The Power of Planning: Why Your Nonprofit Needs a Yearly Grant Calendar
There’s no rest for nonprofits that rely on grant funding to power their mission. Just staying on top of available grant opportunities can be a challenge — and then there’s the small detail of actually writing and submitting the application.
As you can imagine, staying organized and maintaining a clear plan is the difference between whether your grant funding efforts sink or swim.
That’s where one of our team’s favorite tools comes in: the Yearly Grant Calendar.
Integrating a grant calendar into your grant team’s process is a simple yet powerful way to transform how your organization approaches funding.
A Yearly Grant Calendar Acts as a Roadmap So You Never Miss a Deadline
As nonprofit professionals know, missing a grant deadline can be the difference between securing essential funding and falling short of your financial needs.
Making missed deadlines a thing of the past is the biggest reason why grant calendars are so powerful.
By laying out your grant opportunities by month, you create a roadmap for your team to follow — detailing opportunities, requirements, and deadlines — so your workflow stays focused. Most importantly, it will help you avoid the frantic last-minute grant writing rush that too often leads to missed deadlines or incomplete applications.
An Effective Grant Calendar Includes Three Key Components
A well-structured grant calendar covers four crucial components to help streamline the grant application process.
It Highlights Critical Deadlines: An effective grant calendar is deadline-driven. Beyond all else, it puts each grant application deadline front and center so your team can plan ahead and ensure critical milestones are met along the way.
The Calendar Tracks Programs and Capital by Project: Grant calendars should also track both the specific program and the capital needed for every requested project. This makes it easier to ensure your grant requests are aligned with your organization’s mission and needs.
The Calendar Details the Grant Amount Requested: Finally, your calendar must track the amounts requested for each grant. This component is key to keeping your financial objectives crystal clear.
It Identifies Foundation Contacts and Team Roles: Depending on the size of your organization, including foundation contact information to ensure smooth communication along with specific responsibilities for each team member can help keep everyone on track. This should also help the team plan for follow-ups or pivot to alternative strategies whenever needed.
Integrate a Grant Calendar into Your Process and Never Miss Another Deadline
A yearly grant calendar is more than just a schedule. It’s a strategic tool to help keep your organization focused, organized, proactive — and well funded.
With your calendar in-hand and a commitment to integrating it into your grant process, you’ll never miss an application deadline, stay aligned with your goals, and put your nonprofit in the best position to secure funding and fulfill your mission.
About The Author
Katie Schock is a dual-disciplined grants and development professional with over 15 years of expertise serving local foundations and a variety of not-for-profit organizations ranging from human services to intellectual disabilities to the arts. She also serves as a voting Board Member of two Foundations and is the Executive Director of one of the top Family Foundations in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.