Welcome to Day 5 of the 30-Day Grant Readiness Challenge!
When you think of grant writing, do you picture a solo writer huddled over a keyboard at midnight? If so, now is the time to change that mental image.
Successful grant management isn’t a solo sport—it’s a team effort. Day 5 is about identifying your stakeholders and ensuring that everyone knows their role in the process.
Does Your Nonprofit Have a Grant Team?
Whether you have a formal committee or an informal group of coworkers, a cross-functional grant team is essential for readiness. If you’re currently working alone, your task today is to identify one colleague from each of these departments to engage:
- Finance: For budget accuracy and audits.
- Programs: To ensure that the narrative matches the actual work.
- Leadership: For strategic alignment and final sign-off.
- IT/Marketing: For portal access, shared drives, and collateral (photos, logos).
How to Engage Your Team
After you’ve identified your team, start integrating them into your grant-management workflow using these four steps:
- Co-Creating a Grant Calendar: Don’t surprise your Finance Director with a budget request on a Friday afternoon. Use our Grant Calendar Action Guide to align your deadlines and work ahead when possible.
- Pre-Planning Meetings: For large federal or state applications, meet before the portal opens to discuss program design and responsibilities. Build these meetings into your grant calendar.
- Information Gathering: Assign specific data points (like evaluation metrics or demographics) to the subject-matter experts on your team, or assign a team member the task of gathering the data from them.
- Internal Reviews: Have a program staff member review your draft to ensure it’s feasible and realistic.
Deepen Your Team’s Collaboration
Explore these existing resources to help move your team from pre-existing silos to smoother coordination:
- Watch: In this video, Grant Writing Is a Team Activity, you’ll discover why collaboration is the secret to winning higher-value awards.
- Assess: Use the GRASP Tool to see how your team’s current communication affects your overall readiness.
Join the Discussion
We want to hear from you! Do you currently have a formal grant team, or are you a team of one working to engage your colleagues?
Leave a note in the comments below and let us know one role you plan to engage this week!
Did you miss the launch of the 30 Day Grant Readiness Challenge? It isn’t too late for you to start! You can sign up at any point and it will start you back on Day 1!