I’m in a nonprofit support group on social media, and last week someone shared this article about nonprofit funding. 

I read it and didn’t think much of it, until I got an email at 1:38 p.m. last Friday.

It was an email promoting a grant opportunity. And let’s be clear, this email was sent specifically for this grant. It wasn’t a Friday afternoon newsletter or an aggregation of different grants available. It was a breaking-news-this-opportunity-just-opened type of email.

It was for a $25,000 grant, with the application link, and a link to information about what would be funded and what they’re looking for in a proposal.

The priority deadline? Wednesday.

Let’s recap: I received a breaking news email about a $25k grant opportunity on Friday afternoon and the deadline for the grant is Wednesday.

I’ve worked for $350k organizations and $2 million organizations and $11 million organizations. $25k is a lot of money for anybody. And a $25k project or program is not simply described or simply budgeted or simply organized. Writing a grant proposal for that, even if I’m the best grant writer in the universe, would take some time.

The expectation that I am going to read this email immediately upon its arrival, compose a project or program, gather the necessary information, and articulate it all in a grant proposal in the five days allotted is the very definition of toxic. But yes, this is typical in this industry. And yes, people do it all the time. And yes, payroll grant writers are prepared for this very moment. And yes, many in this industry would tell me that this is just how it works and this is what you signed up for.

But that doesn’t make any of it okay.

Could I have done this? Absolutely. Would my organization benefit from a grant like this? Of course. The area of need would be a bit of a mission drift, but I could probably cover for that with pandemic-specific anomalies. Could I have scrambled over the weekend, or asked a staff member or contracted grant writer to scramble over the weekend, to do all of this, and probably turned in a decent proposal and maybe received funding? One hundred percent yes. 

But I did not. Because I’ve committed to having boundaries in a boundary-less industry.

I’m a paying member of a local group for fundraising executives, and at one of our monthly meetups I met a young lady who was a development officer at her org but also moonlighted as their social media manager. She was lamenting over having to push the upcoming local “day of giving” so much. I told her I likened local days of giving to a foundation hanging a piece of raw meat on a string and releasing starved animals to fight each other to the death for it. 

“Don’t you think it’s a little like that...?” I said. I think she was caught off guard by my aggressive analogy, but she nervously chuckled and agreed. “I guess it’s a little like that,” she responded.

It’s exactly like that. And grant opportunities like this make it worse. Because what you’re really doing when you send me a grant opportunity at 1:38 p.m. on a Friday is asking if I’m willing to sacrifice myself for my org’s mission. You want me (or my paid grant writer, payroll or contracted) to work on the weekend. You want me to drop everything else I’m doing (like strategic planning with my board and planning two COVID-safe holiday events) and scramble to win your funding. You want me to want you. And you want to know how bad I want you.

As a funder, you’re perpetuating a toxic work culture. This is why people are quitting their jobs post-pandemic. Because nothing is worth sacrificing what we’ve now realized is more important (whatever that is to you). I’ve been done playing this type of game for a long time, but I’m fortunate enough that I don’t have to. My current org is 85% donor funded, and if I really needed $25k to fund a beneficial project or program, I could solicit funding from human beings who would probably give it to me, no questions asked, and no deadline required.

Plenty of organizations, however, are not as fortunate as mine. And they’ll play the game, because they’ll have to, which just helps to perpetuate the toxicity. 

To boot, in January the recipients of this grant will be announced. And board members all over my area will ask their Executive Directors why our organization (whatever it is) didn’t apply for that grant?

If my board asked me that, I would tell them the truth: I didn’t want to lose my sanity for five days and pull a project out of my ass just for a chance at the scrap of meat that would fund something that’s a borderline drift from our mission. My board would completely understand this. But some other boards probably won’t. And the next time this happens, those Executive Directors or their staff will be burning midnight oil on a Saturday for their little scrap of meat.

I won’t call out the funder who sent this email. But this grant application would probably ask me why I’m deserving of their funding. In turn, I would probably ask them why their funding is worthy of my (and my staff’s) mental health.

Let’s do better, funders. And let’s stop playing the game, fellow non profiteers.