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Cindy Adams is the president and CEO of GrantStation, one of TechSoup's donor partners, and is an expert on nonprofit grantseeking and fundraising. She is guest blogging for TechSoup on the current state of grantseeking for different types of organizations. Read her posts on the overall state of grantseeking, the state of community development, and arts and humanities organizations!

Educational Institutions vs. Education-Focused

Education organizations, both institutions and those organizations focused on education, comprise a little over 15% of nonprofit organizations in the United States and represented over 13% of participants in the State of Grantseeking survey published by GrantStation and PhilanTech in November 2011.

The majority of these respondents (68%) indicated that they either applied for more or the same number of grants as they had the year before. So the overall pursuit of grants by education organizations did not change dramatically this past year.

But within this category of response, there were some significant differences between organizations focused on education and educational institutions, which I think indicate trends as well as confirm what we already know: educational institutions are much more adept at securing grants of any type then are their education-focused counterparts.

In fact, educational institutions, when compared to all the other organizations participating in the survey, received more federal (76% vs. 45%) and state (76% vs. 50%) government grants, whereas education-focused nonprofits, when compared to other organizations, received less federal (30% vs. 45%) and state (42% vs. 50%) government grants, and less local government grants (18% vs. 40%). 

Now, here’s what I find interesting (and this is right out of the survey findings):

During the first six months of 2011, the federal government was the source of the largest awards for educational institutions (33%), followed by private foundation grants (27%) and state government grants (17%), whereas during this same period private foundations were the source of the largest awards for education-focused nonprofit organizations (25%), followed by corporate grants (20%) and community foundation grants (10%).

So, clearly, education-focused nonprofits are pursuing and being awarded private funding from both foundations and corporate giving programs, and may be starting to secure more private funds then institutions. Why? What is going on here?

Private Grantmakers Grow Support for Education-Focused Organizations

According to an article written by John Kania & Mark Kramer and published in the Stanford Social Innovation Review (Winter 2011) “The scale and complexity of the U.S. public education system has thwarted attempted reforms for decades. Major funders, such as the Annenberg Foundation, Ford Foundation, and Pew Charitable Trusts have abandoned many of their efforts in frustration after acknowledging their lack of progress.”

The articles goes on to say, “The heroic efforts of countless teachers, administrators, and nonprofits, together with billions of dollars in charitable contributions, may have led to important improvements in individual schools and classrooms, yet system-wide progress has seemed virtually unobtainable.”

It’s a good article, well worth the read, and it demonstrates this shift in the investments that private grantmakers are willing to make in educational institutions. This is a trend that could be key for both educational institutions and education-focused organizations in their grantseeking in 2012 and beyond.

Collective Impact in Education Reform

This article goes on to talk about one very successful initiative, and its use of collective impact. According to the article, collective impact is the “commitment of a group of important actors from different sectors to a common agenda for solving a specific social problem.

Unlike most collaborations, collective impact initiatives involve a centralized infrastructure, a dedicated staff, and a structured process that leads to a common agenda, shared measurement, continuous communication, and mutually reinforcing activities among all participants.”

Grantmakers, both government and private, will be looking for this type of collaboration in the proposals that are funded in the years to come. There is a ground swell in this country to create change, not just in our educational system, but throughout our society.

These types of collaborations, by whatever name, are definitely the way to position yourself if you are going to secure strong grant support in the future.  Please email cadams@grantstation.com if you would you like a copy of the institutional or organizational education breakout for the State of Grantseeking survey.