From Frustrated to Funded: How Tia Jenkins Won $15,000 Using the Grant Ready Framework
Guest: Tia Jenkins, former Executive Director, Mary Parker Foundation (Southwest Atlanta, GA) Episode Summary: Tia's organization operated for 15 years with zero grant funding. After cycling through grant writers who overpromised and underdelivered. She picked up Grant Ready out of frustration, discovered her organization wasn't actually grant-ready (despite having a website, a 501c3, and a mission statement), and used the book's framework to prep her org from the ground up. When a same-day grant opportunity landed in her inbox at 4:30 pm with a midnight deadline, she wrote the full application with the book open beside her and won $15,000 from the Urban League of Atlanta's Youth Development Grant.
In This Episode:
- Why years of hiring grant writers didn't produce results
- The moment Tia realized her org wasn't actually grant-ready
- What "grant ready" really means beyond a website and a 501c3
- How she used the book to write a full application in under 8 hours, same-day deadline
- Her take on ROI: $20 book → $15,000 grant
Links & Resources:
- Grant Ready: A Nonprofit Leader's Guide to Becoming Fundable Before You Apply → clarity2cap.com
- Clarity to Capital Framework → clarity2cap.com