Lynchburg-based Grant Writers of Virginia in business to help area nonprofits

By Bryan Gentry

Published: August 17, 2008

One key to non-profit success is a mission that is backed with passion.

But another key for nonprofits is cash, which is not always as easy to come by.

“It’s an ongoing struggle for any nonprofit,” said Joyce Sachs, executive director of Crisis Line of Central Virginia.

To provide free hotlines for abuse victims and others who need help, her organization relies on donations. “We’re always looking for some new funding,” she said.

T Shirts Plus of Lynchburg, a nonprofit that teaches job skills to people with developmental disabilities, runs into the same thing.

Executive Director Pete Parziale said T Shirts Plus needs more money to pay for training. “We are a small staff. We don’t have the ability to hire our own grant writer at this time.”

A small Lynchburg-based business is trying to fill the void.

Grant Writers of Virginia is a freelance network of grant writers and other consultants for nonprofits.

A for-profit business, it provides services that help people organize, start and fund a nonprofit.

Fred Agey, co-owner, said the goal is not just a “startup” grant, but to get a nonprofit on its feet so it can last.

Agey established the company four years ago when he lived in Northern Virginia. He faced a battle with cancer, which caused him to consider how he was spending his life.

“When you go through something like that your perspective on life and others change,” said Agey. He started looking for how he could “give back” to life.

While recovering, Agey began taking writing classes at a community college, including a grant writing class.

That’s when it hit him that nonprofits needed help finding grants and other sources of money, and that he could provide it.

“I have a skill, a knack for research,” he said. “That could be my contribution.”

About a year after starting the business, Agey moved to Lynchburg. He met Wally Sabin and Rob Jarvis, who joined his business.

Both Sabin and Jarvis formerly worked for the Lynchburg Area Center for Independent Living, a nonprofit which Agey helped find a grant, Jarvis said.

Sabin has many years of experience in nonprofit work, and occasionally teaches grant writing workshops.

Agey said there are now seven consultants in Grant Writers’ network. Each one has an area of expertise which Agey tries to match up with nonprofit clients.

“I don’t have all the answers. I don’t have all the skills,” Agey said. “I say they don’t work for me, they work with me.”

Grant Writers of Virginia provides training to build leadership and the organization.

Agey said most grant applications want nonprofits to be sustainable when the grant is gone. “You can’t run a nonprofit on grants alone.

He said the nonprofit world is getting more and more competitive. In 2007 the Internal Revenue Service received 75,000 applications for nonprofit status and granted 65,000 of them.

Sabin said that to compete, nonprofits need a sustainable, business-like approach.

“Nonprofits are tax exempt because of their mission. Everything else is the same. They still have to figure out, ‘How am I going to afford my fax machine?’”

Agey said that nonprofit organizations are allowed to make a profit to sustain their mission. Many of them sell goods and services to raise money.

T Shirts Plus of Lynchburg is an example. It makes silkscreened T-shirts and other promotional items for businesses and churches in the Lynchburg area.

T Shirt Plus is one of Grant Writers of Virginia’s current clients. Parziale said they are trying to start a program in which companies can sponsor people for job training.

“They are constantly on the lookout for things that are available out there,” Parziale said.

Looking back, Agey said he feels like Grant Writers of Virginia found him, more than the other way around. He also said he can’t imagine doing anything else with his life right now.

“I can’t feed the homeless or teach kids to read, but I can do the next best thing,” Agey said. “That is to help those (for whom) that is their calling.”