Are you Grant Ready? The Grant Readiness Checklist
A grant readiness checklist serves as a valuable tool for organizations to evaluate their preparedness for grant opportunities. The purpose of this checklist is to ensure that businesses have all the necessary documentation, information, and strategies in place to efficiently and effectively apply for grants. By using a grant readiness checklist, organizations can identify any gaps or areas requiring improvement, allowing them to address these issues proactively. This not only streamlines the grant application process but also enhances the organization’s chances of successfully securing funding. In essence, a grant readiness checklist is crucial for businesses to maximize their potential in the competitive grant landscape and to position themselves as strong contenders for available funding opportunities. Not only does using a grant readiness checklist help you to apply for and acquire funding opportunities, if your organization is Grant Ready then it is also primed to generate profit. So, let’s see if your business is grant ready!
- Relationship, Relationship, Relationship – Relationships are essential when seeking grant funding. By building relationships with potential funders, you can learn more about their interests and priorities, and you can position your organization as a good fit for their funding. Additionally, relationships can help you get your foot in the door and increase your chances of being considered for funding.
- Budget – It is always important to have a good understanding of what is coming in and what is going out. Keeping a good budget will give you a better understanding of your business. They say “You can tell a lot about a person by where they spend their time and their money,” that saying is true for businesses as well.
- A Unique Explanation of What You Would Do With 10K, 25k, 50k, 100k, 1M – This one depends on how much you are going after, but regardless this is extremely simple. If you can’t convey in a compelling way how you plan to spend those amounts, WHY should it be given to you? Also, there are grants available that offer goods and services as opposed to actual dollars. For example, if you know you need $25k for coding and other IT work, it is very likely that a review committee member, judge or just a person in the audience doesn’t give you the $25k, but provides the resources to get all your IT work done.
- Your Story/Journey in Detail – Just about every funding opportunity is going to ask about your entrepreneurial story. Therefore, you need to perfect expressing it in a way that will pull at the heart strings that control their check books. Many of the grants available focus more on the owner and her journey than the actual business.
- Milestones, at Least 3 and 5 Years –You can’t just understand where you are now, you also must know where you are going to be. Funders will not give you money or resources if they don’t have a clear idea of where you are going. If you’re not able to articulate this it is the same as not knowing.
- Active Social Media Presence – Social media is not just the wave of the future. It is the wave of right now. Simply having a website is not enough and far too many organizations have little to no social media presence. There are many companies with a great website that struggle financially, but I have not seen ONE company with a great social media presence that is struggling financially.
- Organizational Gaps (Staffing, Technology or Resources) – It is perfectly ok not to have everything or everyone in place when you start your business. However, it is not ok to not know where your gaps are. The overwhelming majority of funding opportunities are going to ask you about your team and your gaps, so know them well.
- Key Team Members and Why – What is it about you and your team that uniquely qualifies you to operate your business at a high level. Here you want to focus on the most essential positions and not every position. It is critical to know the difference between important and essential positions. What position(s) can your business not survive without?
- WBE or MBE Certification – This certification is highly important. Most high-yield funding opportunities that require businesses to be woman or minority owned will also require the appropriate certification. Also, many government and some commercial contracts require, at a minimum, a partnership with a woman owned business to qualify for funding. Therefore, advertising this certification can open your business to acquire additional funding sources or funders may reach out directly to you.
- 5-Minute and 30-Minute Pitch Deck – Yes, there are a plethora of pitch competitions out there where you can win funds and/or resources for pitching your company. However, for the purpose of grant readiness the pitch deck is needed because about 90% of funding opportunities, will require you to perform a 5 to 30-minute pitch (lengths may vary) to be awarded funding.
- W-9 – Your company will need this document pretty much any time another company plans to cut a check physically or electronically. Have this ready to forward at all times. It takes all of 5-minutes to complete, if that.
- A TRUE Business Plan – This is a document that is almost a must have if you plan to go after grant funding. Not because it is required by funders, but because it will make applying for funding exponentially easier. I say TRUE business plan because your business plan should be living and breathing. Therefore, as your business grows and changes so should your business plan. At any given time your business plan should tell you where you are and here your going. Plus, most of the information I mentioned above will, at least in part, be in your business plan.
- Have Easy Access to a Circular Filing Cabinet aka The Trash – This is where you put all of the “they say…” or “I heard that…” comments, grant emails, internet ads, commercials or myths about grants for your business. They all tell you these 1⁄4 truths about how easy it is to go after and secure hundreds of millions of dollars in funding. Especially starting out, this is not an easy task, but it can be very rewarding with proper due diligence.