About us

NONPROFIT STATISTICS

• There are more than 1.7 Million nonprofit organizations in the United States in 2023. (Network Depot, 2023).

• Only 50% of nonprofits are considered "successful" (meaning they are maintaining funding, expanding services, and securing partnerships in the community), of the remaining organizations 20% will scrape by and 30% will close their doors in ten years or less (Network Depot, 2023). 

• The nonprofit sector is the third-largest employer in the United States (Ensor, 2023)

• In Virginia, Capacity Building, Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI), Collaboration, and Evaluation were listed in 2023 as the biggest needs among nonprofits in the state (Virginia Nonprofit Sector Report, 2023).

OUR STORY

I will never forget my first week as a program manager when my new boss told me that I would be expected to write grants. Images of my old boss in the conference room, papers spread everywhere, and a “Do Not Disturb, WORKING ON GRANTS!” sign posted on the door clouded my vision. I could hear the voices of every executive director I had ever known, their voices filled with frustration saying, “Because it’s required by the grant.” Panic instantly filled every ounce of my being. Write grants? ME?  

I was scared. Scared of the process, scared of the responsibility, and scared to tell any of this to my new boss. After all, grants are the lifeblood of nonprofits. Without it, many would either close or drastically reduce their services. I REALLY didn’t want to be responsible for anyone losing their job. So, I did what anyone who just started a new job would do, I smiled and said, “Yeah of course!” and then I fell into a wormhole of websites, books, and workshops about grant writing. Some were helpful, but a lot were not. Regardless, I just kept absorbing all the information I could to learn how to do it.  

Eventually, I got pretty good at grant writing. I started looking at each grant as a new little monster that I needed to learn how to make happy. Once I learned their language, figured out what they liked, and how to avoid making them grumpy, a lot of the grants I applied for were funded. I decided to teach other people how to learn how to make the grant monsters happy by simplifying the process and making it easy to understand, thus Little Monster’s Grant Writing Academy was born.