We’ve all had deadlines sneak up on us. One second, we have plenty of time, and the next thing we know, it is due tomorrow, and we’re scrambling to make it happen.
No one likes to find themselves in this position.
Thankfully, Instrumentl has a solution. With our grant calendar solution, you can:
Organize all your important tasks and deadlines in one place
Assign responsibilities to members of your team
Optimize your workflow
Streamline the entire grant management process
In this article, we’ll dig into how Instrumentl’s grant calendar can improve your team’s time management. Using our practical tips, you’ll never miss a grant deadline again.
Sound good? Let’s jump in!
7 Time Management Tips for Grant Teams
We could all accomplish so much more if we simply had more time, so let’s go over some quick time-saving tips that can help your grant management team streamline operations!
1. Set Clear Deadlines for Every Task
It is absolutely critical that you set clear deadlines for every task.
Deadlines give you direction and a clear plan of attack, helping you best manage your time when you’re juggling multiple timelines. They also help you organize your workflow, as each task often must be completed in a sequence in order to properly complete the overall project.
As you look to set the deadlines, ask yourself the following questions.
When is the work due? Grant applications need to be submitted by a certain date, and that should be the driving factor behind all your deadlines.
Are there others who need to contribute to the task? If you need to get reports from one department and figures from another, make sure that you set individual deadlines for each element.
Does your work need to be approved? You can set internal deadlines to help with approval processes; however, keep in mind this will add time to the overall completion of a task.
Funders often have a small window when they are accepting applications. If you miss it, you’ll have to wait until the next cycle. It’s important to be generous with your deadlines. Account for the unexpected and give yourself a grace period.
Once you set your deadlines, make sure that you clearly communicate them with the rest of your team. Ensure the deadlines work with their schedules. If not, make adjustments.
How Instrumentl Can Help:
Instrumentl’s calendar view helps you see all your upcoming deadlines so you never miss an important date again.
Instrumentl makes grant tracking easy, especially when it comes to important deadlines. The grant calendar will help you and your team visualize deadlines, as well as set new ones based on workload.
You can set deadlines for submission goals, internal approvals, and so much more.
2. Prioritize Tasks Based on Urgency and Importance
You’ll never miss a grant deadline again if you have a clear plan of attack.
And, even better, you can save time when you prioritize tasks based on urgency and importance because you don’t have to waste time spinning on where to start. You already know what you need to complete and when.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a popular tool many teams use to help them decide where to spend their time.
The Eisenhower Matrix is a popular tool many use to help them make decisions on what tasks to tackle first.
This decision matrix helps rank tasks based on urgency and importance, allowing you to decide what needs to be done now and what can wait. It is a great tool for time management.
Urgent and important tasks you should do immediately.
Important but not urgent tasks can be scheduled.
Urgent but not important tasks can be delegated.
Neither urgent nor important tasks can either be done later or not at all.
With grants, there are a lot of tasks that need to be accomplished, but not everything can be done right away. Trying to tackle everything at once is a trap that those who struggle with time management often fall into.
If you need help sorting tasks as part of the grant management process, consider the following:
What are the deadlines?
Can you break the tasks into subtasks?
Can the tasks be delegated?
Most teams already have a full plate, so they need all the help they can get prioritizing. It’s your job to make the process feel more manageable, and a grants calendar is a great way to do so.
Plot everything in the calendar to make sure that priorities are well-balanced and organized in a way that will let you meet deadlines with ease. You don’t want to rush because all the deadlines are stacked against each other.
How Instrumentl Can Help:
Instrumentl’s task view provides a clear dashboard on what’s coming up, status of tasks, and more.
Instrumentl’s grant tracking features allow you to flag urgent tasks, and these will show up both on the grant tracker and on the calendar view. This will help you manage your time—and your team’s time—wisely.
3. Delegate Responsibilities Effectively
There are a lot of things that go into managing grants, including writing, reporting, managing, and so forth. While it can be tempting to take on all the responsibilities yourself, that’s not efficient.
You need to learn how to delegate in order to exercise time management during the grant management process. This will ensure that you’re able to get more done and focus your energy in areas where you will add the most value.
As you look to delegate, ask yourself the following questions.
Is there someone on my team whose job responsibility it is to do this task?
Is someone else capable of completing this task?
Does it require any specialized skill set?
Even if you need to invest time upfront in training someone to complete the task, that’s okay! It will yield dividends in the long run, so it will be time well spent.
Once you delegate, make sure that you communicate the expectations to your team member, and a grant calendar software is a great way to do that. They can clearly see what they’re responsible for and what’s up on the pipeline for them.
How Instrumentl Can Help:
Instrumentl lets you create tasks and assign them to your team to make sure they get done.
Instrumentl’s task feature is powerful. You can describe the task, choose task types, assign deadlines, add assignees and collaborators, and more.
As you assign tasks, your team members will be automatically notified that something new has been added to their queue. Members of the team can adjust the task status within the platform, add notes, and more. When used properly, you won’t have to waste time tracking down answers!
4. Schedule Regular Team Meetings
Regular team meetings are a great way to share status updates, solving issues in real-time to help move your workflow forward.
Team meetings save time by addressing issues upfront rather than when they become an issue down the line. Other benefits of consistent team check-ins include:
Driving an efficient workflow. You can quickly identify if multiple people are working on the same task or no one is assigned to a specific task.
Breaking barriers. If something is standing in your team’s way, you can quickly brainstorm solutions.
Fostering creativity. Open discussion can often lead to a free flow of ideas that can help take your grant to the next level.
Encouraging collaboration. No one is an island, so your team shouldn’t be working in silos. Working together is winning together.
Regular team meetings, while they take time upfront, can be used to drive efficiencies and save time in the long run.
How Instrumentl Can Help:
Instrumentl syncs with Outlook and other popular tools.
With Instrumentl, you can sync your team meetings with your grants calendars so you have everything in a single location. Even better, you can seamlessly sync your Instrumentl calendar with Outlook. All you need to do is:
Navigate to your account and integrations.
Select settings and copy the link to your Instrumentl calendar.
Those who master effective time management regularly use reminders and alerts. With so many competing priorities, it’s the best way to make sure that things get done!
How can you effectively do this?
Check out your grants calendar. Are there upcoming deadlines? Set a reminder to start work on key deliverables a week or two before to ensure you have time.
Block time on your calendar. This is a great way to remind yourself to get work done and dedicate the space to do it.
Set alerts for new opportunities. Use Instrumentl to notify you of new grant opportunities that may fit your nonprofit’s needs.
Your grant calendar should be a place where you and your team get a comprehensive look at your grant pipeline.
Instrumentl can automatically send reminders of upcoming deadlines. As long as it’s set up in the platform, you will be notified by email of grant deadlines, upcoming tasks, and so much more.
6. Maintain a Task Calendar for Each Team Member
Many grant calendars allow you to filter tasks by team so you don’t have to manually track who is doing what separately. Why is this important?
You can manage workload. You can see if team members are frontloaded with tasks and distribute deliverables more equitably.
You can encourage ownership. Your team members want to feel like they are owning a part of the project, and your task calendar can help them see their overall contributions.
You can identify issues. If there’s a hold up in the process, you can quickly see who is responsible and troubleshoot to help advance to the next step.
Individual team calendars can help drive better accountability on your team. They know what they own, and you can better check in on deadlines that are being missed.
Task calendars for each team member can be a great addition to help you manage your team’s time and allow them to start honing their own time management skills.
How Instrumentl Can Help:
Instrumentl’s filters are easy to use when looking to manage your team’s calendars. You can see who is responsible for what and when using these filters.
In addition to making sure that all calendars are integrated for ease of use, Instrumentl can also help you to easily filter to export who is responsible for what to get a clear understanding of their overall workflow.
7. Automate Routine Tasks
The last way that you can manage your time better is to automate where you can. This will help you optimize workflows in new ways, which is critical when it comes to busy grant managers.
What are some tasks that you can automate?
Schedule reports to run and update on a regular basis.
Send auto-generated emails after a gift or interaction.
Save grant searches and receive updates on new opportunities.
Set up deadline reminders and get notified by email of approaching deadlines.
As you consider your entire grant management process, be strategic in when and how you automate. That will help you better invest your time to add the most value.
Grant calendars are a great way to do this because you can set them and forget them in some ways. They do the work of reminding you what’s coming—and at what frequency you want to be notified.
How Instrumentl Can Help:
Instrumentl’s calendar includes funder deadlines automatically when you save opportunities.
What are some ways that you can automate with a grant calendar on Instrumentl?
Saved grant opportunities will automatically populate on the grant calendar.
You will get automated reminders of upcoming grant deadlines so you never miss another one.
You get automated emails of new opportunities through a weekly digest.
The benefits of working in Instrumentl for end-to-end grant management is that it automatically notifies you of your upcoming tasks and opportunities so you never miss a deadline.
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Instrumentl is a great time-saving tool, helping you navigate your end-to-end grant management process.
Instrumentl’s grant calendar:
Encourages team productivity. You can easily see what needs to be done, who needs to complete it, and by when.
Simplifies current processes. The easy-to-navigate workflow boils your grants down to key tasks to drive clarity.
Improves workflow. You can easily identify where grants may be getting snagged and help guide them to completion.
With seamless integration on multiple platforms and an easy-to-navigate dashboard, Instrumentl’s calendar feature stands out from the rest.
Your grant teams will never be bogged down by administrative tasks and red tape when they use it. Everything you need to manage your time efficiently and get things done is at the tip of your fingers using this tool!
In this article, we covered seven tips to help you with time management, especially when it comes to using a grant calendar:
Set clear deadlines
Prioritize based on urgency and importance
Delegate effectively
Schedule regular team meetings
Alerts and reminders are your friend
Maintain task calendars for team members
Automate where you can
A grant calendar—like the one offered by Instrumentl—can help you optimize your workflow for enhanced grant management.
Once you use Instrumentl, you’ll never have to worry about missing a grant deadline again! Ready to try out all Instrumentl has to offer? Sign up for our free, 14-day trial today!
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