How to streamline the grant application process

Streamlining the grant application process is a must have for grantmakers.

You need to ensure availability, proper tracking, equity to apply, and accurate follow up. Because the application process sets the tone for everything else, and it will either help the other processes run smoothly or things will be going back and forth. So of course, you need to pay attention to several elements, among which:

‍Goals and missions

If you understand your goals and missions well, you will understand what you will need to ask in the application in order know whether or not the specific project will help you reach your goals.

‍Questions to ask your applicants

Carefully plan what you are going to ask people who are proposing to the project so that you get all answers you need. If you don’t plan this carefully, the chances are you are going to have to reply back and forth and it can take some time for another person to respond. In order for things to run quickly and smoothly, the questions must be thought out carefully in order to get the right information.

‍Front-end applications

Having a front-end for applications will make things easier for both you and the person proposing to the project as all application will be gathered and centralised in one place. This will avoid things getting lost and the document that should be with a specific application will not be lost with other documents as all are stored with the system attached to a specific application.

Centralised applications

Keeping things organised can help save time and stress on so many levels. Imagine documents flying around and things getting lost, this will avoid that at all cost. If you also accept documents in other platform, it is also best to still store it in one system at the end in order to make. 

Award

After you have gone through all the above processes, the final part is to decide which ones should and should not be awarded. This is your result.