I wouldn’t translate “organization isn’t currently holding a funding round” into “dead end.” Yes, it does mean you can’t get money right now, but grants are (afaict) almost always a fairly involved process that takes awhile to pay out. The way to get money via grants involves multiple-month-long time horizons even in the best of circumstances.
I think each of the organizations involved has done at least one funding round per year and often multiple ones, which means your time horizon is something like 6-9 months instead of 1-6 months (i.e. the way it’d be if you’d lucked into asking this question right as a funding round was underway)
So I’d say the “not currently in a funding round” organizations should be translating into a next action of “making sure you’ll be notified when the next round opens. Possibly send a 1-3 sentence email to them sooner to check if the general scope of your work is something they’re interested in.” (Which they might or might not reply to)
My time horizon is about 6 months. I could probably extend that by a few months but that would involve (tolerable but noticeable) sacrifices. So the difference between 1-6 months and 6-9 is meaningful to me, though not completely dispositive.
Thanks for writing this up!
I wouldn’t translate “organization isn’t currently holding a funding round” into “dead end.” Yes, it does mean you can’t get money right now, but grants are (afaict) almost always a fairly involved process that takes awhile to pay out. The way to get money via grants involves multiple-month-long time horizons even in the best of circumstances.
I think each of the organizations involved has done at least one funding round per year and often multiple ones, which means your time horizon is something like 6-9 months instead of 1-6 months (i.e. the way it’d be if you’d lucked into asking this question right as a funding round was underway)
So I’d say the “not currently in a funding round” organizations should be translating into a next action of “making sure you’ll be notified when the next round opens. Possibly send a 1-3 sentence email to them sooner to check if the general scope of your work is something they’re interested in.” (Which they might or might not reply to)
If it is the case that you need money now to get started, I think that sort of circumstance almost always requires you to either:
Directly solicit money from people who already know you
have networked your way into an institution that gives you some freedom to spend time thinking.
Pitch your ideas in an immediately-accessible crowd-fund-y way.
This does suck, but any improvements on that status quo would be fairly difficult
My time horizon is about 6 months. I could probably extend that by a few months but that would involve (tolerable but noticeable) sacrifices. So the difference between 1-6 months and 6-9 is meaningful to me, though not completely dispositive.