Why real fund development is a multi-year strategy, not a quick sprint to submit a grant.
Most of the calls that come into my firm still start the same way:
“We need a grant.”
What people usually mean is:
“We need funding for something important, and a grant feels like the way to get it.”
As an attorney, I’m often introduced as someone who “does grant writing.” I hate that phrase—not because grant proposals don’t matter, but because it shrinks the work into one very small slice of the process.
At Levitate, we don’t just write grants.
We practice fund development.
And fund development is the A–Z process of getting funding in the door—and keeping it there—for big vision goals:
- designing programs and projects so they’re actually fundable and compliant;
- building budgets, partnerships, and internal capacity that can support the work;
- weaving in program evaluation on the front end;
- writing competitive proposals (a small part of the overall process);
- and, if the proposal is awarded, supporting implementation, administration, reporting, monitoring, and refinement.
It is an entire lifecycle.
Not a 3–6 week sprint to submit an application.
Over time, that’s pushed me to stop thinking in terms of individual grants, and start thinking in terms of multi-year funding ecosystems.
The Hidden Cost of One-Off Grants
When a local government or nonprofit calls and says “we need a grant,” they’ve usually found a specific opportunity that sort of aligns with an idea—a housing initiative, a youth workforce concept, a violence reduction effort.
What they often lack is an actual program design.
By “design,” I mean:
- How much will this really cost over 3–5 years, not just year one?
- Who exactly will it impact, and how will we know?
- What will it demand from staff, partners, and internal systems?
- What new capacity—legal, financial, evaluation—will we need to build?
Instead of being brought in to execute a fund development strategy, we’re often pulled in late and asked to perform a magic trick:
“Design the program and write the grant… and do it fast.”
We can make the narrative sound good. That’s the easy part.
The hard part is designing something that works in the real world and stands up to legal, fiscal, and compliance scrutiny.
When a program is rushed into existence just to meet a deadline, a few things tend to happen:
- Gaps in the design. Key elements—evaluation, staffing, partner capacity, community engagement—are missed or underfunded.
- Chaos post-award. If the grant is funded, implementation feels confusing. Roles, processes, and realistic timelines aren’t clear.
- Underfunded core pieces. The award doesn’t cover the actual cost of administration, reporting, monitoring subawardees, or audits.
- Program delays and retrofits. Organizations scramble to rework budgets and timelines under the constraints of an approved award.
The best place to fix this is not in year two of implementation.
It’s in the fund development strategy, long before a proposal is submitted.
Why This Article, and Why Now: The Nonprofit Blueprint
A lot of this thinking has been sharpened through our Nonprofit Blueprint webinar series hosted through Levitate’s online training institute.
After those sessions, I’ve heard nonprofit leaders, local government staff, and board members name the same pattern:
- “We keep bouncing from opportunity to opportunity instead of building a plan.”
- “We got the grant, but now our team is overwhelmed and confused.”
- “We don’t know how this year’s funding connects to our longer-term vision.”
The Levitate Logic approach isn’t about how to “win more grants.” It’s about fund development as a strategic discipline:
- designing work that deserves multi-year investment,
- aligning grants, sponsorships, donations, tax credits, and other tools,
- and avoiding the trap of building an organization around whatever RFP happens to be open this quarter.
The idea of a multi-year funding ecosystem grew directly out of these conversations. It’s the lens I use to help clients think bigger than “this cycle” and move toward sustainable, long-term resourcing.
What a 3–5 Year Funding Ecosystem Really Is
When I talk about a 3–5 year funding ecosystem, I am not talking about a pile of unrelated grants.
I’m talking about the cohesive design and resourcing of a big vision—written in pencil, not ink, because things will change.
A funding ecosystem asks:
- What is the end goal we’re trying to advance for this community?
- What are all the components we need to do this well—programs, staff, evaluation, outreach, capital, policy alignment?
- Over the next 3–5 years, what mix of funding tools can support those components?
That mix might include:
- federal, state, and philanthropic grants;
- corporate sponsorships;
- tax credits and other financial incentives;
- a portion of the organization’s own operating funds;
- and in some cases, borrowed money or other financing mechanisms.
We also think in phases:
- What do we need now (planning, data, pilots, community engagement)?
- What fits in Years 2–3 (expansion, refinement, evaluation)?
- What belongs in Years 4–5 (capital projects, scale, replication)?
It’s a shift from:
“How do we fund this one good idea?”
to
“How do we design and fund a multi-year strategy that moves the needle?”
Fund Development: The A–Z Lifecycle
Here’s how I define fund development, especially through my lens as an attorney:
- Strategy and Vision
Clarify the big vision: What are we trying to change? For whom? Over what time frame? This is where we identify the programs and projects that are so central to your mission that they deserve a multi-year funding plan. - Program and Project Design
Before we ever touch a proposal, we help clients design work that is actually fundable and implementable:- clear objectives and target populations;
- realistic staffing and partnership structures;
- logic models or equivalent frameworks;
- early thinking around program evaluation and data;
- high-level budgets that reflect true costs, including administration and compliance.
- Aligning Funding Tools
Only after the design is clear do we start matching it with funding tools:- grants (federal, state, philanthropic);
- sponsorships and donations;
- tax credits and incentives;
- other capital or financing, if appropriate.
- Proposal Development
This is the part most people think of when they hear “grant writing”:- crafting narratives;
- refining budgets;
- pulling in letters of support;
- packaging attachments;
- making sure everything aligns with guidelines and regulations.
- Implementation and Compliance
If the proposal is awarded, the real test begins. Fund development includes:- standing up the program or project according to what was proposed;
- establishing processes for administration, reporting, and documentation;
- monitoring subawardees and partners;
- managing audits and site visits;
- making sure funds are used in line with both the proposal and applicable law.
- Evaluation, Learning, and Refinement
Finally, we look at:- Did this work the way we thought it would?
- Where did we underestimate cost, capacity, or risk?
- What needs to change in design or systems before we scale or renew?
Fund development lives across all six steps.
“Grant writing” lives mostly in step four.
Why I Stopped Being “Just a Grant Writer”
Early in my firm’s life, we took pride in being trusted to “just write the grant.” Program staff weren’t always at the table, and we could still produce a compelling narrative and budget.
Then the awards started coming in—$50,000, $250,000, $1 million and beyond—and we saw the downside:
- Implementation teams were trying to execute a program they hadn’t truly designed.
- Budgets we’d built with limited input didn’t reflect operational realities.
- People were trying to navigate procurement, hiring, and partnership requirements they hadn’t anticipated.
It didn’t matter if the funding was $5,000 or $25 million, philanthropic or federal—the pattern was the same:
If the organization hasn’t done the thinking, the money will expose every gap.
As an attorney, I also see the risk side: misalignment between proposal and practice isn’t just inefficient—it can become a compliance problem.
We realized that if we stayed “grant writers,” we were doing clients a disservice.
Our value is in helping them architect multi-year strategies, not just patch together narratives.
How We Think About Readiness Without Giving Away the Secret Sauce
When a client comes to us about funding, we’re not simply asking, “What’s the deadline?” We’re quietly assessing:
- Have they thought deeply about the program or project?
- Do they understand what implementation will require from their team?
- Are their systems mature enough to handle the type of funding they’re seeking?
We’ll often request whatever they already have—budgets, studies, concept papers, timelines. If there’s nothing on paper, that tells us we’re in early design mode, not “plug-and-play grant” mode.
We also give an honest preview of what it takes to be competitive, especially for federal funding. That’s not a template; it’s a reality check.
The internal tools we use to track opportunities, phase projects, and organize funding strategies are proprietary. But the principle is simple and safe to share:
We start from strategy, then build the funding ecosystem around it.
We don’t build strategy around what happens to be open this quarter.
Internal Infrastructure No One Can Skip
You cannot build a multi-year funding ecosystem on shaky internal systems.
When organizations lock in big awards without that foundation, I see the same mistakes:
- Using funds in ways that don’t align with the approved proposal.
- Underestimating the time and cost of reporting, compliance, and administration.
- Getting stuck in procurement or partnership processes that delay implementation.
- Trying to scale faster than their staffing and systems can support.
So we encourage clients to strengthen their internal infrastructure alongside their funding ambitions:
- basic grant management processes;
- clear expectations and support for subrecipients and partners;
- thought-through evaluation plans;
- realistic staffing and capacity assumptions;
- regular communication channels across departments and organizations.
That’s not secret sauce—that’s responsible practice.
Questions Leaders Should Be Asking
If you’re a mayor, city/county manager, executive director, or board chair trying to move beyond opportunistic grant chasing, here are questions I’d hand you as homework:
- Which programs or projects are so central to our mission and long-term goals that they deserve a multi-year funding plan?
- For each one, what do we actually know?
- Where will it be centered?
- Who will it impact?
- What team and partners will we need?
- What’s our rough sense of cost and capacity?
- Where are we least prepared to receive and manage outside funding?
- Reporting and compliance?
- Fiscal systems?
- Staffing?
- Community engagement?
- If this grant ended tomorrow, what would remain?
- Could we sustain the core of this program, and how?
- What’s our plan for the end of the grant, not just the beginning?
These are the kinds of conversations we invite leaders into through the Nonprofit Blueprint and our strategy engagements. They don’t require you to think like a grant writer. They require you to think like a steward.
The Core Principle: Funding Should Follow Strategy
If I could teach every client one thing, it would be this:
Funding should follow strategy, not the other way around.
Too often, organizations twist themselves to fit whatever opportunity is in front of them. Programs morph to match guidelines instead of being guided by mission and community needs.
When you’ve done the hard work of designing a strong program or project—rooted in strategy, data, and community voice—it is what it is. You might adjust how you tell the story for different funders, but you don’t reinvent the work every time a new RFP drops.
That’s the heart of fund development.
It’s not about chasing wins.
It’s about building a multi-year ecosystem that can carry your work forward, even when the grant cycles, political winds, or federal priorities shift.
When you start there, grants stop feeling like lottery tickets—and start functioning as what they truly are: one set of tools in a larger, intentional strategy to fund the future you’re already committed to building.
