When most people think about raising money as a new organization, they think about getting a grant from a Christian foundation. That's not a bad idea. A foundation that aligns with your mission can certainly go a long ways to helping provide seed money to get you going.
But keep in mind that is the best approach for a foundation--to provide seed money to help get you going. Seed money is start up money. It helps you get off the ground. For some foundations, seed money is a one year grant. For others it is a three year grant that typically diminishes each year. It is important to look for those foundations that provide some of that seed funding. See www.christianfoundationgrants.com as one source of foundation listings.
To a lesser degree, Christian foundations may provide some help with program support and in some cases operational support. They are much more inclined however to give program support. Program support are grants designed to launch or complete new outreaches. They are not grants designed to keep on the light bills. As a general rule, an organization should not rely upon foundations for more than 10% of their operating budget.
What does this mean? Most organizations need to learn to pursue self sustaining fundraising activities. The basic fundraising activity is the "missionary support method." In this approach you go to 50 of your closest friends and seek support on a monthly basis. The math is basic: if you have 50 friends who each gave you $50/mo for 12 months, you could raise $30,000 per year.
But today, most organizations need to look beyond the basic missionary support method. They need to begin looking at outside the box ideas. Today, nearly 47% of non profit organizations are developing entreprenurial enterprise as part of their mission. This may mean offering books, tapes, CDs, etc for sale. It may mean something more involved--running a community center and charging admission fees. (Think YMCA here.) There are a great host of ideas for the non profit as they consider their outside the box fundraising ideas.
It takes some creativity, but helps move away from the reliance on the Christian foundation and the typical fundraising methods.
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William High is the President of the Servant Christian Community Foundation--www.servantchristian.com. Servant Christian has helped start www.iDonate.com which provides funding solutions to non profits. www.christianfoundationgrants.com is a database of foundations that provide funding to faith based organizations.