For many nonprofits, grant seeking invokes a roller coaster of emotions. Grants can open doors to new opportunities through large award amounts, yet successfully reaching funding goals is often a struggle.

Securing grant funding requires a thoughtful approach and process to maximize the return on your investment. In this article, we will guide you through what to consider when building a grant strategy, including how to leverage a grant strategy template to streamline the process and maximize your chances of success.

Let’s dive in!

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What Is a Grant Strategy?

A grant strategy is a structured plan that guides your nonprofit’s funding process, ensuring your team is aligned with your goals over a specific time frame.

Grant strategies often reflect your funding needs for a full year and include a blueprint for meeting those targets through specific grants that have been identified as worth pursuing.

Outlining funding opportunities for the year ahead allows you to:

• Prioritize grants with the highest ROI vs. haphazardly chasing random opportunities you come across.
• Understand where you have enough resources and where gaps may exist in your fundraising calendar.
• Identify timelines and deadlines so that you can appropriately prioritize and allocate your team’s efforts.

As grant expert Veronica Kulon explains, this process is all about creating a structured system for success:

“Implementing a well-structured, tailored approach to grant strategy and prospect research, nonprofits can significantly improve their chances of securing funding and advancing their missions.” - Veronica Kulon

As you begin to work on funding requests, you’ll be able to reference your grant strategy as a guide for what to prioritize and when. Overall, a grants strategy helps you take daily actions toward securing the level of funding your organization needs for its annual operations.

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5 Elements of a Grant Strategy Template

Creating a grant strategy each year doesn’t have to be complicated—especially when you have a grant strategy template to work off of.

A grant strategy template makes it easy to keep your entire team on the same page, providing a blueprint that can be adjusted and adapted to the specific needs of your organization.

While every grant strategy will look a little different, making sure you include the following key elements will set your team up for success:

1. Funding goal: You’ll need to list the programs that need grant funding and the target amounts for each. This guide on setting effective fundraising goals is a helpful resource to reference.
2. Good-fit grant opportunities: The bulk of your grant strategy will consist of a curated list of high-ROI grant opportunities that have been vetted for mission and funding fit. Be sure to include the funder’s name, a link to the opportunity, and any relevant notes as to why it’s worth pursuing.
3. Grant award amounts: It’s important to include the anticipated award amount for each funding opportunity to help ensure you can hit your funding goals. Pro Tip: Instrumentl’s 990 snapshots make it easy to see a funder’s average and median award amounts year over year.
4. Grant deadlines: All deadlines should be noted so that tasks can be scheduled accordingly. Don’t forget to account for LOI due dates and reporting deadlines as well.

Roles and responsibilities: Make sure it’s clear in your grant strategy who is responsible for what. Including specific roles and responsibilities for each grant will help keep everyone accountable and organized throughout the whole year.

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How to Create Your Own Grant Strategy Template

Using the most common elements of a grant strategy listed above, you can create a template that your entire team can collaborate on to reach your fundraising goals.

We recommend using a cloud-based tool (like Google Sheets) for your grant strategy template so that your entire team can access it at once and you don’t have to worry about version control.

Templates can be great if you’re only applying for a few grants per year. However, as your annual grant strategy becomes more robust, you may want to consider transitioning to a dedicated grant management software.

For example, Instrumentl replaces the need for manual entry and tracking. Simply save a grant from your curated list of grant matches and it will be automatically added to your Grant Tracker. Here you’ll be able to see your:

• Total funding goal
• How much funding you’ve been awarded, submitted, and declined
• Each saved grant, its owner, deadline, status, amount, next task, and notes

Everything is organized and accessible in one place, making it easy for your team to collaborate on all the different moving pieces of your strategy.

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Nonprofit Funding Strategy FAQs

1. What Are Some Common Mistakes When Developing a Grants Strategy?

When pursuing grant funding, it can be easy to get overly excited about potential opportunities that may not ultimately be the best fit. This can lead to wasted time and effort on applications that you never had a good chance of winning.

As grant expert Loree Lipstein explains, it’s critical to strategically narrow down your list to those with the highest ROI:

“Grant writing is definitely a quality over quantity situation. A shorter list of prospects, that are all higher quality, are way more valuable than reaching out to a large number of foundations where you may be stretching the fit. Drafting a winning grant proposal is a time-intensive activity. Make sure you take the time ahead of starting to write to do your research on the foundation prospect and be sure it's a good match - for your organization AND for the foundation.” — Loree Lipstein

2. How Many Grants Should Be Included in Your Funding Strategy?

There is no one-size-fits-all answer to this question. It all depends on the number of programs you are funding and your target fundraising goals for each.

Considering that not every grant will be awarded, it's important that your grant strategy includes enough grants to account for inevitable rejections. On average, nonprofits have about a 34% grant success rate—dependent on the type of funding and other variables.

If you’d like more detailed guidance, check out this article on the 6 steps to determine how many grants you should apply for to meet your goals.

3. What Are the 5 R's of Grant Writing?

The 5 R’s of Grant Writing remind us that a grant strategy is about more than writing an application. The 5 R’s include: Readiness, Research, Relationships, Writing, and Reporting.

Learn more about these in our article: 24 Tips for Stronger Grant Proposals.

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Wrapping Up: Grant Strategy Template for Nonprofits

Grants are an exciting way to grow your nonprofit and a key piece of the puzzle for any fundraising strategy. Thoughtful consideration about which grants to pursue and how many will help your nonprofit more effectively reach its goals, and a grant strategy template is a key tool in streamlining this approach.

For an even simpler process, consider trying out Instrumentl’s all-in-one grant tracking and management system. Get started with a free 14-day trial today.