Your Pathway to Grants

I have a BA in Literature. After volunteering and then working in programs at several nonprofits, I moved into a program officer role at a community foundation. Having relationships with many of the nonprofits who were seeking grants from the foundation proved very useful because I already had a good level of trust in the community. I also understood being on the grant recipient side and what we could do to better serve our nonprofit applicants. From the time I joined the nonprofit workforce until I moved into grantmaking was about 5 years.

Thanks, @JulieAssel ! It's the perfect background to move into grantmaking. :)

I have a BA in Communications. I spent my early career in college access work, running education programs for students and parents. I wrote my first grant to fund a FAFSA completion incentive program where we rewarded students with breakfast burritos for completing their FAFSA. The second grant I wrote was for scholarship funding for my community. This was both a fundee space (with reporting and accounting due to the funder) as well as acting as funder for students (writing, collecting, and evaluating applications and working with schools as payees). My scholarship expertise, nonprofit collaboration, and grant writing experience is was landed me the role as Manager of Grants and Scholarships at the Community Foundation.