#025 - Today I am speaking with Teresa Huff.  Teresa is a special ed teacher, turned stay at home mom, then turned grant writing guru.  She began her grant writing career working with a team of grant writers, writing big federal grants. She later branched out on her own, working with clients 1 on 1. When she realized she could help more people, she developed online courses.

“I really liked teaching others because I can only write so many grants and I can only be an expert in so many areas, but I can teach other people to do it. And then they can go out and create a much bigger ripple effect together. That's why I love doing this  - supporting other nonprofits so they can maximize their impact and teaching grant writers how to do this as well, and to be much more successful to shorten the distance from point A to point B.”

She has worked with over 2,100 students, helping many nonprofits triple their funding. Specifically, she:

• Works with nonprofits to strategically lay the groundwork for grant readiness;
• Trains and equips grant writers with the skills they need to be successful; and
• Connect the dots between the two so we can all maximize our impact.

She has a ton of free resources on her website - https://teresahuff.com/

The key takeaways from my discussion with Teresa are:

#1 BUILD RELATIONSHIP - You're not talking to dollar signs, you're not talking to money. You're talking to people and working with people.

#2 Funders want to see an established nonprofit and typically an established program that they can fund - they don’t want to be your first or last dollar.

#3 Be PATIENT - Grants can take a long time to write and it could take a long time to hear back.

#4 Start small with local foundations.

Check out Groupfinity.com for the show notes and links for this episode.