The Well

You spend all week pouring out. Here is where you get filled back up.

Everything here is free and open to anyone doing this work: staff, boards, volunteers. No membership, no pitch attached.

Downloads

Four things you can use on Monday.

Short, specific, and written for somebody with twenty minutes. The first three arrive as one email, the fourth needs no email at all, and nothing in here is a teaser for something we sell.

PDF · 1 page

The Google Ad Grant checklist

Every eligibility rule in plain language, and the two things that quietly disqualify most applicants.

Send it to me →

PDF · 2 pages

What your funder actually wants

What to start collecting, what to stop, and the five numbers that show up in almost every report.

Send it to me →

PDF · 1 page

The one sentence your board should be able to say

A worksheet for writing it, and three real examples from organizations about your size.

Send it to me →

PDF · 2 pages · no email needed

Find your number

All eight steps of our method with room to write, the worked example, and the five rules we hold every number to.

Open it →

Short reads

One idea, and one thing to do about it.

Written against the five things we hear most: a plan nobody has opened, a county that does not know you, data a funder will not care about, people nobody has had time to train, and funding from too few places. Three minutes each, and each one ends in something you can actually do.

3 min read · Clarity and Proof · Stephanie McGuire

Knowing your community and proving your work are the same job

Most organizations run them as two projects with two budgets. They are one discipline, and running them apart is why both come out weak.

Read it →

3 min read · Clarity · Angie Porow

Your ZIP code is probably two towns

One number for a whole community describes almost nobody who lives in it. What happens when you look twice at the same place.

Read it →

3 min read · Confidence · Richard Moses

Why the plan nobody opens was never really a plan

It was written for the funder who asked for one. Here is the ten-minute test that tells you whether yours is doing any work.

Read it →

3 min read · Reach · Angie Porow

It is usually the front door, not the message

Before you rewrite your messaging, check the boring things. Most organizations that feel invisible have a findability problem.

Read it →

3 min read · Proof · Marc Porow

One number isn’t the story

Outputs tell a funder you were busy. Change tells her it worked. How to swap one for the other without a new data system.

Read it →

3 min read · Capacity · Stephanie McGuire

Everything important lives in one person’s head

You can name her right now. That is the risk, and it is fixable in two afternoons without anybody admitting anything.

Read it →

Open house

Bring one thing that is stuck.

A free session once a month, on video. No pitch and no deck. You bring one problem, we work it in front of everyone, and everybody learns from the ones they did not bring.

●Second Wednesday of the month, 12:00pm Eastern
●Forty-five minutes, on video, free
●Capped at twelve, so everyone gets a turn
●Hosted by Stephanie McGuire, Angie Porow or Richard Moses

What you leave with

One next step for the thing you brought, and the name of whoever owns it.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.

One email, two things

Where should we send it?

Pick what you want. We will not add you to anything you did not check, and one click gets you out of all of it.

Thank you! Your submission has been received!

Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.