Dear ExperiencedGrant Writer,

I’ve been a grant writer for a few years now, and I’m taking over as a lead grant writer in the industry that I’ve been a part of for the last few years. My job is to find large grants for the nonprofit that I’m a part of and I also oversee the other grant writers that are attached to the departments that are in my organization. They focus on specific grants for their department and I look at maintaining and seeking grant opportunities for the organization as a whole.

The grant writers have infrequent meetings, and it often feels last minute and rushed for each submission and report. I’m often the person that finishes the applications if we are running behind and I know that we need to be more organized. I want to be more efficient and give the team more structure so that applications can be timely and show our best work. Do you have any advice on building a grant writing team?

Signed, 

Team Builder

Dear Team Builder,

This is a great goal for any grant professionals to have!

Each grant team looks a little bit different depending on the organization’s culture, size, and grant seeking goals. The basics of what a grant team definition is when we are coaching an organization on starting a grant team is here. 

Another way to think of the grant team is a dream team, or even a team of superheroes like a Marvel comic book. Here is another take from our team on how to put together a grant “dream team.”

There is also a CharityHowTo recorded session I provided recently with suggestions about how to manage grant teams and grant calendars that I think may be useful for you, especially with the bonus materials to help guide you along on your journey.

Best regards,

Diane H. Leonard, GPC