Overwhelmed by grant options? Learn how to overcome option paralysis with a decision matrix for grants. Drawing insights from industry expert Stacy Fitzsimmons, discover how to prioritize opportunities and maximize your funding strategy's impact. By the end, you’ll be equipped to make informed decisions and increase your odds of winning funding.
TOPIC
AUDIENCE
Have you ever suffered from option paralysis?
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!
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:
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.
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:
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!
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?
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.
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:
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.”
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.
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.
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:
For a more detailed breakdown on how to develop and leverage a weighted rubric, you can check out Stacy’s presentation here.
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:
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.
How Will You Use the Decision Matrices To Prioritize Grant Opportunities?
In this article, we covered:
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.
For more tips on evaluating grants, check out this guide: The Ultimate Guide to Prioritizing Your Prospects in 7 Easy Steps.
A decision matrix for grants is a tool used to evaluate and compare multiple grant opportunities systematically. It involves creating a table where criteria like funding amount, alignment with organizational goals, and application complexity are scored to prioritize the best options.
Using a decision matrix ensures a structured, objective approach to grant selection. It helps organizations efficiently allocate resources by focusing on opportunities that best align with their needs and capabilities.
Select criteria that reflect your organization's priorities and goals. Common factors include the likelihood of success, funding amount, application requirements, and the timeline for the grant.
Yes, a decision matrix should be tailored to each organization's unique needs and objectives. Adjust the criteria and weightings to reflect what matters most to your team.
Avoid overly complex criteria, neglecting team input, or failing to regularly update the matrix as priorities shift. Keeping the process clear and collaborative ensures the tool remains effective.
Table of contents
