Capacity Through Funding
Securing adequate funding is essential to scaling and sustaining any community initiative. By developing a clear understanding of your funding needs and exploring diverse funding sources, you can create the financial stability required to expand and deepen your efforts. Whether through grants, donations, partnerships, or fundraising events, funding provides the resources necessary to support operational costs, pay for materials, and invest in long-term growth. Building capacity through funding involves not just securing money but also creating a framework to manage and allocate resources effectively, ensuring that funds are used strategically to advance your group’s goals. With a solid funding base, your group can unlock new opportunities and ensure that your work remains impactful and sustainable over time.
Understanding your group’s financial needs as aligned with your strategic plan:
Understanding your group’s funding needs will help you set clear goals and target the right funding sources, while also establishing the building blocks of clear communication to potential funders. Important questions to consider include:
What are our immediate costs? (e.g., event supplies, printing materials, website hosting)
What future projects might require funding? (e.g., a solar initiative, hiring a consultant, purchasing equipment)
Are there ongoing expenses to sustain our work? (e.g., annual fees, insurance, meeting space rental)
How do we plan to handle funding? Will we work with a fiscal sponsor, or do we plan to establish as a nonprofit organization? Will we establish our own bank account? Who will be responsible for tracking our finances and providing regular reports.
Action
Create a basic budget to track expected expenses and income.
Exploring Funding Sources
Small-Scale, Grassroots Funding
Community donations: Crowdfunding platforms (like GoFundMe) or simple donation drives.
Event-based fundraising: Raffles, benefit concerts, or community dinners.
Membership models: A “sustaining supporter” option where community members contribute small monthly donations.
Note on processing tax-deductible gifts:
If your group wants to offer tax-deductible donations, you’ll either need to become a nonprofit organization or partner with a fiscal sponsor—a nonprofit that can accept donations on your behalf. (See the section on Forming Structure for more on this.)
Whichever route you take, make sure to include clear donation acknowledgment language confirming the tax-deductible nature of the gift, as required by IRS guidelines. Fiscal sponsors often provide templates or support for this.
Grants and Institutional Support
Local or regional foundations: Many small foundations support grassroots climate work, research which ones align with your mission.
Examples: Maine Community Foundation County Funds, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund SEED grants, Onion Foundation, Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, local banks or bank-associated funds or foundations
Municipal grants: Cities and towns may have funding tied to climate resilience or sustainability programs.
Examples: Municipalities can receive funding through the Community Resilience Partnership to support the establishment of municipal climate action/sustainability/community resilience committees. Some municipalities set aside a budget item for sustainability committees and/or climate action committees.
Statewide or national climate networks: Partner with larger organizations offering funding opportunities for community groups.
Examples: NBE Consortium Outdoor Equity Fund,
Local Partnerships
Business sponsorships: Partner with local eco-conscious businesses, like outdoor stores, co-ops, or green energy companies, who may sponsor an event or project.
In-kind donations: Sometimes support comes in the form of free services or materials (e.g., a printer offering free flyer printing, a business donating meeting space, or meal donations from a local restaurant to support a community event).
Creating a Simple Fundraising Plan
ACTT has found that promoting events/programs through multiple channels is most effective. For our events, ACTT utilizes the following communication channels:
Posters
At key community locations including coffee shops, grocery/convenience stores, laundromats, town offices, banks, food pantries, gyms/community centers, other community events boards.
Posters should include a short event description, date, time, registration details (if any), and a link and/or QR code for more information.
Re-sharing through community networks
Reach out to community organizations, committees, major employers, and community leaders to share events with their networks. We have found that this is one of the most effective outreach strategies because it expands your outreach and taps into the audiences of other organizations.
Ensure your list of organizations reflects the diversity of your community, especially the demographics you aim to reach.
Simplify the process for others to share your content. For example, asking other organizations to re-share your social media post.
ACTT develops promotional toolkits for major events/programs to make re-sharing as seamless as possible. It contains ready-made content like event descriptions, sample posts, flyers, email templates, and contact information for the project lead.
Share toolkits using Google Docs with view-only access to ensure easy distribution without editing permissions.
Local Newspapers and media.
Share upcoming programs/events with local media outlets by sending a press release. Note that it’s important to ensure you are sending your release to the correct person at the news agency. Most agency’s websites will list the contact email for sharing press releases.
Social Media Promotion.
Social media posts can also be helpful for promoting events/programs, especially if members of your groups and/or other organizations re-share the post to their networks.
Partner with other organizations/groups.
Partnering with other organizations/groups can increase the event’s audience/reach. As an event partner, the organization is more likely to promote the event to their networks and bring their expertise and energy to community engagement and organizing.
Business sponsorships.
You can also ask local businesses to partner or sponsor the event. By sponsoring the event, they may donate in-kind services or food (e.g., a pizza restaurant donating pizza). In exchange, offer recognition at the event, giving businesses positive publicity.
Encourage business sponsors to help promote the event by displaying flyers at their location and/or sharing the event on their social media platforms.
Grants
A significant number of resources exist online to support the grant process. One place to start is this resource page on Instrumentl.
When working with grants, it is important to begin with your strategic plan and the projects you seek to undertake and to then search for grant opportunities that match those plans and projects. If you begin with a funding source and try to create a project, or even significantly change an existing project, in order to match that funding, you risk mission creep, misalignment with local priorities, and could even end up undertaking work that you ultimately are not suited for or do not wish to be doing.
Some tips for searching for grants that match your plans and projects include:
You can register to access online databases like Grantstation. Some of these databases require an annual fee, but this can be funding very well spent. Members of the Maine Association of Nonprofits receive a discounted membership to Grantstation. Many of these databases allow organizations to search by focus area or type of project seeking funding.
The Maine Community Foundation is an important funding resource in the state of Maine. The annual Community Building grants are an important opportunity to receive funding for projects or general operating support. Additionally, applicants to these grants then have the opportunity to be seen by family funds that are managed by the foundation. It can also be a good idea to set up a meeting with your county’s Community Partner, which you can find on the foundation’s website.
It’s okay to start with some smaller grants! Building up your familiarity with grant writing and reporting with smaller foundations and funds is a good idea. These grants can also be stepping stones to larger grants in the future.
Once you have identified grants that are a good match, be sure to carefully read as much as you can about the grantmaker’s priorities and all the requirements for application and reporting. Many foundations share lists of past grants, and understanding how the foundation has given in the past can be very helpful. Be sure to develop as full an understanding of the foundation and the application requirements as possible before you begin writing.
Most grants will require answers to the following questions. It might be a good idea to consider these questions in advance, including in the design of your project:
Brief description of your project
What community need is your project designed to meet and how will it meet that need? How was the need for the project identified? How was the community the project will serve involved in designing the project? (This is a great place to emphasize community-led processes.)
What will be the impact of your project and who will experience that impact? (Many foundations want specifics around the demographic of people served including number of people, ages, income status, and more.)
What measurable deliverables are included in your project and how will you track those deliverables?
How else will you measure the impact of your project? How are the people served involved in measuring that impact?
Some tips for the grant writing process include:
Focus on clear communication. You do not need to write beautiful prose; it is more important to ensure that you are clearly communicating your project, the need for the project, and the anticipated impact.
Pay attention to word limits! Many grants have very tight word count limitations. Be sure you understand these limits before you start writing.
Make explicit the ways in which your project and work align with the funder’s priorities. Make connections to the words used to express those priorities on the funder’s website.
If you are successful in obtaining your grant, be sure to follow acknowledgement steps noted by the foundation (signing any necessary agreements, sending a thank you note, etc.) and prepare to track grant implementation throughout. Familiarize yourself with reporting requirements before you start work and set up documents to help you track throughout so that you will easily be able to assemble the required reports.
Other tips
Revisit your budget often:
Adjust plans as priorities shift—flexibility keeps your group financially resilient.
Open a dedicated bank account:
To keep your finances organized and separate from personal funds, open a dedicated account for your community initiative. This ensures that all financial transactions are easily traceable and transparent.
Prepare simple financial summaries to share with members periodically, as transparency builds trust. Here is a template for profit and loss statements that can be applied to the organization as a whole or can be adjusted to be project-specific.
Establish Financial Policies:
Set clear policies for managing funds, including who is authorized to handle finances, how funds are spent, and what the approval process looks like. This helps prevent misuse of funds and ensures consistency in financial management.
Budget Planning and Allocation:
Develop a detailed budget before starting additional projects or activities. Ensure that your budget aligns with your goals and allows for flexibility in case of unexpected expenses or changes in funding. Regularly review and adjust your budget as necessary.
Fundraising Transparency:
When raising funds, be clear about what the money will be used for and communicate any changes in how funds are allocated. Funders are more likely to support your work when they understand where their money is going and how it’s being spent.
