One of the questions that comes up most often when teaching grant writing workshops is: “How many of you have a grant team, either formal or informal?” Typically, far less than half of the hands go up. Then comes the follow-up: “How many of you feel like a grant team of one?” — and the rest of the hands go up.
Grant professionals can secure grant awards without a formal grant team in place. But no grant professional can be sustainably successful — or avoid burnout — when working entirely in isolation. As we explore in Grant Writing is a Team Sport, grants require the interaction, input, and support of colleagues across an organization to be truly competitive. The challenge is that many organizations struggle to get colleagues to recognize their informal role as grant team members, or find it difficult to establish a formal team when staff are already stretched thin. Often, the root issue is simply that no one has clearly defined what a grant team actually is.
What Is a Grant Team?
A grant team is a group of colleagues who have a shared stake in creating competitive grant applications — and in ensuring that any funded project can actually be implemented successfully.
More specifically, a grant team may be any of the following:
A group of colleagues, either formally or informally aligned, that meets in person or remotely on a regular basis throughout the year to discuss upcoming deadlines, funding priorities, and application plans.
A group of colleagues that gathers around a specific grant opportunity the organization is pursuing, supporting the lead grant professional in moving that application from concept to submission.
Grant teams can look different from one organization to the next. Some are formally structured standing committees with set meeting schedules. Others are informal groups that convene as needed around specific opportunities. Both can work — what matters is that the right people are at the table.
Who Should Be on a Grant Team?
Every successful grant team looks a little different depending on organization culture, size, and the type of grants being pursued. Rather than focusing on specific titles, it is more useful to think about which roles and areas of expertise need to be represented.
A strong grant team typically includes representation from the following areas:
- Grant Professional — leads the process, manages deadlines, and drives the application
- Leadership — provides organizational vision and buy-in for funding priorities
- Finance — ensures budget accuracy, compliance, and alignment with organizational financial systems
- Programs — contributes program design knowledge, data, and implementation realism
- Evaluation/Data — supports outcome measurement, data collection, and reporting capacity
- IT — assists with systems, portals, and technology compliance as needed
- Marketing/Communications — can strengthen narrative, storytelling, and audience framing
The grant team works best when it is facilitated by the lead grant professional — either on an ongoing basis or specifically for each application the team convenes around.
Not sure how your organization measures up when it comes to having a functioning grant team? Take the free GRASP Tool — Grant Readiness Assessment to get a customized score and feedback on where your organization stands, including your internal capacity for grant seeking.
What Does a Grant Team Do?
The specific activities of a grant team vary by organization, but common responsibilities include:
Building and maintaining a shared grant calendar. The team engages in the process of creating and updating a grant calendar that tracks application deadlines, renewal dates, reporting requirements, and funder relationship milestones — and that every team member can access. For a step-by-step guide to creating your own, download the free Grant Research Guide (includes a grant calendar template).
Participating in pre-planning conversations. For large applications — especially government grants — the team engages in dialogue with the lead grant professional well before a formal RFP opens, helping shape the program design, budget parameters, and partner engagement strategy in advance.
Gathering and contributing information. During the application design phase, team members from programs, finance, and evaluation contribute the data, budget details, and outcome information that makes a proposal credible and competitive.
Reviewing and editing application components. Before submission, team members review application materials to ensure that what has been written accurately reflects what the organization can actually implement if funding is awarded. One of the most powerful ways to do this is through a structured mock review process. Download the free Mock Review Toolkit to simulate the funder’s scoring experience and strengthen your application from the inside out.
To understand how a grant team fits into the full arc of grant seeking — from readiness through reporting — download the free 5 R’s of Grant Writing guide, which maps the entire grant life cycle and where your team plays a role at each stage.
Ready to Strengthen Your Grant Team?
Whether you are building a grant team for the first time or looking to get more out of an existing one, the free Grant Readiness Guide is a great place to start. It walks through what grant readiness looks like at an organizational level — including the critical role a grant team plays — and offers practical tips for strengthening your capacity.
And for inspiration on how to keep your grant team engaged and celebrated throughout the year, check out our post on Celebrating Success in a Grant Team.
What are your experiences with grant teams? Successful? Challenging? Please share your experiences and lessons learned in the comments below, via email, or on social media.
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This blog has been updated on 3/17/2026