What do you need to be grant ready?

Things have been pretty crazy for the last six months or so. For us, the last couple of months have been particularly busy with clients needing help with grant applications. There are a lot of funding opportunities starting to emerge as governments try to mitigate the damage being wrought on the economy.

If your organisation is serious about applying for grant funding, you need to be thinking about being ‘grant ready’ with your key projects. You can grab our Grant Ready Guide, Project Planning Template and Project Planning Guide on our Free Resources page to help you on your way.

Stakeholder Consultation

One big challenge that some organisations come up against is when the grant application asks how they’ve consulted with stakeholders. Whether you’re a local government, a not-for-profit or a commercial business, you’ll very likely need to address this…and address it well.

We’d love to hear from you when you are still in the planning stages of your project, which is when we can help you shape the case for the investment, and work alongside you to develop and implement an authentic (unhurried) stakeholder engagement process.

If you’re going it alone, ask yourself this one critical question before consulting with your community: ‘What level of influence are we offering?’

Use the answer to this question to be really upfront with people about the purpose of the engagement. Perhaps you’re just letting them know what’s happening and it’s an opportunity for them to ask questions to help them understand. Or perhaps you are completely handing over the decision-making to the community (with some high-level parameters).

Wherever your consultation sits on this spectrum, transparency about the level of influence on offer is key to managing expectations, as well as building and maintaining trust.

‘Closing the loop’ is also vital – ensure you’ve built in a mechanism to report back to the community about how their input influenced the final decision.

Need help getting grant ready? Or have a grant you’re ready to apply for? We have very limited spaces for new client work at the moment – if you want to be on the list, act quickly as we will soon be booked out.

Need a grant writer?

Grab our free info pack that includes:

• Comprehensive Pre-Application Checklist (so you know you’re ready to apply).
• Case studies of some of our grant writing clients.
• Grant Writing FAQ.
• Price Guide for grant writing services.