A Guide to Reviewing Grants and RFPs

Unlock strategies to save you 90% of your time spent assessing your eligibility for any new funding opportunities

So, you read our post on “Should you even raise?” and you’ve decided that you want to raise grant funding. What’s next? Well, first of all, you make sure you’re familiar with any and all opportunities available for you to apply for.

✅ - You’re already receiving our grant notifications, so you’re well on your way there.

Now…

A friend of yours just forwarded you a new RFP from World Food Programme; You just saw a new prize from Gubliken Foundation in your Grant & Co partners newsletter; A LinkedIn influencer you follow just shared a new grant opportunity from Norad.

From the headlines, all of these grants look like good fits for you and your work.

So you decide to dig in.

You click through to each link. The World Food Programme page has 6 different sub links on it containing information. A USAID RFP is/was 70 pages long. And hidden deep within each document are specific requirements on who, where, why, and how they’ll fund. Take it from us (we’ve felt the pain!)... there’s nothing worse than getting your CFO, Sustainability Officer, and Grant Writer all making moves on an application, spending 30 hours on a first draft; and then discovering that the grant is only for nonprofits… 🙁

So… what do you do? Where do you start? Before you EVER put pen to paper, you should confirm your eligibility.

But you don’t have time, right now, to read through 70 pages!

You can always ask Chat GPT to make a summary for you… but we’ve found AI might still miss key things that would make you and your team want to pull your hair out.

Here are the 10 steps that we at Grant & Co use each and every day to make sure a new RFP is worth our and our entrepreneurs’ attention, saving us 90%+ of our time.

1. Do a Quick Scan of the Grant’s Focus and Funding Amount

2. Check the Applicant “Type” Requirements

3. Check Application Deadlines and Cycles

4. Verify Industry or Sector Limitations

5. Confirm Geographic Eligibility

6. Assess Company Size and Revenue Requirements

7. Look for Targeted Demographic or Ownership Requirements

8. Examine Project-Specific Requirements

9. Deep Dive into the Financial and Organizational Requirements

10. Double Check the FAQs

Hint: “CTRL + F” is going to be your new best friend. :)

Ready for the full guide with timesaving tips and tricks to see if any of those grants make sense for you?