3 Mistakes Nonprofits Make With Grant Proposals — And What to Do Instead

Funding is what keeps nonprofits running. However, funds are increasingly difficult for nonprofits to secure, with declining donor participation and cuts to federal funding among the causes.

Some nonprofits dealing with these challenges may apply to grant opportunities with a spray-and-pray approach, hoping one of the many funders they submit a proposal will give them a chance.

This is a mistake — for several reasons. Here’s an overview of the most common errors nonprofits commit with grant proposals, and what they should do instead.

1. Applying Too Broadly

Applying to every grant funding opportunity you can find is a surefire way to waste time and energy. This is especially true for nonprofits who don’t have a dedicated grant writer.

Not only can broadly submitting applications set you up for fewer successes, but it also means you might miss out on opportunities for funding that truly align with your mission.

For Silicon Valley Community Foundation, one telltale sign of a mission mismatch is that an applying nonprofit doesn’t serve a community within the two California counties it supports.

“We really want to see organizations that are within our region — and even more beyond that, we want to see that they’ve taken the time to understand how things are changing for that particular community,” Jack Mahoney, Silicon Valley Community Foundation’s senior director of community action, said.

Artificial intelligence (AI) tools, often touted as an efficiency booster for resource-strapped teams, can exacerbate this issue if used improperly, according to major grants consultant Susan Schaefer, principal at Resource Partners.

“It’s created an explosion in nonprofits’ ability to apply to more opportunities,” Schaefer said, “and that’s not always good for the sector, because we are flooding funders with applications that are perhaps not as aligned mission-wise as they could be.”

Solution: Be Intentional

One way to prevent issues associated with broadly applying for grants is to be intentional — something that should be foundational to your grant strategy.

Schaefer explained that limiting the number of requests for proposals on your radar helps improve the effectiveness of each proposal.

“It’s well known at this point that the landscape is increasingly competitive on the foundation side,” she said, “so you do yourself and your funders a favor … when you ask yourself ‘Is this foundation a match for our work?’ that it is a very enthusiastic ‘yes.’”

Solution: Connect With Funders

Another piece of the puzzle is relationship-building. Mahoney said connecting with a funder — by attending office hours for a request for proposal or even sending a cold email — is a great way to find out more about funding opportunities.

“It’s really helpful just to do a quick pulse check with a funder and see whether or not something is relevant,” he said. “Often, that funder can point you in a different direction if that’s not the case.”

Core to this is funders’ desire to be true partners to grantees, something Heather Palmer, executive director of the American Academy of Family Physicians Foundation, said is of the utmost importance to her organization.

“Everything we fund ties back to strengthening family medicine and improving access to quality and innovation in primary care and serving our communities,” Palmer said. “I think when we approach organizations or work with other nonprofits, the strength in what we're doing is looking at it as a partnership, not transactional.”

This appears to be part of a major shift in the funding landscape. In the case of major grants, Schaefer noted, funders are increasingly placing greater emphasis on communicating openly with nonprofits and using proposals as a way to cement grantees rather than identify them. Other times, she explained funders are researching nonprofits and inviting mission-aligned ones to submit proposals, rather than leaving the research to nonprofits.

2. Responding to Questions Generically or Vaguely

To save time, nonprofits may be tempted to make their responses to common questions generic so they can be used across multiple applications. Writing generic or vague responses to questions for greater utility is a common grant proposal mistake, however.

The problem may be exacerbated by AI. While these tools can help generate clean answers to questions, they don’t have institutional knowledge that can give proposal reviewers a more nuanced understanding of your nonprofit.

“AI may not be able to answer those questions for your specific organization and our specific grant application process,” Palmer said.

Solution: Be Specific and Clear

The main remedy to vagueness is to be as specific as possible.

“The applications that clearly are responding to the questions and took time to analyze what exactly we’re trying to ask, I think are the ones that stand out immediately to me,” Mahoney said.

However, Schaefer stressed that proposal reviewers are human, too — meaning that they may have other worries on their mind, as well as competing priorities. So, clarity is paramount.

“Writing in a human way that’s relatable and concise, and [that] really highlights your main points without a lot of fluff — I think those are imperatives today,” she said.

Solution: Identify Ways to Stand Out

Another attention-grabber for Mahoney is the personal touch nonprofits can add to their narrative.

“We always encourage people to lean into personal stories and testimonials and stories of impact,” he said. “... If they can lift up a story of how someone has been impacted by the work, that really speaks volumes to us — much more than an output of people served, or people reached, or something like that.”

3. Forgetting About the Bigger Picture

A well-crafted grant proposal is crucial for securing grants, but some nonprofits may focus too much on the proposal itself. In reality, a proposal is only one factor in how funders evaluate and choose grantees.

Building relationships is becoming a major way funders are getting to know their pool of grant applicants, but it’s far from the only thing they consider.

Solution: Weight Priorities Appropriately

Many nonprofits have big goals they want to achieve. However, funders often have a list of criteria grant recipients must follow; often, this includes a timeline for completion. Being mindful of this is key.

“Sometimes, if we're really thinking big, [a project] might be too ambitious,” Palmer said. “A smaller, well-executed project with clear outcomes might be more compelling to our reviewers, because these are family physicians or board members that are very closely embedded in our mission, and they might be able to see something that's overly ambitious that really can't be completed in a grant timeline that's being proposed.”

Additionally, Mahoney emphasized that AI can be useful for reviewing near-final grant proposals for things like capitalization and punctuation — giving nonprofits time back to focus on more mission-critical tasks.

“We want them to be out in the community doing the work that they’re doing,” he said.

Solution: Provide Context Consistently

Proposals don’t exist in a vacuum, and neither do nonprofits. Funders recognize this, and they want to see that nonprofits acknowledge it, too. For instance, Mahoney recommended nonprofits identify who their partners are in their proposals.

“We just want to make sure that the organizations we're supporting understand the public and private and nonprofit partners that they could be working with to have a greater collective impact,” he said. “There's a lot of applications that we get where folks will kind of do a broad sweep of their partners, but they don't give us examples … and that, to us, is a sign that maybe they're not as invested in the work or the geography or whatever it might be.”

Outside of the application process, Schaefer said nonprofits should make sure their external presence offers context for funders, since funders are increasingly researching nonprofits and inviting the ones they think align with their funding goals to apply for support.

“It’s really important for grantseekers to be internal champions of the fact that foundations and funders of all stripes are doing their due diligence by looking at our websites, looking at our socials, looking at all of our publicly available information,” Schaefer said. “... So while it may not be our job to create those communications, it is our job to help our colleagues understand, for instance, that the website — in addition to other audiences — needs to speak to our foundation investors.”