There are so many amazing grant opportunities for nonprofits out there. It can be difficult to decide which to pursue.
Thankfully, there are many tools and resources that can help you, including a decision matrix for grants.
A decision matrix will help you identify and prioritize grants that will make the biggest impact on your overall funding strategy.
In this article, we’ll draw insights from industry expert Stacy Fitzsimmons who shared with us how to build and use a decision matrix to evaluate grants.
By the end, you’ll understand what a decision matrix is, the four most popular types to choose from, and how to put one to use within your organization to make tough decisions to increase your odds of winning funding.
Sound good? Let’s jump in!
What Is a Decision Matrix for Grants?
According to Stacy Fitzsimmons, a decision matrix is a tool used to evaluate an option or opportunity among two or more criteria. It can be used to sort, rank, or otherwise qualify those options being considered.
While decision matrices can be used in all sorts of scenarios, there are a few specific use cases for this tool in the nonprofit world. You can use one to decide:
Proposal Go/No Go’s: Not all grants are worth pursuing, so a decision matrix can help you quickly determine what your course of action should be.
Sorting Grant Responsibilities: Grants can have complex requirements, and a decision matrix can help you prioritize what needs to be done first.
Program Funding/Order Rank: Organizations often run multiple programs concurrently, and this tool can help you determine a priority order of funding.
Deployment of New Programs or Products: With so much going on, decision matrices can help you understand when you need to create new programs or if you can refocus your energy on existing programs to best meet your core mission.
Throughout this article, we’ll focus primarily on using a decision matrix for funding opportunities, specifically grants.
A decision matrix can be incredibly helpful when there are multiple funding opportunities available and you need to decide where you want to invest your limited time and resources to make the biggest impact and get the greatest ROI.
A decision matrix for grants helps you take a step back, reviewing your opportunities in an unbiased, standardized approach to drive consistency and efficiency in your grant pursuit.
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When developing a decision matrix, you have to decide what sort of evaluation criteria to include in it. The specific criteria you choose should be based on your nonprofit’s unique needs and priorities.
However, there are a few common criteria that you can consider including:
Mission alignment: How aligned is the grant with your organization’s mission and vision?
Likelihood to meet the deadline: Does your team have the capacity and resources available to pursue the grant within the given timeframe?
Competition: How competitive is the grant? How many awards are given?
ROI: If you do pursue the grant, what’s the return on the investment? Is it big enough that it exceeds the resources you will put into it?
Geographic location: Does the funder have a history of awarding grants in your area?
At the end of the day, the strength of your decision matrix will depend on the quality and relevance of the criteria you include in it. Here’s what Stacy had to say:
“Even if you’re amidst chaos, multiple deadlines, and new opportunities, [a decision matrix] can help kind of streamline that process and give you a tool to make better decisions, faster.”
So who should be involved in choosing the criteria for your matrix? Keep reading!
Who Should Craft the Criteria and Priorities for Your Nonprofit's Decision Matrix?
Securing grant funding isn’t a one-person job and neither should be the development of your decision matrix.
When creating your matrix, it’s important for the right criteria to be reflected—which requires the right people to weigh in.
Crafting the criteria for your nonprofit’s decision matrix should be a collaborative process. You and other stakeholders— executive director, project leads, and even board members at times—should each weigh-in to develop evaluation criteria that most strongly align with your nonprofit’s funding needs and priorities.
It’s important to make sure that the project leads who will be implementing the proposed funding are always included in this process. Why?
They understand how things actually work in practice rather than just in theory.
They will paint a realistic view of what you can actually accomplish with the resources you have available.
Because of the important role this tool can play in your nonprofit, you need to ensure the criteria within it are strategically informed by the organization’s needs and priorities.
The 4 Different Types of Decision Matrices To Prioritize Grants Effectively
There are many different types of decision matrices out there. Stacy shared a few of the most common ones with us and explained how each can be used to more effectively prioritize funding opportunities.
1. The Eisenhower Matrix
The Eisenhower Matrix is a two-by-two quadrant matrix that’s used to sort, rank, and qualify options based on their importance and urgency. Coined by President Dwight D. Eisenhower in World War II, this prioritization matrix is probably the most well-known decision matrix out there.
Using this matrix, you can prioritize tasks by organizing them into the four different quadrants:
High urgency and high importance (Do)
High urgency and low importance (Delegate)
Low urgency and low importance (Delete)
Low urgency and high importance (Schedule)
However, you can tweak these criteria to make more sense for your nonprofit. Here’s how Stacy explained it:
“This kind of quadrant—depending on what you put into the different matrices—can be used to sort the grant opportunities that are coming out of the pipeline. If you have those that are really tied to your mission (high importance), but would take a lot of time (high urgency), but they are the best opportunities, those are going to go in your upper quadrant. If they’d be quick and easy (low urgency), but if not really tied to what you do (low importance), those are going to be in the fourth quadrant. And those you might get to, or you might not. And so that’s another way of looking at this.”
2. The Weighted Matrix
A weighted matrix helps you compare multiple data sets using a set of criteria.
Each criteria is assigned a different weight, which is intended to reflect the level of importance that each plays in making your decision.
The weight is mutually agreed upon when you develop the matrix, and it helps account for some of the nuances in the decision-making process since some criteria factor in more heavily than others.
This type of decision matrix can help you prioritize funding opportunities by providing an unbiased score for each that takes into account the varying importance of different criteria.
For example, if your grant team is small, you might weigh “staff capacity” more heavily than another criteria so that you don’t end up pursuing an opportunity that you don’t have the resources to complete well.
3. The Rubric Matrix
A rubric matrix uses a clear set of criteria that you can use to assess best fit grant opportunities.
Rubrics are scored in relation to how well the evaluation criteria are met. The criteria are determined in advance, and they are equally rated across all items.
If you’ve ever undergone a performance evaluation, then it’s likely you’ve encountered a rubric matrix.
To make a rubric matrix of your own, simply set the criteria that you want to rate and then score each opportunity based on those criteria. The higher the score, the better the fit.
According to Stacy:
“This is most useful when you have several options that have a robust set of criteria that are easily quantified, or that can be objectively measured within a certain range.”
Pro Tip: One thing to keep in mind is that after you submit your grant application, it’s highly likely that you are being graded against a rubric. Potential funders want to see how well you fit their criteria, so they often use these tools. You can create a mock rubric to see how you stack up to help you prepare for the application process.
4. Weighted Rubric
While the first three matrices can be helpful, Stacy shared with us that she actually came up with her own kind of matrix to better help her evaluate “go vs. no go” grants:
“I kind of mashed them all together to create a weighted rubric, and so it is a blend of the rubric and the weighted matrix [for] deciding whether or not to go after a grant. Each factor is assigned a weight based on that factor’s importance to whether or not we pursue an opportunity.”
A weighted matrix should provide you with a well-rounded view, allowing you to make your ultimate decision on whether to pursue the funding opportunity.
According to Stacy, this type of matrix is especially helpful when there are a lot of different factors to consider that are independent from one another and must be considered individually.
To create a weighted rubric, simply:
Create a list of criteria that could be included
Assign a weight to each criteria
Create a list of information needed to make the decision on each criteria
When Do You Pull the Plug on a Project To Stay on Track With Your Mission?
Even though it can be tempting, you should never pursue a funding opportunity that’s not aligned with the ethos of your organization’s goals. Even if it's a big number ($$), it will only cause headaches down the road when it pulls you away from your mission, vision, and values.
A decision matrix is a fantastic tool to help keep you on track with your strategic priorities by:
Keeping your mission front and center: This should be factored into all decisions—how does the opportunity align with your mission?
Being realistic about staffing needs: If you do not have the staff or resources needed to complete a grant-funded project, be honest. If you’re understaffed, it’s best to pursue other opportunities.
Providing a birds-eye view of what matters most: Through a well-rounded perspective, you can see clearly the pros and cons of each opportunity.
You should use your decision matrix to make tough calls during your grant decision-making process so that you can know which opportunities to pull the plug on and which to go after.
Ultimately, a decision matrix can help your team more effectively and strategically navigate funding opportunities so your efforts are spent on the most promising awards.
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