alumni. Graduates of The Grantsmanship Training Program® also receive a membership package that includes discounts on future trainings for themselves and colleagues, discounts on Grantsmanship Center® publications, access to our exclusive online databases of Government, Foundation and Corporate funding sources, and annual proposal reviews by workshop trainers.

There are also numerous resources for grantseekers available at no cost on tgci.com. These include daily grant announcements from the Federal Register, archives of The Grantsmanship Center Magazine, indexes of funding sources at the local, federal and international levels, and more.

Norton Kiritz's concept of grantsmanship training for community-based organizations originated during his tenure as planning director of the Los Angeles Community Action Agency in the 1960s. He worked with dozens of local community groups, most of which were unable to find the financial support they needed to keep their fledgling programs alive.

Norton believed that, rather than hiring outside fundraisers to apply for grants, these groups needed to write their own proposals, integrate program planning into the process, and make ongoing grant development a priority. Norton envisioned a "community grantsman project" that would enable grassroots organizations to compete with larger, better-known agencies on an equal footing.

In 1972, he established The Grantsmanship Center® to deliver this new training. As its popularity quickly grew, The Grantsmanship Training Program® soon became national in scope as other cities asked to host training programs in their own communities. The curriculum is centered on his seminal work, Program Planning & Proposal Writing™, the most widely read publication in nonprofit history with more than a million copies in print.

Norton also campaigned for grantmakers to be more open about their decision making practices. He was a member of the Donee Group, which spearheaded a landmark investigation that exposed the insularity of traditional philanthropy. After Congress established a blue-ribbon panel in 1975 to examine the state of grantmaking by tax-exempt foundations, his testimony before the commission, along with other members of the Donee Group, was a key factor in its decision to establish the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, an advocate for grant recipients and those they serve.

Norton Julian Kiritz, founder of The Grantsmanship Center,® passed away in January 2006 at the age of seventy. However, his revolutionary impact on the nonprofit world will not soon be forgotten. Obituaries can be found in the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times. The Chronicle of Philanthropy's article, "Giving Charities a Voice," also describes Norton's legacy in the nonprofit world.