Grant Readiness and Submission Checklist

Screen funders before anyone writes

• Treat eligibility as a gate and drop any opportunity that fails it.
• Score the rest on strategic match, funding match, eligibility detail, competition and relationship.
• Estimate bid hours for every live opportunity.
• Compare total bid hours with the writing hours your team actually has.
• Write down the one condition that would move each HOLD to GO.
• Take HOLD funders off the active list until that condition is met.

A warm relationship with a program officer never outweighs a failed eligibility test.

Forecast with a weighted pipeline

• Multiply each open request by its chance of funding, then add the results.
• Count awarded grants at 100% and declined requests at zero.
• Record how you set each probability.
• Revisit probabilities after every funding decision comes back.
• Show conservative, expected and optimistic scenarios side by side in board papers.

The total of every open request is the one figure that will not arrive in full.

Build the proposal in order

• Run a fit test first and decline opportunities that do not fit.
• Draft the theory of change and logframe before any narrative.
• Define indicators for each goal, outcome and output.
• Confirm every indicator has an activity producing it.
• Build the budget from the activities and schedule.
• Write the MEAL plan, then the narrative, then the executive summary last.

MEAL stands for monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning.

Make the budget traceable

• Tie every budget line to an activity, an assumption and a source.
• Confirm the requested amount matches the budget total.
• Write down the indirect rate, its source and the cost categories in its base.
• Check that shared costs charged as direct lines are not also in the indirect base.
• Limit match funding to amounts partners have committed in writing.
• Keep in-kind match in its own column with its valuation method.
• Date every assumption and round only the final display figures.

If the funder caps indirect costs and you cannot find the rule, mark it unknown and ask.

Review the draft before you submit

• Sort the funder's requirements into mandatory, scored and informational.
• Check every mandatory item, including attachments and safeguarding policy, before scoring anything.
• Hold the submission if any mandatory item fails, whatever the score.
• Leave unscored criteria blank instead of entering zero.
• Confirm every number traces to a source and no beneficiary data entered any AI tool.
• Have someone who did not write the proposal read it as a hostile reviewer.

Manage the award after it lands

• Record the award as a commitment and each payment when it reaches the bank.
• Tag every grant transaction with its fund.
• Track received, spent and remaining restricted balance for each award.
• Put each reporting deadline on a calendar with a 30-day warning window.
• List every asset the grant paid for and read its ownership and disposal terms.
• Confirm asset location and condition with a physical check before closeout.