March 11, 2025
The Impact Issue #52: Master Your Decision-Making!
Struggling with grant-seeking decisions? This issue of The Impact explores expert-backed decision-making strategies, AI tools, and top grant opportunities to help you prioritize with confidence.
Hi friends!
Decision fatigue is real. We make so many choices each day that exhaustion can quickly set in.
In this week’s edition, we’ll help you combat that fatigue, equipping you with expert tips, technology, and resources so you can master the art of decision-making when it comes to grants.
Welcome to The Impact.
Pitfalls and Pointers
⚠️ Pitfall: Approaching Funding Opportunities With Too Much Emotion
We all want to make a difference, but sometimes we can get our hearts set on a specific grant or funding opportunity before we even know if we’d be a competitive applicant.
This can cause us to over-invest our limited resources into a single opportunity, even if it's not the best fit or biggest ROI.
💡 Pointer: Use a Decision Matrix to Help Introduce Reason Into Your Grant Search
A decision matrix can be your nonprofit’s hidden weapon. It’s a tool you can use to prioritize grants and determine which will make the most significant impact on your organization.
Four common options include:
- Eisenhower Matrix allows you to sort options based on their importance and the urgency they need to get done.
- Weighted Matrix helps you use different criteria, assigning weight to select factors as some criteria may factor more heavily than others.
- Rubric Matrix assesses best-fit opportunities based on how well your nonprofit meets the criteria.
- Weighted Rubric is a hybrid matrix, allowing you to consider different factors, weights, and more.
You can use decision matrices to determine if you should apply for a grant, how to prioritize grant responsibilities, program funding priority, and more.
👉 Read on to learn how to implement decision matrices in your nonprofit!
Tech You Should Know
What: Created by Tech Matters, the Nonprofit AI Treasure Map is a decision tree that can help you determine AI use cases at your nonprofit to improve your workflow.
How Grant Writers Can Use It:
- Prioritize tasks that can be completed using AI. These can include administrative tasks and data analysis.
- Determine what tasks require a human touch and create schedules accordingly. These often include program-based tasks that require more critical thinking.
- Identify checkpoints to quality control AI outputs. Even as you introduce AI at your nonprofit, it will never be perfect. You still need to invest resources to verify it’s operating as expected.
Ultimately, the Nonprofit AI Treasure Map helps nonprofits decide if they should be using AI for specific tasks or if they should continue to do them manually.
Keep in Mind:
- Check your nonprofit to make sure you’re in line with any policies governing AI usage.
🗺️ Check out the Nonprofit AI Treasure Map for yourself!
Expert Perspectives
🏆 Kimberly Hays de Muga and Amanda Day on Overcoming Analysis Paralysis During Grant Seeking
When you’re searching for grants, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. There are so many great opportunities that it can be difficult to know where to start.
Grant professionals Kimberly Hays de Muga and Amanda Day of Fundraising HayDay shared tips to help you kick your dread of decision-making to the curb.
Here’s their expert advice:
- Assess your internal capacity, including how much time and effort you put into writing a grant. If it takes you 30 hours to apply for a grant and it’s only for $1,000, it may not be worth the energy. Look at what is taking the most time and identify if there are ways you can streamline the process.
- Use the deadline to help you determine which grants to pursue. Ask yourself if the grant is feasible given the status of the program and the time you need to prepare your application. This includes all the required attachments, collaborative agreements, reports, budgets, and other financial documentation.
- Avoid confusing eligibility for competitiveness. Just because you are eligible for a grant doesn’t mean you have a good chance of winning it. Meeting the bare minimum requirements isn’t enough to justify applying.
🔍 Refine your critical thinking skills to help you make informed decisions during grant-seeking!
A Gift for You
We all wish we had unlimited time and resources to pursue every single grant. However, that’s not always the case. It can be tough to prioritize prospects who can make the biggest impact on your nonprofit.
Never fear!
We put together this ultimate guide to help you prioritize your prospects in just seven steps.
Opportunities Spotlight
🚦 Underserved Communities Traffic Safety Grant Program
Who It’s For: Nonprofits looking to improve road safety within underserved communities across Massachusetts
Next Deadline: May 31, 2025
Grant Amount: Up to $75,000
The Details: Underserved Communities Traffic Safety Grant Program hopes to reduce fatalities and serious injuries across Massachusetts, using crash data to inform new programming and educational projects that improve traffic safety. Topics covered may include distracted driving, pedestrian safety, age-targeted programs, and more.
🐶 Folke H. Peterson Foundation Grant
Who It’s For: Nonprofits focused on preventing animal cruelty and improving quality of life
Next Deadline: October 31, 2025
Grant Amount: $5,000-$20,000
The Details: The Folke H. Peterson Foundation Grant is committed to protecting animals, funding nonprofits and programming that helps provide medical assistance, improve living conditions, and more for animals in need. The funds can be used to support programs, projects, emergency funding, or general operating expenses.
🔍 Find even more grant opportunities now!
Networking Nook
💻 GPA Webinar: You Want to Evaluate That?! Practical Strategies to Measure Hard-to-Evaluate Programs
April 24, 2025 | 1 p.m. CT
Join the Grant Professionals Association as they share case studies around hard-to-evaluate programs and initiatives, including resources that can help you evaluate in meaningful and measurable ways. This session will help build your competence and confidence with future evaluations.
Don’t Miss Out
📅 Conference: U.S. National Science Foundation Grants Conference
May 21 - May 23 | New Orleans
Join key U.S. National Science Foundation members as they cover the current state of funding, share an overview of the proposal and award process, and review current and recently updated policies and procedures that can help you through the application process. There are in-person and virtual options available.
Hurry!
To check out more recent and upcoming live events, go here.
In Case You Missed It
📑 Article: Transforming Grant Management at the University of Illinois With Instrumentl
Learn how one grant professional transformed the grants process within higher education. By utilizing Instrumentl’s resources to help her track, manage, and find new opportunities, she helped champion a more collaborative and organized approach to win more grants.
📼 Video: Is AI Going to Take My Job as a Grant Writer?
Join our partners at Learn Grant Writing as they explore the current state of AI in grant writing. In this video, they share tips on how you can use AI to make your job easier instead of feeling threatened by it.
🎙️Podcast: Measuring What Matters: A Guide to Meaningful Nonprofit Data Metrics (Episode 149)
On this episode of the Grant Writing Simplified Podcast, Teresa Huff shares more about how to make the most of your metrics. She provides a framework you can adapt at your nonprofit and why the type of data you collect makes a big impact on the outcomes you can report.
Don’t Let FOMO Drive Your Grants Strategy
Many of us suffer from FOMO—the fear of missing out. We don’t want to miss something, so instead we try to do everything.
We have the best of intentions, but there are limits to what we can accomplish.
Instrumentl can help you make decisions and stay on track. You can map out your deadlines, assign tasks, and see the big picture of your grants strategy, including when you may have more capacity to take on new opportunities.
👉 Try Instrumentl free for 14 days to help you organize your grants pipeline!
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