The Decision to Look for Funding for the NPO Network

After working on the NPO Planner and Grant Generator for about eight months, my vision for what it can become has grown from a standalone application to help my local food bank, Food for Others, to an online community that helps charities and foundations alike. I've picked the name 'NPO Network' as my working title for this effort.

I see the NPO Network as a place where charities can find planning and automation tools, as well as search tools that help them find like-minded foundations.

I see foundations coming to the community to get the information they need for selecting charities and giving grants. The community's automated grant application generator will give them the control they want without the expense of designing and maintaining their own grant application website. I think foundations will appreciate that all the money they give will go towards a charity's mission, and not to pay for foundation search firms and grant writers.

And I see an online community that connects a network of coaches with charities and foundations that need their help. My experience tells me that there are a lot of people just like me who are ready and able to put their experience to work helping others.

This vision is much bigger than the project we began work on many months ago, and we've taken things as far as we can take them in our spare time. To move forward, I will need to find some funding.

My goal is to provide our services to charities for free; I don't know if this is really possible, but it is my intent. To achieve this we need to find partners who share our vision and are willing to invest in our efforts.

My first step is to create a video that gives an overview of both the problem charities face, and our solution to it. This 26 minute video is my first attempt at doing this: