32 SPRING 2020 MOVIEMAKER.COMAlysa Nahmias is a director and producer
whose films include the documentaries The
New Bauhaus and Unfinished Spaces. She is
also the founder of Ajna Films and co-author
of the Sundance Creative Distribution Case
Study on Unrest, an Emmy-nominated
documentary she produced that premiered at
the Sundance Film Festival in 2017 and is now
on Netflix. She wants readers to know that
while she has won several documentary grants
in her career, she has been rejected by many
more, because that’s how these odds work. Here
is what she’s learned in the process. —C.H.OMEONE TOLD
me something a long time ago that I’ve ad-
opted as a fundraising motto: “People don’t
give money to projects. They give money
to people with projects.” So, even if your
documentary idea is amazing, you need to
present yourself in your grant application
as somebody who is trustworthy, confident,
and capable of doing the project. If you think
about the projects that you’ve supported on
Kickstarter or Indiegogo—which are forms
of micro granting—they tend to be projects
where you believe in the people in addition
to their idea—you trust them, and you care
about what they’ll make.
A grant application is a deliverable—treat
it as such. Grant makers reviewing your
application are not necessarily going to be
forgiving of grammar and spelling errors. I’m
not saying that they throw out your applica-
tion if that happens, and they should take
into account whether English is your first
language, but you need to show that you
care, because you’re not just being assessed
on what you’re doing, but how you do it. You
never want to come across as somebody who
does things in a way that feels dashed off, un-
revised, or un-proofread. If your application
is like that, are you leaving room for grant
reviewers to question whether your work is
like that in general? You’re being entrustedTHIS
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with money that an organization—typically
a nonprofit—had to raise, and that they’re
liable to their supporters for. That’s a big re-
sponsibility for them, and they have to trust
the moviemakers they’re granting.
Do your homework on any organization
from which you are seeking a grant. If you’re
applying to Creative Capital, and you’ve done
your homework, you know that they want to
support artists and their long-term growth,
and they focus on projects that are at pivotal
moments in an artist’s career. So if your proj-
ect and you are at a pivotal moment in yourcareer, but that doesn’t get expressed in your
application, Creative Capital might think you
didn’t do your homework.WHEN TO APPLY
Each grant-making organization has its
own specific criteria, so you want to know
when your project is a fit for each one. For
example, Catapult Film Fund is a grant
maker in the doc space that specifically funds
development and the production of funding
reels for documentaries—so they want to see
your project early in the process. Other grant