15 pre-award Grant Management Best Practices

The right grant management strategies can transform your nonprofit’s fundraising efforts. 

Don’t believe us? Daniel Jenkins, the President of Lutheran Braille Workers, was able to scale their yearly grant submissions by 150% by ditching inefficient grant processes and replacing them with a streamlined grant management system. 

In this article, we are going to share with you 15 pre-award grant management best practices that can help you level up your nonprofit’s approach to grant seeking. With these strategies, you’ll be able to navigate the complexities of the grant lifecycle and increase your chances of success—just like Daniel. 

Ready? Let’s dive in.

When it comes to the grant management journey, the first thing you will want to do is assign someone on your team to be responsible for researching and identifying relevant grants. 

This person should come up with a list of potential grants that your team can then consider and prioritize. 

Effective grant prospect research is an essential step in the grant lifecycle. It’s critical that you’re able to identify relevant grants that your organization is eligible for, aligned with, and can meet the requirements of. 

Pro Tip: You can use Instrumentl’s comprehensive grants database to search for grants that fit your funding needs. You can filter your search by funding type, grant amount, area of focus, and so much more. 

Winning grant funding ultimately comes down to your team’s ability to identify the best opportunities to apply to. Investing in grant identification software is a great way to streamline and improve your nonprofit’s grant management efforts from the start.

Many nonprofits only involve their finance teams after they’ve won a grant award. However, it’s actually important to involve your finance team from the start. 

During the pre-award grant management phase, you will need to have a clear understanding of how much funding you are hoping to secure so that you can target the right opportunities. Your organization’s finance team should be able to look at your entire organizational budget to provide insight into how much grant funding you need. 

And once you’ve identified the grants you want to develop proposals for, someone from your finance team should review your proposed project and program budgets to ensure they are accurate and realistic. 

For example, proposing a budget that is too large may eliminate you from the award, but proposing a budget too small could inhibit your ability to complete the project or program successfully. 

It’s also incredibly important during the pre-award stage to ensure that your organization has the right financial tracking systems in place to manage awards when they come in. You don’t want to win a grant only to then realize you don’t have the capacity to manage its funds and properly report on its outcomes. 

Pro Tip: You can track all of your grant awards within Instrumentl. You can track how much funding you’ve received, how much you’ve spent, and when your next report is due all in one convenient location! 

Another key pre-award grant management best practice is to establish a review process that involves multiple team members to provide diverse perspectives on your grant applications.

Establishing a formal feedback loop will help ensure your team stays on the same page during the pre-award research and development process. 

For example, once a grant proposal has been written, it should be clear who it should be handed off to next for review and feedback. There should also be someone on your team who has the final say to approve a proposal for submission. 

In general, the more eyes you have on your proposal, the easier it is to catch mistakes and costly errors. Establishing a proposal review team will also help you craft more competitive proposals because of their collaborative nature. 

Pro Tip: You can assign tasks to your team members within Instrumentl. That way, everyone can stay on the same page and understand what their specific roles and responsibilities are—whether that’s researching a funder, developing a narrative, or reviewing the rough draft of a proposal.  

One of the most important steps in the pre-award grant management process is to ensure mission alignment with your grant opportunities.  

Grant-making organizations have their own missions and values that guide their funding decisions. It is important that your team researches and understands these goals so that you only apply for grants that are a good fit. 

For example, the Ford Foundation specifies on their website that their funding is focused on organizations that fight against inequality. 

The more aligned you are with a funders’ mission, the more likely you are to receive one of their grants. While it might be tempting to apply for grants that aren’t a good match, it will only cause headaches down the road as you try to force a fit in your proposal. 

Pro Tip: Instrumentl makes it easy to determine funder fit. Simply click on a grant and you’ll see an overview of the funder’s area of focus, eligibility requirements, past giving history, and more! 

Many funders focus their giving on specific communities, so you may find success more quickly when you apply for local awards versus national or global funding.

For example, Maureen McGuire, the Grants Manager for Habitat for Humanity DuPage Chicago South Suburbs, made a surprising discovery when she started using Instrumentl to search for grants: a local organization that was only two towns over was announcing a $20,000 grant award.

No one on Maureen’s team had ever heard of this organization before, yet their missions aligned perfectly. Her team decided to put together and submit a proposal, and in only a few weeks they were notified that Habitat for Humanity had won the $20,000 award.

This is just one real-life example of why it’s often best practice to search for opportunities in your area before expanding. 

Pro Tip: Instrumentl allows you to limit your search to your home state or even your county and surrounding counties.

Like Maureen, you may find funding opportunities right next door!

Applying for a grant takes significant time and effort. One of the biggest pre-award grant management mistakes you could make is applying for funding opportunities that don’t align with your mission. 

Programmatic alignment is one of the top things that funders consider when awarding grants to nonprofits. To get the best return on your team’s investment, you should prioritize funders whose giving priorities line up with your organization’s mission and programs. 

Pro Tip: You can use Instrumentl’s 990 snapshots to gain insights into a funder’s previous giving history based on their NTEE codes. Past giving is a strong indicator of future giving! 

Another pre-award grant management best practice is to have your team evaluate the potential impact of each grant opportunity against the effort required to complete it.

Like we mentioned before, developing grant proposals isn’t easy, so you want to make sure that the potential impact of the grant (the funding) is worth the effort needed to apply for and manage it (your team’s time). 

An impact versus effort matrix is an easy and fast tool that will help your team evaluate and prioritize potential funding opportunities You will sort each grant into four possible categories: 

1. Low effort and high impact
2. Low effort and low impact
3. High effort and high impact
4. High effort and low impact

For example, if your team concludes that a grant opportunity meets number one—low effort and high impact—you should consider moving ahead with the grant. 

On the other hand, maybe you’re considering applying for a $1000 grant from your local community government. However, its application process is lengthy and the reporting requirements are incredibly detailed and onerous. You might decide, then, that this grant is high effort and low impact and should be passed on.  

If you have enough individuals on your team who can take on more work, high effort and high impact grants could also be worth pursuing. Just make sure your team doesn’t end up getting overwhelmed with too much on their plates.

Whenever applying for grant funding, it’s important to assess your organization's capacity to meet the grant's requirements.

During the pre-award grant management stage, your team should evaluate each grant opportunity to determine if you have the capacity to manage the funding if awarded. This includes looking at the grant’s: 

• Guidelines 
• Deadlines 
• Compliance information 
• Reporting requirements 

That way, you can determine whether your nonprofit organization has the internal bandwidth and resources to draft an effective proposal and manage the grant throughout its entire life cycle. 

Pro Tip: There are capacity building grants available that are specifically designed to help improve your organization’s operations—whether through staff training, new equipment, added resources, and more. You can filter for capacity grants within Instrumentl’s database.

Do you even have enough time to write a competitive application? If your answer is maybe, your team should think twice about taking the time to go through the laborious application process.

All grant opportunities will have application deadlines, so your team should prioritize grants based on deadlines and funding cycles to ensure you have enough time to prepare a strong proposal.

Pro Tip: You can use Instrumentl to list your possible funding opportunities by deadline. That way, you can eliminate the top funders if their deadlines are too soon.

A great pre-award strategy is to determine whether a funder has awarded grants to nonprofits that are similar to yours—similar in location, size, and mission. If they have, they are more likely to fund your organization. 

By spending time doing this due diligence on the front end, you’ll avoid wasting time on grants that aren’t a good fit.  

Pro Tip: You can use Instrumentl to research a funder’s previous grant recipients to gain insights into their priorities and preferences. In the example below, you can see how the funder awarded the majority of their grants to organizations in California. 

Review reporting and evaluation requirements to ensure your organization can meet them.

Every funder will have different grant reporting and evaluation requirements that they detail in the funding announcement. For example, if you are looking into federal grant opportunities, their reporting requirements are often more complicated and require more time and effort than those for a grant from a local foundation.  

It’s important to make sure that your nonprofit can deliver on these reports and meet their deadlines. We discuss more information on evaluation requirements in grant funding here that may help!

One of the best ways to position your nonprofit for success during the pre-award grant management phase is to connect with funders early. 

If possible, you will want to develop relationships with program officers or foundation staff before you submit your proposal. A great way to accomplish this is to have a member of your team attend their information sessions or webinars. 

This is also when you can get your board involved. Encourage board members to leverage their networks for introductions to potential funders. 

Pro Tip: On Instrumentl, you can see a list of a foundation’s key people pulled from their 990 filings with the IRS. This makes it easy to identify if there are any connections with your staff or board.  

Recently, the City of Oakland missed out on a grant worth millions of dollars for fighting crime in their city. The reason they missed out? They missed the deadline to apply.

This is why maintaining a grant application calendar to track deadlines, reporting requirements, and follow-up tasks is imperative during the pre-award grant management stage. 

Pro Tip: Instrumentl’s shared grant calendar makes it easy to keep track of all your grant’s deadlines and tasks in one place. 

Grant rejections are almost inevitable, and you should use them as a learning opportunity. 

Funders sometimes provide feedback about why your proposal was declined, and you can use this information in your next grant-seeking venture. Knowing what you did wrong or how you can improve is the first step to bettering your applications in the future.

‍Pro Tip: Check out this webinar with grants professional Maryn Boess to learn how to ask for funder feedback the right way to get the right results.

Finally, don’t forget that pre-award management is a team sport! You should make sure to keep your team informed about the progress of your grant applications and share important updates and insights with them.

You will want to develop open and positive communication with your team throughout the entire pre-award process. This should be done via email, your grant calendar, and during face-to-face meetings to ensure everyone is involved and on the same page.

There you go—we’ve covered 15 pre-award grant management strategies. Following these best practices will help set your nonprofit up for success as you navigate the entire grant lifecycle. 

And don’t forget! If your team hasn’t tried Instrumentl, you can create a free account for 14 days. Happy grant seeking!