Frequently Asked Questions

We write grants for foundations, corporate funders, and government funding at every level, sometimes referred to as institutional giving.

We are driven by our values, which are progressive and social justice-oriented. We specialize in areas related to health and human services. This includes victim services, mental health, homelessness, substance use disorders, criminal justice, disabilities, and youth services. We also support organizations that work on changing oppressive systems. They typically do policy development, advocacy, organizing, training and capacity building, and voter mobilization.

RIC’s clients and experience are pretty diverse, so don’t hesitate to contact us if you want to talk further about your organization and your needs.

We use a collaborative process that relies on communication, trust, and rapport. Once you sign a contract with us, you receive a new client guide and a grant document checklist. We assign a consultant who will be your dedicated point of contact and lead on your scope of work, and schedule a kickoff meeting. We start with the kickoff meeting so we can provide an overview of our standard process, meet key staff, and collect all the documents we need to get started. Our scope of work depends on your contract. Please see our Grant Services page for more information.

We prioritize regular communication throughout the contract period. In general, we recommend having regular calls or meetings (we have found weekly calls and monthly or quarterly meetings most useful). We are generally very flexible to accommodate clients’ needs, preferences, and capacity. Please contact us to talk more about your organization’s needs.

We work with clients who share our values and align with our specialties. We work with many entities, primarily nonprofits, and we can also serve aligned for-profit businesses and government offices, such as Victim Witness Assistance Programs, Community Service Boards, and health departments.

To ensure our work together has the most impact, we look at both the current infrastructure and capacity your organization has to reach the goals identified for our contract. If you are seeking grant consulting services, please be aware that we require clients to have at least two years of operating experience and supporting data, an audit, an operating budget of at least $300,000 (although we are most successful with organizations that have budgets of $500,000 or more), and an engaged board of directors. Nonprofits must have an IRS 501(c)(3) or (c)(4) letter or a written and signed fiscal sponsorship agreement.

We do not provide grant services to law enforcement or incarceration facilities.

No, but we commend you. Starting a nonprofit is lots of hard work. Fortunately, there are many free resources available through some fantastic organizations whose mission is to help create and sustain effective nonprofits. 

No, we don’t work with nonprofits that are less than two years old. We generally recommend that nonprofits wait until they have an audit and at least two years of operating experience and measurable outcomes before applying for a grant. Applying for and managing grant funds requires capacity and established infrastructure, so it’s usually an intermediate step in a nonprofit’s growth. You can work with a consultant to get grant-ready but it does require an investment. We recommend Catapult Connections, which offers a fantastic coaching package to help nonprofits get grant-ready.

Our fees are listed under Services and we can also offer custom packages. Please contact us for a free consultation for more information.

Our clients work in health and human services, capacity building, and systems change (policy, advocacy, voter mobilization). Some are national networks and some are state coalitions. Their budgets range from $250,000 annually all the way up to $101M+. We are most successful with clients that have operating budgets of $500,000 or more.

We are most successful with clients who have active boards that engage in making introductions to funders. Executive Directors and Development Directors who are active and enthusiastic about contacting funders (and being persistent) are also more successful.

This is a good question but in our field, average grant success rates vary widely. If clients are willing to take risks they have lower success rates, as do many newer, smaller nonprofits. Conversely, clients who only apply when they have a good chance of funding, and larger, more established organizations tend to have higher success rates. For these reasons, we don’t track success rates. Anecdotally we can say that there’s a 0-25% chance of getting a cold grant where there is no relationship and the odds increase from there based on the type and nature of the relationship of the organization to the funder.

Our role in success is to guide clients towards the best matches, consult on relationship-building, and of course to write the best proposal possible that is both compelling and meets the funder’s guidelines.

Yes and no. There are outliers on either side. Our clients received 145 awards in 2022 totaling $30,209,873, ranging from $500 to $9.75M. The median award was $25,000 and the average award was $208,344.