“There are so many grants out there I had no idea about”

How a climate charity cut application time from 5 days to 1 hour, learned to pitch for operational costs, and got the funding.

We sat down for a kōrero with Tori McNoe, a connector and strategist in the science and innovation sector, and a founder and trustee of climate and education charities. Here’s Tori, in her own words.

“Fundsorter showed us a bunch of funding opportunities and ways of writing grant applications that we’d never thought about before.”

My day to day mahi is with The Lighthouse, which is the research and commercialisation arm of the University of Auckland. I’m also in a lot of charitable spaces, like being on the board of Science Alive, which supports STEAM curriculums, as well as the Climate Foundation, which is mobilising a climate funding pool. I was also involved in founding a charitable trust called CoAotearoa, which grew out of the Auckland Climate Festival.

I first tried Fundsorter for CoAotearoa, at the recommendation of Foundation North, which encourages accessing funding from a broad range of sources and suggested Fundsorter as a way. I’d already been hearing about it from multiple different people, so I decided to give it a go. My first impression of Fundsorter was like a smack in the face: there are so many grants out there I had no idea about.

“My first impression of Fundsorter was like a smack in the face: there are so many grants out there I had no idea about.”

When getting started, the Centre for Social Impact gave us advice to go for “a little from a lot”, meaning try to get many small grants from many sources, since single large grants are rare in Aotearoa. Fundsorter made that feel possible.

Fundsorter onboarding was actually the first time we were ever asked about our organisation without shoehorning it into the requirements of a grant application. We weren’t fitting someone else’s criteria, just explaining who we are and what we do. It was really nice to step back and consider how to communicate our story that way.

Bonnie from the Fundsorter team wrote a very helpful article about how to pitch for operational funding, which enabled us to be successful with a COGS grant to fund someone’s time to write an impact report. That made a huge difference for us.

People’s time has always been the hardest thing to fund. We had to clearly articulate the operational funding context, which not many people understand how to do. With Fundsorter’s help, I was able to communicate why funding a person’s time was worthwhile and the tangible output that would come from it. 

We had never thought about grant funding that way before. I wish I’d read that help article earlier. Once I knew how to reframe the operational funding ask, it took me only 1 hour to write the grant, while previous applications had taken me up to 5 days. 

“Once I knew how to reframe the operational funding ask, it took me only 1 hour to write the grant, while previous applications had taken me up to 5 days.”

I used to avoid seeking grants for wages, almost trying to get around stating the worth of someone’s time. This meant I was inadvertently implying that the person’s time was not valuable. But the right person’s time is incredibly valuable! We needed to resource a specific person with a specific skillset. 

The other key was clearly stating timeframes and deliverables: between this date and this date, this specific output will occur. Previously, we hadn’t articulated that very well, because we didn’t want to overly predetermine the outcome. But I realised I could talk about our genuine intention to have the impact report out by a date, and what would happen for the community as a result.

We also used Fundsorter to apply for a council grant. We didn’t end up getting that one, but Fundsorter helped us explain our alignment without just regurgitating the fund’s criteria, or shoehorning ourselves in where we didn’t fit. It’s important to hold your own in applications, or you risk locking yourself into measuring something way out of your wheelhouse. 

Obviously, we need funding, but we can’t focus on something that isn’t meaningful to the people we serve. It’s easy to bend your outcomes too far just for the potential to get a grant. It snapped us out of this loop, which I hadn’t even known we were stuck in. As an inexperienced grantwriter, Fundsorter supported me to stay with our original intent, why we exist, rather than seeing an application first and trying to fit it. 

“Fundsorter supported me to stay with our original intent, why we exist, rather than seeing an application first and trying to fit it.”

There are real gaps in the funding system, where our community sees something but there are no grants available. Testing that on Fundsorter allowed us to think through whether we were chasing the wrong thing, or whether there were really no funds out there matching an important outcome that we care about.

We frequently recommend Fundsorter at The Lighthouse as well, where we’re exploring the role of philanthropic funding in the entrepreneurial innovation space. Young people may think “Oh it doesn’t fit a VC model; I shouldn’t do the thing”. We lose a lot of amazing value that way. Some people think VC is the only capital pool, but grants for innovation are an option too. My view of the future of funding is what I call “omnivorous”. Resilience means not being tied to only one type of capital. To find aligned funding, we tell founders to jump on Fundsorter, put in your goals, and see what it spits out. Besides Fundsorter, where can you go to figure that out?

You can tell the true value of a tool by noticing how often you recommend it. Fundsorter allows me to sit at the juncture of many things, be better informed, and see possibilities in a new way. I keep finding new use cases for it. A Fundsorter subscription is really worth it, because you don’t know what you don’t know.

“You can tell the true value of a tool by noticing how often you recommend it.”