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Last week I attended a free webinar titled Proposal Writing Basics. The webinar was given by The Foundation Center, which is an organization that helps grantseekers, grantmakers, policy makers, researchers, and the general public in their mission to serve as non-profit organizations. I found the webinar helpful, insightful, and beneficial to my own future plans to begin a non-profit organization. The course was free and there were several more dates mentioned during the webinar, which allowed for additional training regarding proposal writing such as start up issues and budgeting. The dates for the free webinars were December 9, 11, 14, & 15th.

The webinar was approximately 1 hour long, easy to join, and best of all free. For more in-depth trainings, there is a fee. There are also classroom trainings listed on the website along with resources for grantseekers. The webinar “gets your feet wet” in the sense that you will know what kind of work, research, drive, and motivation you truly need to pursue funding for a nonprofit. If you are considering starting a nonprofit organization you should make their sight amongst your top picks. I have signed up for several additional webinars regarding nonprofit management and budgeting.

In addition to the free webinars the Foundation Center hosts, there are also free online training courses in many of the budgeting, planning, and basics of proposal and grant writing. My webinar on proposal writing basics covered the steps involved in such an undertaking, gave a wealth of information, and provided a basic overview of the planning, research, writing, and communication necessary in writing proposals.

Their headquarters is in New York and four field offices are located in Atlanta, Cleveland, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. A number of libraries and non-profit information centers are listed under the cooperating collections link. There is a Regional Association of Grant Makers and in my case it’s the Southeastern Council of Foundations, which have their own additional trainings online also.

One additional note regarding the Foundation Center is that they also offer an online training course (free) titled “Finding Foundation Support for Your Education”. I have enrolled in this course because of my status as a graduate student planning to pursue a doctoral degree. According to this course so far in 2006-2007 student aid was over 97.1 billion dollars from which 70% came from government (state and federal) funding (Foundation Center.org- Training course: Finding Foundation Support for Your Education).

If you are ready to get started on proposal writing, grantseeking, budgeting regarding the same begin with the Foundation Center.org. I have found a wealth of information.

http://www.secf.org- The Southeastern Council of Foundations