Tips for Grant Pitches - Know Your Funder’s Mindset - Customise Your Pitch

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rhys

A practical guide for NGOs to improve grant success by understanding funders’ mindsets and tailoring pitches to three archetypes: Programme Proponents, Adaptive Funders, and Organisation Builders. It explains how each archetype views programme results, indirect and organisational development costs, and reserves. The guide offers concrete pitching approaches and tips, including how to frame true costs, provide evidence and benchmarks, create narrative links to impact, and track financial resilience indicators.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages4

Reading Time10 min

AccessFree to download

Tips for Grant Pitches

Know Your Funder’s Mindset

Customise Your Pitch

Tips for Grant Pitches Know Your Funder’s Mindset Collaborating to accelerate social impact June 2022 For NGOs, the world of funders can be difficult to navigate. The question isn’t just whom to approach for a grant. Equally important is how to make a successful pitch for money. Funders approach their work with different mindsets and practices that fall into three distinct archetypes along a continuum of funding for NGOs’“true costs” – programmes, indirect costs, organisational development, and reserves. We believe NGOs stand abetter chance of securing the grants they need when they understand which funder archetype they are approaching and tailor their pitches accordingly. Know your funder Start by doing some homework. Which of the following archetypes most closely describes each of your current funders and those you would like to do business with? Programme Proponents They believe that programme funding produces the results they value most for their limited resources. Hence, they minimise other expenses. As we found in our 2022 research, Bridging the Gap on Funding the True Costs of NGOs in India, their grantees typically receive indirect-cost rates between 5 percent and 15 percent, and little or no support for organisational development. Adaptive Funders This segment adapts funding practices for select grantees to cover underfunded administrative and organisational expenses. They currently provide indirect-cost rates between 15 percent and 25 percent – with some flexibility to fund organisational development in select cases if an NGO makes a compelling case for impact. Organisation Builders 2 This segment values the importance of funding the administrative and organisational expenses of NGOs to maximise programme impact and support an NGO’s growth. They usually provide indirect-cost rates that can exceed 25 percent or are determined in conversation with NGO partners. They also invest in organisational development of grantees that need to function more effectively. Unfortunately, across all funder archetypes, only a small minority of funders currently contribute to an NGO’s financial reserves, or corpus. There is less data on what works here but tracking and communicating specific indicators of your financial resilience, such as number of months of reserves or size of operating surplus, may be a starting point to build a case for support. Customise your pitch Tailor your pitch to each of your funders’ archetypes – considering both what you ask for and how you ask for it. The tips below reflect advice and promising practices we heard from NGOs and funders. However, please feel free to further adapt this guidance to your individual context and needs, as it is not meant to be rigidly prescriptive. Programme Proponents Approach these funders primarily for programme support but seek allowable indirect and organisational development expenses as specified by the funder. Over time, make a case for how these costs support programme success and sustainability, and communicate what your true costs are. Tips for pitching Programme Proponents: • Highlight how indirect costs and investment in organisational development can improve the outcomes and sustainability of specific programmes. For example, communicate how investing in organisational culture and management can reduce employee attrition and improve the quality of constituent/community experience or other programmatic outcomes; or communicate how investment in technology can facilitate programme reach and future scale. • Share benchmarks and programme outcomes from peer funders who invested in indirect and organisational development costs. • Explore potential for nonfinancial organisational development support on a caseby-case basis. For example, corporate social responsibility (CSR) programmes could volunteer domain or function expertise to help with specific NGO organisational development needs. Adaptive Funders Approach these fund

FAQs

What are the three funder archetypes described for NGOs?

The guide groups funders into Programme Proponents, Adaptive Funders, and Organisation Builders along a continuum of funding for NGOs’ true costs, including programmes, indirect costs, organisational development, and reserves.

How should an NGO pitch to Programme Proponents?

It should primarily seek programme support while also requesting allowable indirect and organisational development expenses, then explain how these costs improve programme success and sustainability over time.

Why does the guide emphasize financial reserves when pitching for grants?

It notes that only a small minority of funders contribute to reserves, so NGOs should track and communicate indicators of financial resilience—such as months of reserves or operating surplus—to build a case for support.

Oct 15, 2026

Uploaded by Rhys