12 Grant Readiness Tips

Grant readiness in grant seeking organizations can be something that brings out the best of grant professional humor. When an organization is asked to consider if they are “grant ready,” the answer is usually a resounding, “Of course we are! We are ready to receive grant money!”

Joking aside, grant readiness is one of the most important factors for grant seekers to consider, relative to each and every potential application. Grant readiness comes through in all aspects of your grant seeking.

It impacts how you decide what your priorities are for grant revenue and, therefore, who and what you research as part of creating a proactive grant seeking strategy. It impacts how you sell your organization strengths during your grant funder relationship‐building efforts. It impacts how you talk about your programs and organizational capacity during your application writing work.

It can be difficult to put a clear answer to the question of whether or not an organization is grant ready, as it relies on so many variables.

Grant readiness is a way to determine your potential competitiveness when seeking grants whether for foundation or government grants.

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– A Sneak Peak Into “12 Grant Readiness Tips”

Take an Inside Look at the Chapters of This Ebook:

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TIP 1: Have a Current Strategic Plan

A current strategic plan is a critical filter for grant seeking organizations. Strategic plans show grant makers how your proposal is aligned with your organization’s…

TIP 2: Centralize Grant Registrations

Have one individual in your organization responsible for all grant related organizations from Grants.gov to individual online grant applications. Ensure that

TIP 3: Create a Grant Team

When putting together a grant team for an organization, you need to make sure that you have all of your key positions covered . within the players at…

TIP 4: Engage Partners in Pre-Planning

The key action steps to follow in starting a pre-planning process for any new grant opportunity are:

First, determining who will facilitate the pre-planning process, whether an outside facilitator, internal grant professional, or external grant professional.
Second, looking at the previously funded applications and the previous RFPs/NOFAs to understand the…

TIP 5: Create Grant Seeking & Managements Policies & Procedures

As with all organizational management tasks, creating policies and procedures ensures consistency in which tasks are undertaken whether conducted by the…

TIP 6: Create a Grant Calendar

A grant calendar is an entry for each upcoming deadline on a shared calendar. ALL members of the grant team can access this and is…

TIP 7: Evaluate Your Impact

Have a consistent approach to evaluation throughout your organization. Utilize the data collected and analyzed as part of your grant seeking s…

TIP 8: Know Your Numbers

Know your organization’s basic numbers that grant makers are looking at when reviewing your…

TIP 9: Get to Know Your elected Officials

Elected officials can be wonderful advocates for your grant applications at the local, county, state and federal level with grant making agencies. In order to have…

TIP 10: Do Your Homework

Time spent on grant maker research is never time wasted. Every piece of information gathered during grant research helps to…

TIP 11: Be Proactive

Focus on creating a proactive instead of reactive grant seeking process and culture within…

TIP 12: Revisit Your Grant Readiness Annually

Grant readiness is a constantly shifting metric as your organization changes and…

12 Grant Readiness Tips