Don’t Let Internal Procedures Ruin a Perfect Grant Opportunity

I was recently lamenting on LinkedIn about a string of federal grant opportunities that went live on July 2 with a 30-day window between then and the deadline. 30 days is already a tight window when developing large federal grant proposals, but when you drop the application details a day before a federal holiday (and therefore a long weekend), that 30-day window shrinks, giving you less time to meet the deadline. (And don’t get us started on some of the 7- and 10-day grant windows happening lately.)

There was a robust discussion in the comment section about the reasons for these tight deadlines, seemingly little care about when and if grants are posting, and the necessity of grantees to have their ducks in a row before the grant even opens if they want a snowball’s chance of getting awarded. If you want to join the conversation, you can find the post HERE.

A few comments discussed the hardships these short application windows caused grant professionals who work at agencies enforcing their own protocols for approving grant permissions. And it got me thinking – what is the right balance between an organization’s leaders having a say in the grant applications going out the door and creating a process that prohibits their grant professionals from applying for a number of grants.

I’ve experienced many different approval processes at varying agencies, and here’s where most of them tend to land.

THE CEO CALLS THE SHOTS

In this case, the organization’s leader (be it the Executive Director, City Manager, School Superintendent, or some other title) determines whether or not a grant can be submitted. The approval process may involve submitting some form of formal documentation for the CEO to sign off on or simply having a quick chat in the hallway to get the go ahead.

How easy it is to get time with your agency’s CEO probably varies from place to place, but when you’re only dealing with one person, it should be easier to carve out time or a process to prevent this step in your process from becoming a roadblock to submission. I’ve found this works easily when the grant professional has direct access to the CEO, but if you must move through layers of supervisors to get there, it can be a hinderance.

THE BOARD MUST VOTE ON IT

Many government agencies, and some nonprofits, adopt this course of action. Before any grant can be submitted you must present either the completed application or a synopsis of the grant and proposed project and budget. In theory, it makes sense, but in practice, this can be a nightmare.

Even in local government, some boards only meet once or twice a month. And to get on the agenda you need to submit a report anywhere from 5-15 days before the meeting date. Let’s do the math here. You have a grant that dropped on July 2 with an August 2 deadline. Your agency’s only meeting date is on July 25, and you have to submit your agenda report by July 15. If your agency requires the final application to be included as part of the report, you now have 8 workdays to collect information, draft an application, edit the narrative, build a budget, and create all needed attachments (to include support letters, a logic model, and more).

This is certainly more doable if the agenda report only requires information about the grant (what it can be used for, how much money is available, and what the cost sharing requirements are), along with a synopsis of the program you’re planning and the estimate of the overall budget and where the cost share will come from.

THE BOARD MUST APPROVE, BUT THERE IS WIGGLE ROOM

One city I worked for used to have the above process, but there were instances when the timing did not allow me to get approval during a council meeting before the grant was due. That meant we missed out on a few grant opportunities.

They eventually changed the policy to state that if it was not possible to get approval beforehand, the grant could be submitted, and then approval sought after the fact. Of course, that meant if the city council voted the grant down, I would have to pull the application from consideration for funding. That only happened twice over the course of 15 years (and both times had nothing to do with the grant or project, but some political maneuvering that was beyond my paygrade). But that was still fewer times than the number of grants we were missing out on before the policy was adopted.

IS YOUR APPROVAL POLICY CAUSING YOU TO LOSE GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

If your agency’s grant approval policy is causing your agency to lose out on quality grant opportunities, then it is time to revisit your approval policy. What’s more important to your organization? Having the board get the final say in all things, or finding an approval process that puts in needed guardrails while ensuring the best chance for increased grant funding?

Does your organization have a process for approving grant submissions? If so, is it working for you? Email us hello@haydayservices.com and let’s talk about it.