Finding Mr. Right (Grant): How to Prioritize Your Grant Choices.

Not everyone that you date is worth a committed relationship. In the same vein, not every grant you come across is going to be a good fit for your nonprofit. It can be tempting as a new nonprofit to throw grant applications in every direction. That grant funding is essential, after all. But not all grant opportunities are equal. Sometimes it's worth it to be selective about the application process. Here, we’ll explain how to organize and priority funding opportunities to increase your chances of success, and efficiency at fundraising.

Why Prioritizing Grants Matters

Being able to prioritize your grants is an essential skill, for a few reasons. First and foremost - it saves you time. Think of it this way - would you accept every connection for a date? Even those that clearly aren’t going to work out well? Avoiding chasing down funding sources that aren’t going to pan out prevents burnout in your team. A higher win rate on your grant initiatives means more time to spend fostering the really important grant relationships.

Prioritizing grants also helps you better define the mission of your nonprofit. You want all the grant proposals you prepare to be on brand and representative of your strategic goals, capacity and program needs. By better defining the types of grants you are interested in, you can make your grant pipeline move at a faster clip.

By taking the time to be careful with your grant-seeking, you are also giving yourself more room to build collaborative and meaningful relationships with your funders. You want sustainability in these kinds of relationships - not one-off flings.

Key Questions to Help You Prioritize

It’s one thing to say that you should be picky before your grant writers get to work. But browsing through a grant database can often be intimidating. How on earth do you even start finding the grantmakers that are going to work well with you? To get you started, here are some questions you should be asking. The more “yes-es” you find yourself giving, the more likely that grant is within your focus area.

Does this grant align with our mission and programs?

Understanding your own capacities is a key part of good grant management. You should be able to clearly outline your mission in a specific way - and your funding priorities need to go towards grants that support that mission. If your programs deal with protecting the environment in a particular state, general environmental grants may seem appealing, but are outside the reasonable scope.

Are we actually eligible?

Speaking of geographic restrictions... There are lots of different types of eligibility requirements. checking these can be one of the quickest ways to knock a potential grant off the list. Geography is one consideration, yes. But is the grant suitable to a nonprofit of your size? Do you meet the capacity requirements? Does your nonprofit really fall within the type the grant provider is looking for? Being optimistic is good, but it has its limits.

Is the timeline realistic for us?

If the application deadlines for this particular grant are coming up too soon to do quality grant writing, you can skip it. But feel free to mark down the grant provider for future funding opportunities.

What’s the return on effort for us?

This one is a bit hard to measure, it's true. Understanding how much effort something will take is just part of the grant process that you become an expert at over time. But try to consider the complexity of application, and how much it will cost you in money and time. Is the potential return worth it?

Is this a long-term funder?

If there’s a chance to integrate a close partnership with a funder, then that should make a grant application more appealing. Grants that have the chance for renewal should, generally, take priority over one-time grants, unless that one-time grant can play a critical role in your current plans for your grant programs.

Do we have the capacity?

Not all nonprofits are going to have the same capacity in terms of infrastructure, team size or technology. It might sting, but its okay to prioritize grants that you can actually use. The right grant isn’t always the largest.

Ranking and Organizing Grants

One useful tool a nonprofit organization can deploy to make deciding grants easier is to organize them by ranking them, letting you judge at a glance which potential funders are most likely to end up being successful partnerships.

The best way to do this is to set up some sort of “priority matrix”. This means grading each grant on a spreadsheet, and comparing and contrasting to find the best mix. This doesn’t have to be a complex part of your grant strategy either. You could easily just set up two axes - one measuring effort, the other fit. Anything that shows up as both highly relevant and easy to apply for is going to be a very relevant grant.

You can even go more in depth with this as you want, giving grants a variety of “scores” depending on how they match your project’s goals and funding strategy. Then you can assign team members to the grants that have reached the highest ranking.

Grants to Avoid

Learning what sort of things to avoid in your grant research is a topic all of its own. In general, there’s a few things you need to watch out for when doing your grant research. The big ones to watch out for include the following:

• Unrealistic Funder Expectations: Some funders expect a lot to be done with a grant for a minimal funding amount. You could end up in a situation where you underdeliver, in their eyes, damaging your reputation.
• Hidden Match Requirements: Some funders will require your nonprofit to put forward part of your own cash after a successful grant application. Make sure to ask specifically about any match requirements so you’re not caught off guard.
• Non-Relevant Grants: It can be tempting to go for grants that are outside of your mission if they seem to provide a lot of funding. You want to resist mission drift the best you can.
• Lack of Clarity: If a grant offering doesn’t have very clear guidelines or eligibility requirements, you may want to give it a pass, or reach out for further clarification.
• Very Short Deadlines: A good grant proposal is worth taking the time to get right. Yo
• Overly Complex Post-Report Requirements: Post-report requirements aren’t unusual. But if a funder is asking you to jump through a lot of hoops, you’re going to be burning a lot of staff hours and time on it. You need to think if the grant is really worth it.

Focus on fit

In love and dating, there’s no perfect person - but there could be a perfect person for you. Matchmaking with grants is very much the same. If you have one takeaway for your strategic planning, it's to focus on a good fit over total funds. You want grants that work for your specific projects.

Beyond that, just make sure to start looking into grants long before deadlines, and make sure to be proactive in communicating with funders. With enough practice, finding the right grants will be much easier than navigating the dating scene - and you’ll be finding plenty of great matches!