<p>I have the same experience as eireann. At the organization where I used to volunteer and am now a trustee we receive small grants from the State and the city where we are based which go toward the rent for our office and some staff costs, but the majority of our general operating costs are paid for by donations from individuals and corporations. </p>
<p>On top of that we have grants for specific programs like the ones you mention. Some of these specific program grants do include funding for salaries and supplies that are used only for the particular program, and travel if it is necessary to carry out the activities of the program, but usually not for general operating costs, such as maintaining an office where we can conduct the program. </p>
<p>For grant writing, I think it is important that there is one person who takes it on as their responsibility, whether they are a paid member of staff or a volunteer. A lot of grant applications require very similar information and you learn the kinds of ‘key words’ and so on to use that funders look for, so one person who has learned all those things can put together a better application, and do it more quickly, than several people who have to reinvent the wheel every time there is a grant to be applied for. </p>
<p>The organization spends a great deal of time fundraising from individuals and corporations. We have an annual fundraising drive which is to raise funds for the organization as a whole and usually between three and five more drives in the year aimed at particular activities which are linked to our campaigns. </p>
<p>To target individual donations, we use our mailing list of people who have signed up to support our campaigns, because we know they at least have some sympathy with what we are doing and might be willing to donate a few $ here and there. People can donate through our website or contact us in person. We do a small amount of merchandising. It is not a big money earner, and we give a lot of it away for free, but it is useful for increasing visibility when people attend community events.</p>
<p>For bigger donations from corporations, we have someone within the organization who takes responsibility for that. They are one of our paid members of staff and it is a specific part of their job (but not all of it). A lot of their time is taken up phoning/emailing/writing to people asking them for money or other resources. They also do a lot of networking - attending various events, lunches and so on that bring together business leaders, talking to people and handing out packs we have made explaining what the organization does, why it’s important and how they can get involved. Being out there and getting known is really important, so that even if someone has nothing to give right now, when they do, they think of you. </p>
<p>Sometimes it can seem a waste of time to divert your staff into these kind of activities when they could be doing hands on work with clients, but it does pay off. You can go on courses to teach you how to do this kind of fundraising which can be good if you are starting out, but you can get good advice simply by approaching other non-profits and asking what they do. Really, in our case, the guy who does it is just really good at it, he has that kind of personality. He started on a fractional post working only with clients, but as we expanded, his hours were increased and fundraising became part of his job. </p>
<p>Before that we did much of our corporate fundraising on a completely ad hoc basis, with people writing letters on their home computers in the evenings. We tried to make it efficient by having only one contact name, email, phone regardless of who sent out the letters, but it is much easier having someone who is doing it as part of their job and can contact people during the day. A decision was made that we could use volunteers for a lot of the hands on activities of the organization, with support from salaried staff, but for the more business-related activities, it was better to have someone who was not a volunteer, so when money became available, using it for more back-room activities such as fundraising was temporarily prioritized over expanding our number of paid staff working directly with our users, as part of a long-term strategy to eventually have the money to increase paid staff in this area too.</p>
<p>We are also part of various networks of organizations working nationally, or at the state or local/city level. Sometimes we make joint applications for grants with them, and we share information about grants that are available either individually or through a mailing list. Whenever it is possible, we try to make sure we have a representative on any forums designed to bring together people who might be useful, so when they are looking for partners for their grant proposals they think of us because they know us.</p>
<p>We don’t really do anything related to healthcare, so I’m not sure how relevant this is for that area though. For your computer plans you might consider approaching a college - it might be the kind of thing a student would do as a project or just for work experience. Some colleges are very helpful. We get all our computers for free from a local college because they will only keep them for a few years before they are deemed to be outdated, whereas we don’t care about that at all. We used to have to pay to get them wiped, but that became free when the college signed up to some program to do it.</p>