Grant Readiness: Are We Truly Ready, Or Just Pretending?

If you’re unsure whether your nonprofit will be grant-ready when a new request for proposals (RFP) lands in your lap, ask yourself this question: How do I feel in my gut?

Weird, I know. But trust me on this one.

Here’s the thing: Intellectually, you know exactly what to do to prepare a grant. You’ve got to assemble a budget. Design the program. Explain how you’ll deliver impact for the clients you serve. Plug all the right pieces into whatever template the grantor has provided.

Rinse. Repeat.

But if you were to step back for a moment from the routine of it all, I bet you’d find aspects of the grants process that you’d like to be better at.

Maybe grants always feel like a three-alarm fire that upends your life and nonprofit for weeks at a time.

Maybe grants always feel like an unending sprint, and there’s never enough time to dial things in well.

Maybe grants always feel like Monday morning on repeat, frantic and frustrating.

The reality is that some of these elements might never go away. Grants require plenty of elbow grease in the form of thinking, budgeting, writing, and packaging.

But there are other parts of the process that don’t have to be this hard. Let’s talk about some strategies to stop pretending to be ready and actually being grant-ready. That way, no matter what else is going on, you can respond to that RFP with confidence, with your grant readiness already in motion.

Strategy 1: Build Grant Readiness by Studying Grant Processes and Documenting Them With Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs)

Across nonprofits and for-profits alike, too many systems live only in leaders’ heads. That makes day-to-day operations fragile, especially if the executive director or CEO is out sick, on vacation, or simply overloaded. You can’t delegate easily without clear documentation of how things get done around your nonprofit.

If you apply regularly (or even semi-regularly) for competitive grants, the arrival of an RFP shouldn’t be a surprise. The rules may shift. Maybe you used to have 90 days to prep, and now you have 30. But the steps you must complete are directionally similar to those you've taken many times before.

So document those steps. Create a one-page SOP outlining the first three things to do when a new RFP drops. Include the names and titles of the first three key people to engage. We always tell our clients at Silver Maple Strategies to include a clear "go/no-go" framework so you don’t waste precious time crafting a proposal that’s fundamentally out of alignment with your theory of change, activities, and desired impact areas. And assuming you greenlight the proposal, assign roles: who builds the budget, who drafts the narrative, and who reviews everything holistically. You might not have the luxury of a big team, so it's possible all these roles reside with you (yes, you personally!). In any case, if you can, rope in even a second party to simply review and pay attention to critical details that will decide whether your proposal is OK or excellent.

Finally, be sure your SOP includes buffer deadlines. Plan to submit at least two days before the due date. We've all encountered situations where grant proposal online portals crash or otherwise mess up, and you don’t want to be left empty-handed come award season because of a glitch you could have anticipated and avoided.

Strategy 2: Create a Reusable Set of Templates & a Documents Library

I've worked on a lot of grants over the years, and a perennial challenge I've observed is the scramble for proper documentation. Clients recall that a proposal they shipped years ago might be good to dust off and resubmit. Or a data point illustrating a nonprofit's impact is buried on a website or in a file somewhere on someone's computer desktop.

To get ahead of such a scramble, we recommend that all nonprofits assemble an easily shareable documents library. Ideally, this will be a cloud-based library such as Box, Google Drive, or Dropbox. In this library, you'll want to create clearly labeled folders to store documents, including:

• Core messaging (theory of change, logic models, talking points, FAQs)

• Past proposals (funded & unfunded, with reviewer feedback)

• Commonly cited data and peer-reviewed research sources

• Budgets and financial criteria specific to your nonprofit

• Standard team biographies

• Case studies and testimonials

• Annual reports

• Impact reports

You’ll likely think of many other helpful resources you’ve developed over the years that belong in this library. Capture and archive those here, too.

As part of this library, put together some basic templates designed to get you off the starting block. These might include a basic budget template, a project narrative template, or a case study template designed to capture key insights on the impact you’ve had on clients you serve.

The purpose of the library and the templates is to get you up and running faster. No more digging through files and losing sleep about “that one gold nugget of a data point.”

Nope. It’s all in a central location. Give it a fun name. The Vault. The Master Key. Raven Rock.

Who says being grant-ready has to be all blazers, starch, and spiffy shoes?

Strategy 3: Integrate Your Tech Stack, Including Artificial Intelligence (AI) Tools

Nonprofit grant readiness in 2025 should include tech tools—especially AI. With the caveat that you should always follow your nonprofit's tech guidelines, remember that tech tools can be a big asset in being grant-ready. This is especially true of AI tools such as ChatGPT or Gemini. I'm a big advocate of designing Custom GPTs (or their equivalent), basically a wrapper that sits on top of a large foundation model that can be trained on your past proposals, data, and insights. Use your discretion as to what you share (or don't). If you have a paid account, you'll generally get a higher level of machine to do the hard work of research for you. Then, trust but verify to ensure the machine output is accurate, not hallucinated.

I do not recommend connecting your AI accounts to Google Drive, Dropbox, or other sources of data. As numerous AI experts have written, no one knows exactly how these tools work, and if you give them access to all your files–not just targeted files for the specific purpose of grant writing–you never know when the AI tool might grab and use materials without your consent. Tread carefully while experimenting with ways to harness the power of these tools.

The use of tech tools should extend to project management software such as Asana, ClickUp, or Trello, and to CRMs such as High Level or HubSpot. Use the capabilities of these tools to manage contacts and schedules, track deadlines, and respond more effectively and efficiently.

In Summary: This Is Not a Drill

The truth is, there’s way too much urgency in the world of grant prep. I’m convinced that the anxiety and overwhelm many nonprofit leaders feel could be substantially reduced with a little upfront planning in the “slow” season, so that when an RFP curveball heads their direction, they’ll be prepared to catch it and capitalize on it.

You might think none of this sounds particularly exciting, and honestly, you’re right.

But think of how you’ll feel on the other side of that next grant if you invest time retooling to be truly grant-ready.