Nonprofit Hub Radio
Whether starting a nonprofit or taking an existing cause to the next level, The Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast is about breaking down how nonprofits can grow. Each episode features an interview with a sector star with insight, stories, or ideas that can take your nonprofit from good to excellence. Join host Meghan Speer every week to make your good go further!
Nonprofit Hub Radio
Rethinking Grants: How Tech and Grit Are Changing Nonprofit Funding
The ground shifted under nonprofit fundraising, and we felt the jolt. Federal grants vanished, competition for private dollars surged, and small teams were suddenly racing against institutions with entire development departments. So we got practical: rebuild the grant pipeline, rethink risk, and double down on alignment over volume. Luke Keller—founder and CEO of Match Grant and board leader at Tekton—joins the podcast to share a candid playbook born from necessity: how to diversify revenue, target right-fit funders, and use data to spot warm signals that boost your odds.
If you’re just starting with grants—or rebuilding after a tough year—you’ll leave with concrete steps: get laser-specific on funding needs (capital, program, or general operating), map true peers and their funders, cultivate relationships before you ask, and measure outcomes so your story holds up. The theme that carries through it all is simple and hard: don’t chase every dollar, chase alignment. Subscribe for more practical strategies, share this with a nonprofit leader who needs a lift, and leave a quick review to help others find the show.
Get free nonprofit professional development resources, connections to cause work peers, and more at https://nonprofithub.org
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SPEAKER_01:Welcome back to the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Speer. Joined today by my friend Luke Keller, who's the founder and CEO of Match Grant. We're going to dig into that story and Match Grant itself. Super excited for all of Luke's insights on the podcast today. So, Luke, welcome in.
SPEAKER_02:Thanks, Megan. Excited to be here.
SPEAKER_01:Nice. So tell the audience a little bit about yourself and kind of your journey in the nonprofit sector that brought you to Match Grant.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Thank you for the question. Again, thanks for thanks for having me. So my my journey to launching Match Grant, I would say is not a typical one in terms of entrepreneurial, entrepreneurial story or venture. But I, my wife and I started a nonprofit called Tectonic Career Training about 13 years ago out of a necessity within the refugee community, uh just outside Atlanta where we live, in a community called Clarkston, which is the most diverse square mile in the US. We saw a need for training to help primarily age, you know, adults who have aged out of education around upward mobility. So there were refugees are 10 times as likely to be under or unemployed versus the average American. And so we saw a need to come in, and really the lowest hanging fruit were skilled jobs. So construction, things like welding and carpentry and electrical. Um, you know, we've we've tabooed that in the US in general. You know, there's there's a huge need. I think the statistic now is for every seven journeyman that are leaving the workforce, only one is filling their shoes. And so just based off supply and demand, if the demand the supply is going down, the demand is definitely going up, especially in in economies where things are going better. Yeah, um, that means wages are going up. And so we the the idea was if Americans are going to take these jobs, refugees are desperate, they're under under or unemployed, we can help upskill them and then get help them get these jobs. So that was what we did. We've pivoted a little bit over the years. We've developed the technology, we were doing a lot, a lot of coding classes. That's kind of stopped because of AI. And um, I started the organization, I hired people to run it. I am just, I guess you could call serially curious. I constantly am like, oh, I wonder if there's a uh a solution to this problem. And so I've started a couple of businesses, and so I was, I was maybe always too busy, too distracted to run TETON. So I always sat in like a board chair, more leadership role. And then my board came to me two years ago, two and a half years ago or so. No, sorry, three and a half years ago, and said, We need you to step in. The organization has basically been paused for the most part because of COVID. We've never really started programming back. Funding is at an all-time low. Could you step in and we're either going to shut it down or the founder is gonna step in and redirect the ship? And so I did that. Um, and at the time I shouldn't, I think it was taking on way too much. I had a one month-old um my daughter who's now three and a half, and uh, and I also had a full-time job in technology, and I also had another technology startup. So it's I was way too much. But when you're passionate about something, you know, you figure out how to make it work. And so, and then the stars aligned, weirdly enough, and then I got laid off from my tech job. So I got like six months of severance, and so I was able to step in and kind of do all the things again. And long story short, the the first thing I did when I stepped in was I immediately got a grant writer. So we subcontracted a grant writer out, and I started working with her on a daily basis. And I think within that first year, we like 20x'd our grants that we'd ever received before. We were able to get some government grants, which we were heavily reliant on, ended up being about three-fourths of our entire budget for up until January of this year. And um, and then January of this year, for lack of a better way to describe it, we got doged. We lost all those federal grants we become dependent on, and programming was just up and to the right, because we're going the right direction, and then we lost that funding. And I think the thing that a lot of people don't talk about, like if you if you're listening to this and you've been, if you were quote unquote doged, is the reality is that the comp the level of competition for grants, for private grants, is also significantly increased. So for example, last week was the first week in NPR's history that they were not, they were not supported by federal grants. I'm here in Atlanta and the CDC, you know, CDC has almost entirely been federal grants. And I've I've got friends that work over there in development, and they're telling me the same thing that they're now as organ at these institutional organizations are now going after the same grants, you know, that they're more reliant actually on the same grants than I am. So I'm a small nonprofit and I'm having to battle. I hate to use the word battle, but I'm having to go against, you know, these other organizations. And so what it's done though is I think it's made it so the level of competition has increased, meaning nonprofits, especially smaller nonprofits, have to be willing, ready, able to go after 10 times the amount of grants they did in the past. It doesn't mean that they're not going to win, you know, that it doesn't mean that they're not gonna win those. They have to be more creative, maybe more entrepreneurial or like sales, sales-minded, if that makes sense. Um and so after all that happened, I started looking into the existing software solutions, which are really good solutions. You know, instrumental is a great solution, candid, great solution. There's some of these other ones that I think are really good, but they're also very cost, they're very costly. And as a nonprofit, as a smaller nonprofit, we just we looked at that and we were like, well, the reality is, is to really use an instrumental to the full effect, that's gonna be half my week dedicated to using this the solution, or we have to have another$100,000 in the budget to pay for a development person. And neither of those were things that we could do. And so after uh a lot of kind of internal debates, I decided I was gonna try to try to build something myself. And so I built really the duct tape version, so to speak, of Mass Grant. And the idea for me was can I use the same access to these, you know, to available 990s, to available data out there to help my organization, help Tekton find the right grants, but only the most relevant grants that I should actually apply for. So I wanted to, you know, find more great opportunities, but also find the right ones, the the ones that were more aligned with what we do, who we are. And it worked. Weirdly enough, I I built it myself and I'm like, oh my goodness, like this is a really stellar solution. And I kind of felt a little guilty, like, okay, I need to I need to share this. Like, I can't build something that's good and then not share it. So we're so involved with the community here. You know, I'm I'm part of a number of groups if you're familiar with Praxis and some of these organizations. And so I reached out through my network and invited about 50 nonprofits to participate in a very closed beta. And I brought on a partner, he's a very seen seasoned software engineer, the best software engineer I've ever met, happened to be my cousin. And uh we worked with those 50 nonprofits for about four months on a weekly, sometimes daily basis to literally co-create the best solution possible, simultaneously the most affordable solution. Because in my research as well, what I realized is I and don't quote me on this, but I want to say it's like 75% of nonprofits in the US are less than$600,000 in annual budget. And I looked at and I heard that and I looked at that, and I'm like, okay, well, if the 30% rule applies here, you know, meaning that like, what is that, like$180,000, give or take. So a third of their budget could be administrative overhead and maybe some supporting, you know, software and whatnot. Well, to build a team around that, along with the software and development people, you know, spending$20,000, which is really where a lot of these other software solutions stood,$10,000 to$20,000 per year, is just out of the question. So when we when we launched the product, we did the co-creation, we built the best possible solution that we're continuing to make better and better. Um, it's basically just to give you the quick, it uses AI to match you based off of your funding needs with available opportunities. And then it gives you all the information needed to then go chase that grant and then also manage the grant. So, you know, in that process of like applying, getting the right documents, you know, understanding if they're a good fit for you, who else have they given to in the past. So that's one element of it. You can also search for peers so you can find, you know, all the potential peers that, you know, the like who's giving to them, you know, kind of even the playing field, which was kind of part of this idea, the idea of like the the reason that the top nonprofits continue to get so much funding. I mean, I was literally just meeting with an organization just before this, this, uh, this call. Like they they looking at their competitor, and their competitor has is getting literally$20 million a year. And and they're like, uh we provide so much better of a level of service and our our output so much better. They could use the platform to go in and basically copy paste their their competitor. I you hate to use their competitor, but their peers, uh, grant calendar as part of their grant calendar. And so, yeah, Megan is working. We've got about 60, maybe 65 users right now, give or take, from all around the world. I think that's the most fun thing for me is just being able to um, you know, work with organizations that are fighting human trafficking and helping refugees and helping with employment and homelessness. And, you know, we're working with an organization, organization on Texas that gives away a few million dollars every year around Christmas time and and gift cards and toys for low-income individuals. And that's just, you know, that's that's that's the stories we get to hear on a daily basis. And I don't think anything's nothing's been more exciting or fulfilling than to serve organizations doing the most important work. So that's that's kind of where we're at.
SPEAKER_01:Okay. Great. So I want to talk a little bit though about something that you mentioned in in that section there, and that is kind of the drive to and I think I think a lot of nonprofit leaders have this, right? Of like, I want to make it better, I want to make it more accessible, but I feel like we are, and I'm curious because you do have a tech background, right? I had Matt Lombardi was on a couple weeks ago on the podcast, and we were talking about some pieces from the tech world that maybe can apply to nonprofits that we've been really slow to adopt as a as an industry. And one of them I think is the idea of that entrepreneurial spirit, right? So nobody knows better what you need than you do, and you like, but I feel like sometimes we're so scared to fail. And that's something that struck me in your story is like, yeah, I had 17 things going on, but this was important and I wanted to give it a shot. I'm willing to wing it and duct tape version, if you will, and put it together. So talk to me a little bit about that piece of your story of like where did that ability to say, you know what, I'm just gonna try and see what happens? Kind of the fail-fast mentality, right? That tech startups tend to have, that nonprofits tend to not, but man, I wish that that's a piece we could adopt. How do we, how could we, or as nonprofit leaders, embrace that idea a little bit more? Tell me a little bit about what that journey was like for you.
SPEAKER_02:That's a great question. I don't think it's anything you like learn overnight. I don't think it's I don't think it's ingrained. I mean, maybe, maybe some of that is ingrained in you, but I I honestly think that most of that comes from being gritty, which the only way you can be gritty or build the muscle perseverance is to fail a lot. And maybe in my life I've failed a lot. Maybe I've tried a lot, and maybe that's like this one skill or fault, maybe even I have is I'm I'm willing to try, I'm willing to fail, I'm willing to embarrass myself. You know, for example, we with our nonprofit, we did a we tried and we we pulled it off an immersive experience. We built a refugee camp in a warehouse, and it was a huge labor of love. I mean, it was it was chaos, and we were able to pull it together like hours up until our launch event. And it did okay. But we, you know, ultimately, like it was a we tried it, you know. It was, I think most people aren't willing to just even just take that step of like, well, what if we do it and it doesn't work out? You know, I I I look at that and that specifically, and I'm like, I think it, I think it impacted a lot of people in a lot of people's empathy. I think it built some empathy for some people. We did raise a little bit of money around it. So that's just an example. I think that at the end of the day, it's being willing. And I actually I think Megan, where the biggest fear for people are, and I completely understand it, is that when you fail fast and break things in technology, the ramifications are maybe like, oh, you lose your investors some money. I mean, that that's a Mark Zuckerberg line. So, like, yeah, he probably lost a lot of money for investors, but I think ultimately if you bought meta and you held meta, you're doing pretty well. You know, like that's a good investment. I think failing, uh, moving fast and breaking things in the nonprofit world is really it could be really dangerous because that's the things you're breaking could be the people you're trying to serve. Sure. And so I think that there's this balance to it where it's like taking an entrepreneurial stance and doing things that are maybe innovative or different are a little outside of the norm. And I think that we get a little complacent, especially when you I mean, maybe in a weird way, Megan, the doge environment, the level of competition that's a right uh this rising is forcing nonprofit leaders and forcing these organizations to actually have to be more gritty, be more entrepreneurial, think a little bit differently. And and maybe in a weird way it's good. You know, maybe even the people we serve will benefit far greater because we're being pulled outside of our comfort zone, because of the like cushy, uh sustainable grants that were coming in, and these federal grants have gone away. It's kind of forcing us to have to, you know, do things differently, maybe better.
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SPEAKER_01:I guess I do wonder about that from a grant perspective, right? Is like, is now the time to be because we're going up against much larger institutions and it the competition is definitely ramping up. People are having to look at all sorts of different funding sources that they've never had to utilize before. And so I do wonder in that case, right, is it is now the time to be risky, I guess, or is now the time to just kind of play it safe and go with what works and stick to it. It's an interesting environment and not one that we've ever seen, at least that I've ever seen before. I've been in the industry for going on 25 years now. Um so I do wonder about that in terms of grants. But I also do, as I as we think about like the innovation side of it, I think this is a really good, it's a key time to step back and say, is what we're doing actually working? And I think that grant the grant process gives us a chance to kind of evaluate that in a different way than anything else that we do, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because you have to prove those outcomes. You have to be able to say, we did this program and here's what happened because of it. And I feel like sometimes we get stuck in this cycle of like, well, we're doing a little bit of good, and as long as we keep doing a little bit of good, it's fine.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Without being able to really prove, like, no, this is the impact our organization's having. And if you can't prove that, well, then maybe it is time for that program to go away. And that's always so hard.
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_01:That's so hard because we don't want to lose any programs, right? We don't want to lose any of the work that we're doing. Oh, but it's such a delicate balance, right? Yeah. So I think that this is like just as I'm watching it, I think this is such an interesting time in the nonprofit space as we look at kind of the effectiveness of programs alongside of it.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah. I I think to your your original thought or question, you know, like, is this the time to be risk, you know, be risky, so speak? I actually might argue that I think the riskier thing, and this is not a plug, by the way, for match grant. I I truly just, this is just unsolicited advice for your listeners, but I think the riskier thing to do is to not diversify your your revenue, you know, not diversify where you're receiving money from. You know, it's to stay the path of like, oh, well, like obviously you can't do that if you're receiving mostly government grants because those are basically gone and who knows when those are coming back. But I think if there's a lot of people I've talked to who are like, oh yeah, we're fine, you know, we got really solid individual donors. Well, guess what? You have one recession, one down, down economy. Yeah, you know, that's that's there goes a huge portion of what you thought you could rely on. And the organizations, I'm I've been fortunate, I've been blessed to meet with so many diverse organizations, with well, you know, anywhere from half a million to million, you know, tens of millions of dollars in annual budget. And the ones I see that are the strongest are that have the most sound, you know, like they got it together, happen to be the ones that have the most diverse level of income. You know, they're they're not they're not just solely focused on individuals, they're not just solely focused on grants. I think usually grants tends to be when those last ones organizations think like that it feels like a heavy lift. It feels like a burden. Oh, I've got to hire a grant writer, I've got to have a development person, or where do I even find the grants? And I get all that, but it I think actually once you get going, and I say this as the founder of Tekton, the person who's written grants, has found grants, is once you get rolling, it's actually not that scary. It's not that difficult. And it's actually one of the least risky things you can do because you know you're you're trading hours of your time, hours of research to find aligned grants, whether you're using a match grant, whether you're you're using a candid, or you're just googling it. You know, like they're out there, you just kind of have to know what to do and how to look look for those.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. I'm curious your take, as you've kind of obviously you've been spending a lot of time in the grant world as of late. I'm curious if there are organizations because I and I just talked to one maybe last week at at a conference that was talking about the fact that they've never done grant before. But they're because of some of the economic conditions of things as of late, they're seeing a decline in individual donors. So they're like, I think now's the time we want to start doing grants.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:This is that's a bold move of my like in my estimation, just start grant right now is like, wow, okay, great, good blessings on you. Um if someone in this environment is just starting to dip their toe into grant for the first time, what kind of outside of like, oh, just sign up for match grant and it'll help you do it, right? It's like, okay, fine, we'll we'll that's a given and we'll put it off to the side. But are there things that you would encourage them? I mean, my first piece of advice to them was like you get as niche as possible to in finding the ones that are right for you, right? As zeroed in as you can. Are there other pieces of wisdom like that that you would share for somebody who's kind of just dipping their toe into diversifying integrants?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, that's a great question. And I would say, like, first of all, maybe this would be both like scary and also maybe encouraging. It's not gonna happen overnight. I mean, it takes sometimes it takes years of cultivating the relationship with the foundation before they're like, okay, they've this is the third time applying. I guess we should give to them. The short answer is I think that, and and outside of using match grant, we the platform does all this, but like there are you could it's difficult, but you could do this yourself. So, number one is who's supporting your peers? Who are your peers? Number one, if you don't know your peers, I'm gonna use the word competition. It's probably not liked, but like I'm gonna use competition because we're all going after the same grants. So know your competition. If you don't know your competition, I can tell you match grants perspective, I know all of our competition. I know how much money they've raised, I know who they're focused on, who they're focused on winning, all of that. Because that's just what that's what I'm supposed to do. You and your your job, your role, you should do know the same thing. And if you know them well enough, you can actually start to find who's supported them. And there's ways of doing that. Match grant does make it really easy in that you can search for those those peers by name or by EIN and actually like see who's giving to them. But like you can do some digging to find out who's giving to them because the likelihood that if they're giving to your competition, if they have in the past, that they give to you is is pretty pretty significant. I don't know the data around it, but I'm I would say it raises your chances, probably like 75% chance of winning the grant if it's one they've already supported somebody in a similar uh industry, a similar field. And then, like you said, being hyper, hyper niche. So that's where it's like, okay, well, if and I didn't know this, development people know this, is that you can be very, very hyper niche, and meaning we need obviously to raise, we need a capital campaign. We got to get a new building, we gotta get a new piece of equipment, whatever it is. Or, you know, like if you're trying to support general operating or you know, unrestricted, like being hyper, hyper specific in your grant research. Again, shameless, unshameless plug for match grant. We also help them by like actually finding grants relevant to those specific funding needs. That's kind of what the platform does is use AI to do that. But I think like you've got to start to think a little bit you how can you find grants that are knit, are super niche to your industry, who you're serving. And that's gonna highly increase the chances of your ability to win because you know you're not you're not going after the very like easy grants that everybody else is chasing. Uh the last thing I will say, Megan, is the one the the found the nonprofits I see that tend to have the best balance and tend to be the most successful in terms of winning grants heavily are outweighed by unsolicitation grants or not non-solicitation grants. So they have figured out a way to network themselves into these small, they're usually smaller family foundations. They there's sometimes most of the time there's no websites. And it that's a hard one, but it is feasible and it's it's possible. And especially if you're using a tool like a match grant where you can find those foundations because there's you know they'll show up on your peers as ones they receive money from. But just in general, like just Google it, like find the foundations. There are other resources resources out there to find these foundations that are hyper niche to your maybe geography or your industry and approach them, find them on LinkedIn. I mean, you've got to think like a salesperson in a weird way. It's like find the people running the foundations on LinkedIn. You know, don't overly sell. Don't go into it like, hey, here's what we do. Can you support me? It's like, hey, we I want to get to know you. You know, I you supported, you support organizations in our community. I've seen, you know, I've seen that before. Can I get to know you? Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Can you know, can we meet for lunch in the community and you can see a little bit of our work? You know, I think there's, you know, you don't want to overly sell that. This is actually, this line is more specifically to fundraising around like for-profits raising capital, but I think it is so relevant for nonprofits. And it's ask for money and they'll give you advice, ask for advice and they'll give you money. And I think it's so true for nonprofits too, because if you're going into it genuinely not to sell, but like, hey, I you're you're brilliant, you're a business person, you're connected. I just need you to help speak into the work I'm doing. And if you can, if you can genuinely spark up that relationship and ask for their advice, um, I think it's the book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Like, nothing's sweeter than someone's own voice or being praised. And if you go into it like, hey, you're a really dynamic business person, and I think I want to learn from you, they're probably gonna be so flattered by you asking the right questions and getting to know them that like a check might just show up. And I've literally had that happen before.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. No, I think that's great advice. I one of the statements I make regularly on this podcast, I'm sure people are tired of hearing it, is that nonprofit is just a tax status. You still have to think like a business. And so when it comes to especially to those relationships, I think everyone likes to kind of wrinkle their nose when we talk about, oh, it's sales. I don't want to do sales. Well, you're not doing sales, but you do have to take the same practices of cultivating relationships and building those connections and kind of building your network of people that someone who is in sales would do. And there's nothing bad about that. There's nothing wrong about you know, borrowing from that philosophy because that is what works. And it works for a reason. Absolutely.
SPEAKER_02:I think, and on that point, I Megan, on that point, I love following you on LinkedIn, and I think that your listeners can like like look at Megan's LinkedIn and see what she's posting because I think what you do and like you're providing value, not selling people, and that inadvertently is pushing people to y'all's organization and to the podcast and all the other work you're doing. And I think that that's a that's a growth hack, that's a strategy. I see, I mean, I saw this when I was in the tech industry. I mean, these these companies literally would incentivize their salespeople to post and they would do these unique posts. It was very interesting. I think this could be something helpful for your listeners. Like, for example, let's say I'm trying to sell, I don't know, a technology product to Whataburger. Uh, we don't, I think we have like one of one Whataburger in Atlanta. I literally used the strategy, that's why it came to mind. Um, I was trying to sell a big contract to them. So I brought my daughter, who is I don't know, a couple years old at the time, to Whataburger. We drove like an hour away to the Whataburger, and I ordered a meal and I ordered her a meal, and we snagged a picture, a selfie, in front of it, and like come up with you know, some sort of like cheesy line, silly line about like coming to Whataburger or whatever, and we posted it on LinkedIn and it went crazy viral. I mean, like half the like I had like 200 likes and half of them were employees of Whataburger. I did the same thing at Chick-fil-A. I was trying to sell Chick-fil-A contract in this old tech job I had. So I think like that's that's an obviously like example, like hyper niche example, but I think that example, like what you're doing, what I try to do on LinkedIn as well, is just offer value, not overly selling people. Yes. Um, especially if you're doing, and I'm sure your listeners are doing really good work, and you can offer base basic like yeah, value in some capacity that then will get them interested, you know, get them maybe following you, and then eventually you kind of you can kind of drop some lines around like giving Tuesday or whatever it is.
SPEAKER_01:So yeah, no, I love that. Okay, so we're almost at time, but I want to kind of close out here with the same question that I've been asking everybody this season. And that is if you could give one piece of advice or wisdom or encouragement to nonprofit leaders right now. Obviously firsthand that they've had a tough year with uh especially if they have been grant reliant. Um so if you could give one piece of advice or wisdom or encouragement to nonprofit leaders, what would that be?
SPEAKER_02:It's a great question. I would say it's easy to feel like chasing every dollar is worth your time. It and it's I'm not saying it's easy, it's still hard work. I think the harder thing to do and the smarter thing to do is to chase alignment uh with the right funders, um, the right don, right individual donors, the right the foundations, the right grantors. And that's easier said than done. Again, shameless plug, that's what Matt Church does, is it helps you find the right aligned foundations and not individual donors, but foundations and grant grantors. But you know, I think that goes across the board. I think that you know, you finding like let me let me give you an exact example. And this is this is one that maybe will encourage people, maybe leave a sour taste in their mouth about us. But uh we were out of money uh earlier this year. I mean, we were we were dead broke. I did I couldn't cover payroll. I didn't know what we were gonna do. We had tons of programming planned, we were expanding internationally, we were really excited, but we had we ran on money and we applied for a grant. I did a ton of research on the specific grants. It was a pre-match grant, and um and it was a perfect, we were perfectly aligned. We got a grant by them, and I worked really hard cultivating that relationship. It was actually a foundation of a larger bank, larger institutional foundation, which is not one of those places that a lot of people look, you know, like thinking about the larger for-profit companies that have these foundations, I think are really solid opportunities. Um, because oftentimes they're run by volunteers in the company. So these are not like like like paid, and they're not employees paid by the foundation, they're paid by the company and they're like giving out of their own compassion to nonprofits, right? And so, anyways, like we get the grant, we're all excited, it saves us. Well, fast forward, you know, six months later, we're still in a bad spot. Match grant has helped us find, you know, like$300,000,$400,000 in grants that we're waiting on. We've gotten word on quite a few of them that all yeses, but we still have to cover some income. And out of the blue, that same woman, that woman that had granted us that original amount, calls me and is like, hey, we have money left over. Do you guys need any? And just randomly another giant chip shows up. And it was just absurd. But I say that because that was not like months or, you know, that wasn't days or weeks or months. It was like a couple years of cultivating that relationship. And so I think like, again, not chasing every dollar, but chasing alignment. And I think alignment is the harder thing, but once you can find it, you just lean heavily, heavily into it. And those organizations, you know, like when you're when you're, for example, if like in her job, she's like an accountant at this larger corporation. In a weird way, if she's volunteering and she's giving her time to that foundation, she's like kind of like like she lives for being able to help organizations like Tecton. Like that's what excites her about her job.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And so if you can find those right people, lean in those relationships. I don't know if that's helpful or not, but I would again I summarize that by saying, don't chase every dollar, chase alignment. That would be my end. I love it.
SPEAKER_01:It's a good one. Uh Luke, thanks so much for all of your wisdom. We really appreciate you joining us today. And uh thanks so much for being a good match grant is certainly a nonprofit hub partner, so we're excited about that partnership. Uh, thanks for being here today.
SPEAKER_02:It's my pleasure, Megan. Thanks for having me.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah. This has been another episode of the Nonprofit Hub Radio Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Spear, and we'll see you next time.