[In June 2025, Deborah Maini, featured in this post, left her position as DVSN’s Community Engagement & Philanthropy Specialist. Her tasks will be taken up by select staff and Board members, including the other two contributors to this post, to ensure the important work of this role continues as described here.]
Domestic Violence Services Network, Inc. (DVSN) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. We are able to provide vital services to our clients due to the generosity of our community, both in the numerous dedicated hours of service given by our volunteers and in the continuing financial support of our donors. DVSN is run primarily on grants and donations by a small staff dwarfed by a cadre of community volunteers. A lot of people may not realize what it takes to run a nonprofit organization like DVSN and how things work to keep our crucial and empowering programs and services operational and free of charge to our clients. In this blog post, we’ll pull back the curtain a little bit and take readers inside the world of nonprofit funding with a primer of basics and some specifics of how DVSN navigates this domain. The three DVSN staff members who are most involved in our funding recently sat down for a discussion on our approach to funding, challenges we’ve encountered, the value of our unique partnerships, our focus on community engagement, and how we are evolving in this sphere to sustain our future. Some of the informed insights and distinctive explanations they shared at that discussion are quoted throughout this post to better illuminate DVSN’s experience and perspective.
The Basics of Nonprofit Funding
There are various ways nonprofits get funded, often cobbled together from different styles of funding and multiple sources. DVSN is funded by a mix of assorted grants and donations. Let’s start off by clarifying a few relevant terms and elucidating the process of how our main funding sources work and our experience with them.
What Does 501(c)(3) Mean?
501(c)(3) is a legal tax-exempt designation of the United States Internal Revenue Code. 501(c)(3)s are commonly referred to as “charitable organizations” and must not be operated for the benefit of private interests. In other words, the net earnings of the organization may not benefit any private shareholder or individual. Organizations must apply for this designation and be approved by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Those that meet the requirements and are granted 501(c)(3) status are exempt from federal income taxes and are eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions. This means DVSN does not pay federal income taxes on the grants and donations it receives and that those who donate to DVSN can deduct said donation on their taxes, helping to ensure that all charitable giving directly benefits the nonprofit’s important work and providing an incentive for donors to support that work.
Grants vs. Donations
Grants and donations are similar concepts with some key differences. What we refer to as “donations” are sums of money that an individual, a family, a business, or an organization gives to DVSN in support of our work. Donations may be anonymous or acknowledged, large or small, one-time or recurring. Making a donation is as simple as filling out our secure online donation form, mailing a check to our PO Box, or contributing at one of our fundraising events.
“Grants”, on the other hand, are often given by an organization, business, bank, church, foundation, or government. They are akin to donations in that they are sums of money given to DVSN to help fund our work. Unlike most donations, however, grants typically require DVSN to apply and be chosen to receive the grant over other applicants. “There are hoops you have to jump through to try to get the grant, which are more cumbersome and complex than they used to be,” explains DVSN’s Director of Technology & Operations, Jessica Apsler, “Then if you do get the grant, more often than not there are all sorts of reporting requirements and terms and conditions for accepting and managing it. And requirements are even more complicated if it’s any type of government funding, whether it’s local, state, or federal. Then there is quite a lot of extra work that goes into just keeping the grant.” So, while grants tend to be more substantial amounts than our average donation, they also require a lot of time and effort to obtain and maintain.
DVSN’s budget is currently around 35% donations and 65% grants. These percentages have shifted slightly toward more donations and fewer grants in recent years, and we are working to continue that trend going forward.
How Do Grants Work?
There are many different types of grants, each with different application and reporting requirements. Grant applications often have very specific questions that ask for detailed information about DVSN, our trainings, services, the particular focus this grant will fund, DVSN’s overall budget, what percentage of our clients come from the grantor’s community, client demographics, the percentage of DVSN’s full budget that goes toward the cost of services to those clients, among other queries and data. They typically entail a mix of statistics and more descriptive writing, the balancing of which is a particular skill. At DVSN, the vast majority of our grant applications are currently written, mostly on her own time, by our Executive Director (ED), Jacquelin Apsler, with assistance from other staff in providing and/or compiling data. Talking about writing grants, Jacquelin explains, “I’ve learned writing grants is a special art, especially for the kind of grants we have to deal with. I’d never written grants before I took over this job. I just had to learn all their intricacies. And, especially because DVSN is so unique in many ways, knowing our agency exceptionally well is crucial to writing strong grants.”
Not only is grant writing a specific skill requiring specialized knowledge of the organization, but the application questions for each grant are unique and must be individually considered. As Jacquelin continues to elucidate, “Some people think, ‘Oh, you wrote that grant once? It’s boilerplate next time.’ Or, ‘You wrote about that topic on that grant, you can do almost the same for this one.’ Not really. Even if you have the same form from one year to the next with the same grantor, your statistics are different. There are different things that you may be focusing on. What has changed? What’s different? So, nothing is ever boilerplate. It still takes me hours to write each grant.” Grant applications are also becoming more complex and sometimes require additional steps in order to even be considered. “More and more now,” Jessica describes, “You apply and maybe they also want to discuss it with you or have a site visit. Some grants even ask for letters of interest. So, before you even can write the grant and apply for the grant, you have to make a case for why you should be given a chance to try to get the grant.”
If DVSN is fortunate enough to be chosen to receive a certain grant we’ve applied for, there are often a bevy of reporting requirements that are necessary to keep the grant. According to Jacquelin, “There’s a tremendous amount of scrutiny on how grant money is spent or allocated. I wish there was more scrutiny like that in other places, but it’s really time consuming getting the grant and managing the grant. And, there’s no guarantee you’re going to get it the next year. Sometimes you have grants [that] are going to be quote ‘four-year grants’, but they’re really not four-year grants automatically. After each year you have to write a tremendous amount again. You go through the same kind of hoops you did for the original. The good news is you’re not fighting against outside people, it’s only those who already have the grants who can apply again for each of the four years, but you can still screw it up and not get it somehow. There are other grants that you can only apply for every other year. Others will only fund you for new projects and will not fund the same thing again.” Overall, obtaining and maintaining grants is a more complex, work intensive, and time-consuming process than the general public realizes.
Fundraising Events & Donation Diversities
While DVSN always has options available anytime someone would like to donate, we’ve historically run specific fundraising drives twice a year. In the spring, we hold our annual Celebration of Hope Benefit Fundraiser (CoHB). This is a ticketed event at a picturesque or interesting local venue, typically involving a meal, a speaker, and some sort of entertainment. Funds from ticket sales and event sponsors cover the costs of putting on this type of event (food, entertainment, rental fees, etc.), and there are opportunities for attendees to donate and/or bid on items at the event that goes exclusively towards our fundraising goal. Around the holiday season, we also hold our Annual Appeal drive, which involves a card mailing, email, and social media campaign to spread wishes of hope and goodwill, inform the community about DVSN’s work, and solicit donations to help continue that work into the new year.
Beyond attending an event or writing a check, there are some lesser-known ways that people can support nonprofits like DVSN financially. “One thing we’ve seen over the years, especially the last five years or so,” comments Jessica, “Is we’re getting more and more donations that come from some sort of family fund or foundation. We can still consider that an individual or family donation, but they’re doing it through their own donor-advised fund or something similar.” Donor advised funds are accounts that can be created by organizations, families, or individuals, where multiple people can contribute in multiple ways, and the contributors or fund managers can choose organizations to donate the funds to, streamlining the process of charitable giving and taking advantage of tax incentives. Jessica gives another example of a unique and tax-friendly way to donate, saying, “There are certain retirement accounts that once you’re at a certain age, you have to take money out every year. A qualified charitable distribution, or QCD, is an option for people who don’t need that money or would rather keep it where it is. Instead of withdrawing the funds and having to pay taxes on them, if they donate it through a QCD, then no taxes are taken out and the full amount is given to whatever charitable organization they send it to (like DVSN).”
Funding Challenges
Funding can be difficult for any nonprofit organization. As DVSN’s ED Jacquelin Apsler puts it, “Nonprofits are scrambling for money constantly.” Different nonprofits have different challenges when it comes to funding. The major challenges DVSN faces in this arena can be distilled into six basic categories, three of which are more universal to many nonprofits, and three of which are more specific to DVSN, the work we do, our values, and our community.
Undervalued Nonprofits
In DVSN’s experience, each year less and less grant money is available. Government grants are dependent on political vagaries and are likely to decrease or vanish entirely through the duration of the administration at the time of this writing. Private organizations that provide grants may also have less funding or want to spread their funding among more recipients. Many also focus on organizations that work particularly with a certain demographic, such as people of color or those who identify as LGBTQIA+. There are many factors that determine who grantors decide to support and not enough funds to support all worthy causes. “We’re all fighting over scraps,” says Jacquelin, “Because it’s truly scraps, because our society does not really fund or value the work that’s done by nonprofits. They don’t even see it.” As Jacquelin sees it, nonprofits often do work that governments can’t do or don’t want to do, work that our society does not value. She feels nonprofits are stalwart pillars of our communities, providing many essential services, but somehow these services fly under the radar so that the general public is unaware of the value they provide or even of their existence in many cases. The size of the organization and how tangible their services are also play a role in how they are generally valued financially, regardless of how important their work is to those they serve. “There’s something about the prestige of being able to support [big, well-known organizations],” explains Jacquelin, “I’m certainly not begrudging them their money, but it’s an easier situation for them than for a smaller, grassroots agencies [like DVSN].”
Restricted Funds
“Restricted funds” are monies that are given exclusively for a very specific purpose or project. Funds received from any source could potentially be considered restricted. As Jessica says, “If a donor says I want my money to go towards supporting Angel of Hope or any particular focus, we will consider that donation restricted funds and we won’t use it for anything else.” Restricted donations are fairly infrequent, however, as opposed to grants, which are almost always restricted. According to Jessica, “Fewer and fewer grantors want to fund things that aren’t specialized or focused, even though there’s a need.” Most grantors prefer to support a particular measurable and/or accountable thing, as opposed to the organization’s work as a whole or so-called “operations” costs (such as supplies, utilities, office management, printing brochures, bookkeeping, etc.). “Restricted monies tend to be for a particular project,” reiterates Jacquelin, “Which is wonderful, but there’s so much else that goes into fueling this energy and this engine to do the work that we do. They call it ‘operations’. I’m calling it more often ‘mission’. That’s where we need money.”
“There’s always things each of us are doing,” Jessica responds, “Even if we’re not in more obvious service-oriented positions which contribute to the services that are funded but aren’t obvious or consistent enough to clearly justify to grantors that their funds should be used in that way.”
“People often see such a bright line between what is considered ‘direct services’ and ‘operations’,” Jacquelin continues, “To me, there is no bright line. I mean, in most nonprofits everyone wears many different hats, and all of the work that each of our staff members is doing is all very much germane to the service that we provide our clients. So, there’s no bright line there, and it’s disturbing to have to keep making that argument or, in fact, to not get monies for quote-unquote ‘operations’.”
Inconsistent Funds
Many nonprofits have to deal with inconsistent funding. “There’s no stability [with grants and donations], and that’s another issue,” laments Jacquelin, “Aside from the fundraising journey that takes an enormous amount of time and energy, the end result may not be consistent or persistent.” Many of the issues already discussed here account for this inconsistency. While some donors contribute to DVSN regularly, others do not, cannot, and/or prefer to support different causes each time they donate. Some supporters, such as religious organizations, may provide a mix of grants from the organization and donations from their congregation, which can make for changeable quantities. “The churches and temples are varied depending on what they raise and can afford,” reveals Jacquelin.
Grants can vary greatly as far as what kinds of grants are available, what funds they are able to provide, and whether or not DVSN is chosen to receive them. As Jacquelin explains, “We have grants that have reduced their funding. There are tremendous demands on [grantors] with more and more people looking for monies. They’re raising money on behalf of several [organizations] they support. And there’s been changes in terms of focus and what’s eligible [for particular grants]. Except for those that decrease, most of our repeat grants give the same amount every year, but our costs are going up. So, our budget is being really squeezed.” Funding through grants and donations is always a great unknown, and it can be a real challenge to provide consistent programs and support with inconsistent funding.
A Difficult Issue
A funding challenge that is not pertinent to all nonprofits, only to those in certain fields, is the very fact that we deal with a difficult issue. “People are happy to give money to feed people, for example,” says Jacquelin, “That’s relatively easy. They know they’re helping to feed people who are really in dire straits. And it’s easier to talk about that as well. Domestic violence is not.”
DVSN’s Community Engagement and Philanthropy Specialist, Deborah Maini, adds “It’s one thing to fund the new wing of the museum, the first chair at the symphony, the stadium at the Ivy League school, the ‘prestige giving’. Rarely are people attracted to giving to our cause because of that type of thinking and opportunity.” This holds true for both individual donors and grantors.
Why are people reluctant to support domestic violence organizations? “Well, it’s the shame of it, the stigma of it,” explains Jacquelin, “Nobody wants to touch it because they’re afraid it’s going to rub off on them, or people will think they are a victim. Nobody wants to be a victim.”
“Our particular society does not recognize or see value in trying to stop domestic violence or intervene in any way,” continues Jacquelin, “It has to be done in the shadows with a tremendous amount of effort and energy by volunteers and nonprofits.”
“I was percolating on the phrase ‘in the shadows’,” responds Deborah, “Because that is one of the wonderful descriptors about the work we do on this issue… The truth is everyone has a neighbor somewhere in their neighborhood who’s dealing with this and by keeping it hidden and not funding it properly, our neighborhoods and towns are less safe because this goes on. I always feel like part of what our work does is to create truly safer, more peaceful [communities]. We help facilitate that and caring and community. And if we don’t have fundraising, we can’t do that.”
The Affluence Bias
Another misconception DVSN deals with in the funding sector has to do with our particular location. DVSN’s mailing address is in Concord, MA, and the majority of our clients come from the thirteen nearby communities where we have partners. This central Middlesex region is generally considered to be an affluent area. People assume that most victims in these communities have the financial resources to help themselves and that nonprofits in these communities have a bevy of wealthy donors and avid volunteers who provide all the funding and support they could possibly need. While it may be true that there is more affluence in this area than some others, that does not mean that that automatically trickles down to nonprofits based there nor that all of our clients are wealthy. More importantly, it fails to recognize more fundamental aspects of how victims of domestic violence are affected, what kind of support they need, and how universal the problem is. “We’re all of the same ilk in terms of desperation and the debilitation that our people are suffering,” expounds Jacquelin, “Just because [our clients] live in Concord, it doesn’t make it any less traumatic. It doesn’t mean they’re going to come out of this and finally be rich again. It means they’re going to carry this with them the rest of their lives. It becomes part of their fabric. And I don’t want to argue that people in a different community shouldn’t get the money. The fact is that there’s not enough money for these various services everywhere.”
Finding Balance
With DVSN’s particular philosophies and values, it can be tricky and troubling for us to try to balance soliciting the donations we need to be able to do our vital work and providing educational programming, awareness building, and community engagement that isn’t all about fundraising. Jessica explains DVSN’s stance on this balance saying, “For instance, anytime we have a program that’s purely about awareness or education, we make it available to the public and we don’t charge a registration or attendance fee. We don’t explicitly ask for donations. We don’t turn them away if people happen to give us donations, but for all of our Voices of Hope events – the Appreciation Breakfast, the Candlelight Vigil, Clergy Symposium, and the Speaker Series we did during COVID, all of that – the importance of the issue and how terrible it is overshadows our need for funds, and we try very hard to keep those two things separate. Anything that’s really about helping our clients or raising awareness and educating people, we try to keep that separate [from fundraising] and make it accessible to anyone who wants to participate.”
“On the other hand,” continues Jessica, “We will work in educational components to our annual benefit to help people understand why it’s important that they give us money. They know they’re coming to a fundraising event.”
“We’re educating people about why they will benefit from valuing our work and from supporting it financially,” Deborah expands, “Truly, we would not ask people for money if we didn’t have to. If we were funded some other way, we would continue to bring awareness and education to the community and to build relationships and partnerships, but we wouldn’t do [any active fundraising]. And the reason we have to is because there’s a problem. It’s domestic violence. We help with the solution, we bring sustainability for survivors, and we give donors the opportunity to partner with us to solve this insidious, often hidden, and yet incredibly impactful, negative issue everywhere in our communities.”
“We really keep the essence and the ethics of our mission as separate as possible from money,” continues Jacquelin, “And, as Deborah said, we don’t want to be asking for money at all ever. So, it’s basically a couple times a year and occasionally with something else very softly. But we may have to ramp that up because we just have to. We need money to be able to sustain services for our clients.”
“We want to give people who are interested the opportunity to support us [monetarily] without inundating them with asks or making them feel like that’s the only reason we want to connect with them,” chimes in Jessica, “That’s the fine line we try to walk. We recognize that there’s benefit to making it easy for people who might choose to donate at education or awareness events to do so without making it the purpose of, the reason for, that experience.”
“But that’s our fine line,” concludes Jacquelin, “That’s DVSN’s fine line. That’s not prevalent in this industry.”
Beyond balancing fundraising and non-fundraising events, DVSN staff have to balance their personal feelings on the matter with the necessities of running a nonprofit today. “I’m in the business of building relationships, because that’s who I am. I love that,” enthuses Jacquelin, “Whatever I’m doing, wherever I have worked, that’s what I’ve done. Community building. Absolutely community building. But then when it gets to the money part, it feels transactional… I feel uncomfortable and want to move away from it because it dishonors what I’m trying to do. Or I feel like it does. It may not, but that’s how I feel.”
“If I weren’t doing this work, if I were in the corporate world, I’d be much more likely to be educating people about something or supporting in a marketing/gathering/relationship way. I wouldn’t want to quote unquote ‘do the hard selling’,” agrees Deborah, “The reason I do this work is because of the mission, because of our clients that need us. And I, too, understand the transactional piece, yet I have to remember the overarching mission and goal, which is to help victims, person by person, child by child, break free and thrive.”
The Value of Volunteers
One reason DVSN is able to provide the vital services we do with all of these funding challenges is our wonderful volunteers. “People do not realize how many things in their community are taken care of because of nonprofits, because of volunteers,” Deborah believes. “We do a lot for the little bit we have,” expands Jacquelin, “That’s an important component in how much the volunteers are a part of what makes this work.” DVSN has a variety of volunteer opportunities, the most predominant of which is our volunteer Advocates. Advocates support clients on the phone and in court by answering DVSN’s Help Line, reaching out to people referred to us by one of our partners, and providing support and assistance to clients who are involved in legal proceedings. All go through our intensive 40-hour classroom training, followed by 10-12 hours of field training, and new Advocates are asked to commit to two 3-hour shifts a month for a minimum of a year. That’s a major commitment right out of the gate and many of our Advocates volunteer beyond the minimum we ask for. Learn more about what these volunteers do and what it means to them in our March 2021 blog post, “Profile of a DVSN Advocate”.
Before becoming Executive Director of DVSN in 2006, Jacquelin worked as a middle school principal and special educator as well as consulting in the public and private sectors. Jacquelin compares her awareness before and after her involvement with nonprofits: “It wasn’t until I got into this role that I realized how crucial and how important nonprofits and volunteers are. It’s almost like this hidden foundation that nobody’s aware of, and we’re often working unusually long hours, and it’s so different from the corporate world or the capitalistic world. That’s something that was really striking – how different the whole nonprofit world is, with volunteers included in that, and how much they do to keep our society functioning.”
Powerhouse Partnerships
Beyond our volunteers, DVSN’s partners and community connections contribute tremendously to enabling the work we do. “What’s unique to us as a DV agency is that we have this coalition, that we have these community connections,” describes Jacquelin, “That’s unusual in and of itself, the incredible collaboration DVSN has with our police and community partners. We have really robust relationships, and that’s how we provide services, as opposed to having lawyers, counselors, and advocates as paid employees, which is more costly. DVSN’s model is more cost effective. This is another illustration of society not paying for what it is nonprofits do.”
“The thing I love about what we do, which is different than so many other organizations that deal with this issue, is our police partnerships and our other partnerships,” reiterates Deborah, “I swear that there is not one time in the thousands of conversations that I’ve had so far about DVSN when I say, ‘You know, we partner with the police, and we train them and we educate them and we help them understand this issue so that it can be safer for them and safer and better for families who are in this crisis.’, I’ve never heard someone say, ‘That’s a bad idea.’ What they say instead is, “That should be in every town and city.’”
DVSN’s Community Engagement & Philanthropy Specialist
In the past few years, DVSN has made some changes in an effort to expand our outreach and fundraising efforts. The biggest part of this has been bringing on Deborah Maini as DVSN’s Community Engagement and Philanthropy Specialist. Previously, Deborah worked on Wall Street, led leadership and team-building training programs, and ran her own coaching, facilitation, and wellness firm. Following that, Deborah helped survivors of domestic violence through her roles as Development Director, Director of Community Engagement and Events, and Assistant Executive Director at The Second Step, Web of Benefit, Cycle the Wave, and The Wave Foundation. She first joined DVSN as a volunteer helping to bring in sponsors for our Celebration of Hope Benefit 2023. Soon after, her volunteer work expanded to include fundraising activities. “Deborah was out there, and she just had this whole feeling of, ‘This is important work, and you’re going to have the opportunity to support this important work.’ And she says that with all kinds of sincerity. That was just a gift,” explains Jacquelin, “She had a very gentle and caring style in dealing with people, which I liked because that’s how we want our agency to be for our clients and I think that’s the way we build relationships across the board in all of our arenas. I was feeling like, yeah, Deborah will take on the world, but she can’t because she’s a volunteer. And so we started thinking about, well, maybe we could hire her.” Deborah started as a part-time development contractor and within a year moved into her current full-time role. “It’s very hard to be a part-time development person because the work is all-consuming and just eeks into everything,” Jacquelin continues, “So we decided to make her a full-time employee.”
“Deborah’s approach reminds me so much of how we train our Advocates to work with our clients” Jessica effuses, “Deborah’s like a development version of an Advocate, both for working with and coaching our board members, but then also with people out in the world that we’re asking to support us. She’s always trying to find a way that works for them while meeting them where they’re at. I think that’s part of why this connection works for us – her natural style is already emblematic of the core of what DVSN is. And that’s the thing we were always missing with any other person we tried for development or fundraising purposes. It’s part of why Deborah’s title is Community Engagement and Philanthropy Specialist, because it’s about building and maintaining relationships.” Jacquelin agrees, adding, “I like the way she approaches things… empowering people to take advantage of this wonderful opportunity [to support DVSN].”
“I feel like I can serve you all and the organization best if I engage as many types of people in the community as possible,” professes Deborah, “This organization thrives and exudes partnership and collaboration. And part of my role is to get to know our current donors better and build deeper and stronger relationships and partnerships with them, and to grow our network of donors, to give more people the opportunity to support this essential organization. I will focus even more this year on getting to know our current donors and growing the relationship with them, appreciating them, thanking them in person, ideally, and helping them understand even better how their investment helps survivors. Then also growing – giving others the opportunity to join our consistent donors, our active donors, and bringing in new people.”
“Part of the reason I’m doing this work,” Deborah continues, “Is also because each of my colleagues inspire me, because this organization helps to save lives. That is true. I have no doubt. I can prove it. That is with me every day, including any day that I’m working.”
Sustaining the Future
As Jacquelin looks to the future of DVSN, she believes there are multiple areas to focus on. “Bringing on Deborah is part of the story of how we see being able to sustain ourselves. I don’t even want to call it just ‘fundraising’, it’s really just sustaining ourselves,” she declares, “We need money to do that, but we’re also sustaining ourselves because of the relationships we’re building. It’s not just to get money, it’s truly to have partnerships so that we can service our clients even better.” DVSN is all about community and relationship building in multiple arenas and finding new and better ways to do that successfully.
“I appreciate that for all of us, we are recognizing that there may be some things we will need to do a little differently because of the possibility of it bringing in more money for us,” Deborah states, “Because we do need that, and that is reality, to help our clients. And that’s what it’s all about. It’s about solving this issue, ideally ending domestic violence and someday only doing awareness and education, having no clients because this has gone away. In the meantime, it’s all about the donors helping us to solve the problem, to help the clients.”
“We are spending an enormous amount of time to sustain ourselves and to get money to help us help our clients,” responds Jacquelin, “When wouldn’t it be nice if we could just spend our time on helping our clients?”
Deborah sums up, “What is the why? Why do we fundraise? Because there is a problem and we are helping to solve it. But, realistically, the community is helping us to help survivors, and we cannot do it without the community. We cannot.”
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