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Apr 20

Help your team care for themselves and they will care for others

By Sponsor Insight

By Jodi Snell, vice president, Hedges

We work with some of Indy’s best at Hedges. Hard to believe, it has been five weeks since we all started working from home. While working remotely is not a completely new concept to our Hedges team, working from home 100% of the time while being surrounded by our loved ones is new to us.

Last week, we took the time to send out some extra communication via email to let Hedges employees know how much we value them. It was something we called Monday morning motivation. The response from our team told us that we were right on the money. They needed to be reminded that it’s okay to care for themselves during this time. As a result of this intentional communication, we received positive feedback from team members and learned that people felt relief, support, and gratitude for such open communication during this time.

We were inspired by how much this message meant to our team and during this time when collaboration and community mean so much, we wanted to give others permission to “borrow” our idea and hope that it can be a resource for those nonprofit leaders looking to communicate the value of self-care to their teams amidst COVID-19.

Here’s what we sent to Hedges employees

We have made it 4 weeks!! Thank you all for taking such good care of our clients. Each of you have gone above and beyond in so many ways. You have reflected the Hedges values repeatedly during this time and we appreciate you so much!

With that said, we wanted to touch base and make sure that you are caring for yourself as much as you are caring for our clients. Below are a few things that we want to reiterate and put out into the universe for each of you to read:

Let go of any guilt: We are so thankful to have a team of high achievers. That is what makes this transition to the full team working remote so easy for us. We know that you will take care of our clients and go above and beyond for them.

So…let go of the guilt about not being your most productive self right now or not getting in eight hours a day. We know you will take care of your clients and all client work will be completed. We aren’t counting hours and you shouldn’t either. Put that guilt on a boat and send it down the river!

Loved ones included: Dog barking? Cat walking across your keyboard? Kiddos popping in on a meeting? Partner walking in during a meeting? We are all in the same boat – all of us at Hedges and everyone else in the community. Try to remember those little windows into us as humans are okay – find the joy in those moments rather than worrying about them!

Give yourself a break: Hitting a wall? Can’t seem to finish that deliverable? Kiddos asking you to play? Want to have lunch with your loved ones? Feeling down? Need a nap? Have a desire to help and volunteer right now?

Give yourself permission to take a break. If you need to take part of a day away to just recharge during this time, please do so and don’t use your PTO. Consider it self-care and do it! You will be way more productive if you take a break and come back to your work. Please, please, please take the breaks you need to care for yourself right now.

You do you: Depending on your workload and the type of work you are trying to knock out you might need less or more face-to-face time with others. Please determine what you need each week and plan accordingly.

Need some heads down time or a break from Zoom? Let the team know, turn off Microsoft Team chat, and move unessential meetings to emails. Need a space to process and talk through a project with someone? Tap into someone on the team who has the space to do that with you! We all have different capacity levels each week, so let’s lean into that as a team.

It is our hope that these reminders will remove any stressors that you might be feeling related to work. In a time like this, we will each have good days and bad days. If you are feeling a certain way, someone else is probably feeling that way too. Check in on each other – take care of each other.

There are some videos about mental health related to identifying stress, your workspace, and practicing gratitude in First Person’s resource hub that might be helpful during this time. And, if you need additional supports or resources, please let us know.

With gratitude for all you do.

Focused on equity, justice, and serving others, Jodi Snell is leading the way to make Central Indiana a vibrant place to live and to strengthen the nonprofit sector. Jodi has worked and volunteered with an array of nonprofit organizations for more than 12 years providing leadership and strategy, serving on the front line of direct service, and leading fundraising efforts. Since 2014, Jodi has shared her valuable leadership skills as an essential thought partner and problem solver at Hedges. She leads the Hedges team and clients in a manner that transforms visions into impactful and measurable change.

Mar 23

Creating award-winning grant proposals: It takes a village

By Sponsor Insight

By Melanie Priest, senior consultant, Hedges

Like the proverb: “It takes a village to raise a child,” it also takes a village to develop competitive grant proposals. The more resources and team members you include when creating grant proposals, the more you will be able to paint a compelling picture of your organization and the project in which you are seeking funding.

With the increasingly competitive nature of foundation grants, best practices suggest including staff, participants, volunteers, community partners, and funders within your organization’s “village” to develop strong proposals. There are more than a million charitable organizations registered with the Internal Revenue Service in the United States (National Center for Charitable Statistics, 2019). Just like fundraising focused on individual donors, it is a competitive world when trying to secure foundation grants.

Your grant proposal may be developed by the best writer around, however it will fall short without preparation, planning, and input from all perspectives of the organization. It is essential to identify and utilize all contributors that comprise your village to set you up for optimal success.

Before creating the most competitive proposal, it is necessary to build your village by getting to know who the funders are in the area.

Find your funder community

Learning about who provides grants in your community is the first step in the grants process. Researching, identifying prospects, and cultivating relationships are key components needed when getting to know the local, regional, and national funding landscapes.

  • Research: There are various databases available to search for funding prospects. At Hedges, we have found that the Foundation Center’s online directory, https://fconline.foundationcenter.org/, is a robust and comprehensive tool providing information about grant funders through keyword and name searches. The directory is available through a paid subscription or for free at the Indianapolis Public Library’s Central Library.

    Additional free resources to conduct your searches include: the IRS informational tax return (also known as the 990) available on guidestar.org, topical list serves, Google searches, foundation websites and newsletters. Of course, word of mouth is also a valuable resource so asking your board of directors, community partners, volunteers, and staff to keep their eyes and ears open for grant opportunities is good practice.
  • Identifying prospects: Once you have identified potential grantors, you will need to narrow your list to only those that are the best match for your organization. Things to consider when identifying prospects include: the focus or purpose areas in which the funder has an interest; similar grants funded, range of grant awards amounts; geographic requirements. Linkages to executive and volunteer leadership are also important.

    Thorough research to determine a match with each prospect is imperative. Determining the priorities and interest areas of each foundation is important down to the keywords used. Even the difference between a food pantry and a food bank is notable as is the differences in college readiness and college-success programs. Without a strong match, there is less of a likelihood that your proposal will be funded.
  • Cultivating relationships: Similar to relationship building with your individual donors, cultivating relationships with foundation staff and board members is critical. This is particularly true with local foundations. Many foundations in Central Indiana encourage or require an in-person meeting, phone call, or other means of communication to share project ideas before an application can be submitted. When in doubt, take every opportunity to get to know funders whenever possible through invitations to coffee, onsite tours and other programming and fundraising events, and engaging funders through social media and other communications.

    Another way to cultivate funder relationships is through networking. Share names of foundation leadership, with your board, staff, and volunteers to determine if anyone has connections. Our clients are often able to get a foot in the door because of board affiliations. And as the relationship is developing, do not hesitate to seek advice from potential funders about the work your organization does. Through the grants process, they have a pulse on the community and what programs are successful. With further cultivation, these relationships then can lead to deeper involvement and increased financial support for the organization over time.

Now that you have identified grant funders, it is time to develop your proposal. Here are two tips you will want to consider when using your village for the most competitive proposal:

  1. Share your story

Most funders want to understand why there is a need for your project and organization and how your organization measures impact. Use available data to strengthen your grant proposals by illustrating the need and the expected results.

  • Community data sources: There are several online tools that provide demographics and statistics by census tract, neighborhood, city, county, region and state. SAVI is a project of The Indiana University Purdue University (IUPUI) Polis Center and is known as one of the first and largest community data-information systems in the country (www.savi.org, 2020). Additional data sources include the U.S. Census Bureau and Stats Indiana. Scholarly articles and studies on the specific issues that your organization addresses are also available through Google Scholar.
  • Measuring impact: To measure impact it is best to create a logic model. The logic model serves as a roadmap for your program and organization, including what resources you need to implement the program, the activities that will take place, the frequency of the activities and number of participants, and how the activities have impacted participants. A comprehensive overview of logic models is described in the W.K. Kellogg Foundation Logic Model Development Guide.

    Logic models serve as a foundation for strong impact measurement. By clearly defining the program’s short-, medium-, and long-term outcomes and associated activities, standardized evaluation tools can then be researched to ensure proper measurement of key outcomes. The data to be collected and measured can be captured through a variety of methods including surveys, focus groups, one-on-one interviews, intake forms and staff observations. A few years ago, one of our clients went through a process to develop a comprehensive research-based program logic model. As a result of the logic model and data collection, they were able to show program impact and were awarded a grant from a funder who had declined a grant proposal in the past because there wasn’t a way to show program impact.
  1. Prime your program experts

Tap into your organization’s program experts and make them an integral part of your grant proposal process. Their expertise and input will strengthen every component of your grant proposal. Key program experts include program and financial staff, program participants, community partners, and advocates.

  • Program staff: The program staff are working on the front lines and implementing programs and services. As logic models and proposals are developed be sure to include them in planning to ensure that the project created is feasible and realistic. A logic model can also serve as a strong training tool for new staff. And remember that front line staff can share stories and accomplishments that will help you, the grant writer, make an inspiring and compelling case for support.
  • Financial staff: Program and organizational budgets are another way to share your organization’s story, demonstrating how you plan to utilize the requested grant funds, and why a funder’s investment is important for program or project success. If you aren’t already, become good friends with your organization’s Chief Financial Officer, controller, bookkeeper or other staff that are responsible for the finances. Budgets and other financial statements are frequently required as attachments for grant proposals to show fiscal organizational health. Financial staff are the best resource in ensuring that the information shared with a funder is current and accurate.
  • Program participants: Don’t forget about the most important members of the village – the program participants. Those receiving services know their needs best and should have the opportunity to inform how the programs are designed and how impact is measured and described. Their input can be acquired through surveys, focus groups and interviews, which should be administered regularly.
  • Community partners: Funders are well-informed about nonprofit organizations in the community and want to know how you collaborate in ways that maximize your collective impact and avoid duplication of services. Consider community organizations as additional members of your village and be able to clearly articulate how you work together and what makes your organization distinctly unique from similar organizations in your field.

Rest assured that successful grant proposals are meant to be created collaboratively. In other words, it really does take a village. So, make sure to meet up with your village and create winning grant proposals that will bring more grant awards to your organization.

Melanie Priest is passionate about making Indianapolis a great place to live, having strong connections in the community and helping nonprofits share their stories of impact. For more than 20 years, Priest has worked closely with the Central Indiana philanthropic community to provide creative solutions to complex problems. As senior consultant, she has worked at Hedges since 2012 securing hundreds of grants for Indianapolis nonprofit organizations to ensure they are able to advance their missions.

May 27

The top 3 must-do’s in effective strategic planning

By Sponsor Insight

By Hannah Gooding, consultant, Hedges

Imagine having to map out a family road trip without knowing your destination. Sounds a bit backwards and overwhelming, right?

Too often, barriers of time and resources leave nonprofits of all sizes and at all life-stages operating this way: with no clear destination or a strategy for getting there. Nonprofit leaders may feel like all they can do is to “keep driving.” They provide their services. They steward their donors. They submit their grant reports. They maintain the status quo without ever getting to stop and ask: Where are we trying to go? What do our participants need? What are we trying to solve and how will we know we’re successful?

These questions are natural stepping stones in a strategic planning process — a process nonprofit organizations should undergo every three to five years.

However, for many organizations, a strategic plan can feel like a box to check. When that happens, nonprofit executives may attempt to answer these important strategy questions in a board room on a Saturday lacking external perspectives, buy-in, or consensus.

When checking the box is the end-goal, nonprofits lose sight of the value of good strategy. Good strategy is a product of a thoughtful, flexible process that can’t be tackled in a board room — even with the most diverse and talented board and staff in the world. Good strategy is not a strategic plan. Without a process that is inclusive and destination-driven, a strategic plan is just a bunch of buzzwords that sits in a binder or in a file on a desktop. Indeed, as President Dwight Eisenhower once said: “Plans are useless. Planning is everything.”

So how should organizations approach a strategic planning process that will result in real strategy?

First, there is value in having a conversation with your funders about why a strategic planning process would be game-changing. Funders want to invest their resources in organizations that are guided by good strategy. In fact, many offer capacity building grants or award endowment funding so that organizations can truly invest in a planning process.

However, to ensure a strategic planning process is worth the investment of both your time and resources, there are three important things to keep in mind.  

1 A strategic planning process should be inclusive. Incorporating a diverse range of perspectives and experiences is the best way to develop a strategy that is not only realistic, but also exciting for your key supporters and relevant to those you serve.

A strategy-rich planning process starts with setting the perspectives of your participants, volunteers, partners, donors, and other stakeholders as the decision-making foundation. You can do this by facilitating one-on-one interviews, focus groups, surveys, or “town halls” to glean important feedback about what is working well and how your organization might need to shift, adapt, or grow.

At this stage, a third-party facilitator becomes incredibly important, providing the necessary neutrality to collect real information. This individual can be the buffer if a participant needs to share concern about mission-creep or that the model your donors love isn’t working for the clients who actually experience it. As one of our participants put it: “No one wants to tell you your baby is ugly.”

An inclusive strategic planning process not only leaves room for honesty, but also provides a space to build buy-in with your closest allies, partners, and supporters. Asking your stakeholders for their ideas is the quickest way to ensure you have their support when it comes time to implement (and fund) those ideas. Asking your participants for their feedback is the best way to ensure your work is grounded in integrity and purpose.

Take for instance, when the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention and Prevention (CHIP), on behalf of the Indianapolis Continuum of Care, set out to develop the Indianapolis Community Plan to End Homelessness. It engaged 400 community stakeholders — including 170 individuals who were experiencing or had experienced homelessness — in the planning process. By doing so, Indianapolis residents and more than 80 unique agencies were able to make their voices heard and collaborate to create a true community plan.

Key funders, who were included in the planning process, decided to orient their funding priorities around the strategies that were developed. One of their priorities became the commitment to raise and align $4 million toward implementing the strategies identified in the plan. Through careful crafting of the Indianapolis Community Plan to End Homelessness, the Continuum of Care not only set the strategy for addressing one of the most pressing challenges in our city, but unified key perspectives and achieved vital seed funding in the process.

2 A strategic planning process should be oriented toward a clear destination. It should set the results you want to achieve, or the difference you want to make, as the yardstick by which you test all of your decisions.

A good strategic plan should act like a compass — not prescribing every specific turn you must take, but a tool that reminds you what direction you should be going to get to your destination. However, like a compass, a strategic plan is useless unless you know where it is you’re trying to go. Setting a destination is essential for setting strategy.

A strategy-rich planning process doesn’t just ask: “How do we keep going down this path?” Instead it asks: “What do we want to be different for our community and our participants, and what do we need to change about our approach to make that vision a reality?” One of our clients, for example, answered this question by simply saying: “We have to stop being all things to all people.” This realization articulates what so many nonprofits experience when they lose sight of their true destination — an attempt to do everything “okay” versus one thing extremely well.

When a strategic planning process is destination-driven, it puts your endgame into clear focus and pushes your organization to make decisions based on what gets you closer to your real goal and greater impact.

Keep in mind that your destination:

  • should align with your mission;
  • should be specific and measurable;
  • should elevate the insights of your key stakeholders; and
  • should put your participants’ needs front and center.

3 A strategic planning process should be holistic. Setting strategy should include an assessment of what we at Hedges like to call “The Four Pillars of Organizational Health.” In addition to considering the strengths, challenges, and opportunities of your programs and their impact, strong strategic planning takes into consideration plans for strengthening the organization’s leadership and culture, development and financial management, and marketing and communications. 

An organization must be able to measure the impact of its programs with the use of strong data, foster leadership and a culture throughout the organization, execute engaging and effective fundraising strategies while maintaining strong financial management, and communicate its impact to key stakeholders and the broader community.  Like four legs of a table, these Four Pillars of Organizational Health will provide the strength and balance your organization needs to realize your strategic vision even during times of uncertainty and change.   

In a strong strategic planning process, you will take the information you learned from your inclusive research process, align it with your clear direction, and finally set your plan to holistically align with each of these four pillars. This approach allows you to focus on the overall health of your organization in a way that optimizes your resources to create sustainability. While a holistic approach takes more time and resources, the end result builds the capacity of your organization to further expand its impact in the most meaningful way.

As you approach a strategic planning session/process, remember, setting strategy is a process and the process is everything.

Don’t waste your time on a strategic plan that documents the status quo. Especially now, when the philanthropic landscape is changing, unrestricted dollars are elusive, and community needs are becoming increasingly complex, good strategy is more important than ever.


Hannah Gooding is passionate about three things: nonprofits, problem-solving, and pie. She has been a consultant with Hedges since 2017. With a background in nonprofit program management, her expertise in research and strategic thinking has supported dozens of nonprofit organizations in Central Indiana.

Mar 04

Hedges: Let us bring clarity …

By Sponsor Insight

By Erin Hedges, president, Hedges

Nonprofit leaders often worry about organizational sustainability, demonstrating impact and planning for their next chapter.

At Hedges, we get it. We’ve been there too! That’s why our team of experienced consultants is passionate about empowering nonprofit leaders to confidently and effectively address the challenges that come their way. By investing in our services, nonprofit leaders can stay focused on solving the most important issues facing our community.

Since 2002, Hedges has been a trusted partner to more than 100 leading nonprofits, foundations and public entities in Central Indiana. We have worked with them to maximize their impact, produce measurable results and attract larger community investments.  From helping a single nonprofit to strategically plan and secure funding to helping a foundation to measure and communicate its impact of a community-wide initiative, Hedges has provided an array of services to support the success of our nonprofit community.

Drawing on our team’s deep understanding of the local nonprofit landscape, topical expertise, and extensive knowledge of nonprofit best practices, we specialize in helping leaders address complex challenges. Through strategic planning, grant services, program development and evaluation, and board development, we assist in building a nonprofit’s capacity allowing them to further their mission in a sustainable way.

If you’re a nonprofit leader who is ready to make transformational change, our team is ready to help. Contact me at erin@hellohedges.com or learn more about our measured approach to social change at www.hellohedges.com.

Erin Hedges is the president of Hedges and has worked in the nonprofit sector for over 20 years.