-: My name is Emily Kelson, and I am the grant writer
at Loaves and Fishes Minnesota.
So Loaves and Fishes is a nonprofit that serves
free and healthy meals to people here in Minnesota,
mainly in the twin cities, but some greater Minnesota areas
and we're looking to expand to even more sites.
So what I do is I write grants, I write the reports,
I keep and maintain relationships
with our contacts at the foundations,
and just try to kep all of that stuff organized.
A grant is money given by any number of
different types of organizations, and they're giving it
to usually a nonprofit to fulfill their mission.
In our case, it's to serve free healthy meals.
So people, we apply for funding
and hopefully they give us that funding
to fulfill our mission.
It is kind of a lengthy process.
Most of the time you have to start with a letter of intent
to the organization you're asking for funding from,
and then from there, they will let you know
if you are approved to apply for funding.
So after you submit whatever they need
for the application for your proposal, you wait,
if you get awarded the grant, there is often a report
that is also going to be due, usually within a year
of the grant being received.
Sometimes people have kind of an open enrollment period,
and so for several months,
they're getting a ton of applications
whenever people submit them and then at that day,
they will review all of them, however long that takes.
So kind of depending on people's process,
sometimes it can take eight, nine months to know
whether or not you receive the funding.
Some smaller organizations, or maybe people
you have a better connection with,
you will probably know a lot sooner.