Welcome. I'm glad you're here. 👋 I'm Edward Gibbons, Founder and CEO of the Caregiver Coalition Fund of America (CareCFA), a 501(c)(3). I built this academy for start-up and small nonprofits, and it now also serves businesses and other for-profits that write grant proposals or prospectuses. All of them need to show funders real capacity, even with a short track record. Here's the idea behind everything we do: set the table, then write. 🍽️ Most proposals don't fail because of the writing. They fail because the mission, systems, policies, budget and compliance behind them aren't in place yet. Here, you build those first. Please take five minutes to read this post. It will save you time later. 𝐈. 𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐚𝐜𝐚𝐝𝐞𝐦𝐲 𝐢𝐬 𝐥𝐚𝐢𝐝 𝐨𝐮𝐭 * Classroom. This is where the 10 courses live. Every lesson ends with a Start-Up Nonprofit Take- Away (Courses 1 to 9 also carry a For-Profit Take-Away for business members), and most modules end with a task that helps you build a real document. * Community. This is the feed. Ask questions, post your take-aways and share your wins. Please use the categories so others can find things. * Calendar. Live calls, including the monthly Grant Clinic & Q&A, are listed here. Click the event and add it to your own calendar. The 10 courses, in order: 1. Introduction to the Academy 2. Mission, Vision and Pillars of Excellence 3. Work Systems 4. Policies Sit On Systems 5. Procedures Sit On Policies 6. Systems, Assessment and Budget 7. Compliance As Ordinary Practice 8. Capstone: Infrastructure Map 9. Epilogue: The Art of Grantsmanship 10. Grants & Prospectuses for Businesses Each course builds on the one before it. I suggest you take them in order. Business members: take Course 1 first, then Course 10, and use Courses 2 to 9 as your systems need them. 𝐈𝐈. 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐂𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐬𝐞 𝟏 (𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐥𝐥𝐲) ✅ Even if you've written grants before, please begin with Course 1: Introduction to the Academy. It explains the method we use in every other course, including:

Start-up organizations that seek grant funding face a distinct set of conditions: limited operating history, constrained resources, evolving evidence of capacity or innovation, and the need to demonstrate measurable outcomes with instruments that may be designed primarily for more established entities. The Art of Grantsmanship Academy courses address these conditions by treating the pursuit of grants as an exercise in grantsmanship rather than as an exercise in workmanship alone. Grantsmanship is the disciplined preparation of the venture so that a reviewer can recognize a fundable case. It encompasses the refinement of an operational mission, the deliberate linkage of operational, outcomes-assessment, and budgetary cycles, the selection of opportunities that match current stage and realistic evidence, the anticipation of reviewer questions, and the assembly of consistent, verifiable support for what is proposed. Workmanship, by contrast, concerns the quality of execution visible in the finished document—clarity of language, coherence of presentation, and the craft with which arguments are expressed. Competent workmanship is necessary, yet it cannot compensate for the absence of the readiness, alignment, and evidence that grantsmanship supplies. A carefully worded proposal that lacks internal logic, stage-appropriate evidence, or demonstrated capacity remains difficult for a reviewer to fund. The courses therefore place grantsmanship tasks in primary sequence. Participants first establish the foundational elements that make funding possible, then apply those elements to opportunity screening, question anticipation, and proposal construction. Only after the substance is fixed do refinements of expression occur. In this order, the resulting materials serve start-up organizations by converting limited history into a structured, reusable case rather than by polishing language around an unprepared request. The outcome is work a reviewer can evaluate on its merits and, where alignment is sound, can fund.

This community is a standing academy of the Caregiver Coalition Fund of America, Inc., a 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit in Melville, New York. The work is grantsmanship: mission with operational meaning, pillars of excellence, linked operational–assessment–budgetary cycles, documented work systems, compliance as a condition of fundability, and only then the writing. No module promises that a grant will be awarded. The promise is readiness and a method. Where to begin 1. Read these rules. 2. Post your introduction in Introductions: name the organization, state whether it is a 501(c)(3), and name the single most urgent table-setting gap. That post is Level 1. 3. Open Course I, Module 1. 4. Place the next Office Hours on your calendar (Office Hours and Events). House rules 1. Tone. Exact, unhurried, and unwilling to confuse activity with readiness. Critique the work, not the person. 2. Confidentiality. Drafts, excerpts, reviewer comments, and organizational details shared here are confidential. Do not copy them outside this community. Do not identify another member’s organization in a public forum. A breach is grounds for removal. 3. No unsolicited paid writing. Do not offer grant-writing or consulting services in the feed or in direct messages unless you first disclose that you sell those services and the member has asked. This applies to nonprofit and business members alike. This is an academy, not a marketplace. 4. No investment offers. Don't post offering terms, promote a securities offering or ask for investors in the feed, comments or DMs. We study prospectuses and offering memoranda as course material only. Nothing here is legal or securities advice; talk with qualified securities counsel before any offering. 5. Peer review is structured. In Peer Review, post no more than two pages (need statement or logic model), state the question you want answered, and receive comment in kind. Do not drop a full proposal into the feed. 6. Wins are redacted unless permission is given. In Wins, you may report an award, a site visit, or a lesson from reviewer comments. Do not publish another organization’s name or a living proposal without written permission. 7. The CareCFA room. Family Caregivers & Nonprofits is the charitable anchor of this house. It is not a substitute for Setting the Table or Peer Review. 8. Membership fees. Paid access is received as a donation to CareCFA (EIN 82-5456471). Gallery members are welcome in the open rooms; classroom and live seats follow the published tiers. 9. The host. Questions of method belong in Office Hours or the appropriate working room. Direct messages are not a private grant-writing service.