Grants & Funding
FOR NONPROFITS, BUSINESSES, FAITH-BASED ORGANIZATIONS, PUBLIC AGENCIES, AND FISCALLY SPONSORED PROJECTS
These resources follow the order grant work actually happens — from finding your lane through managing what you win. Use them as a sequence, not a menu.
Find Your Lane
Before you chase a dollar, know which funding your structure can actually reach.
Funding Pathways by Organization Type
Which doors are open to you
Private charitable grants, government grants, and contracts have different front doors, and your legal structure decides which ones you can walk through. Covers nonprofits, for-profits, churches, faith-based organizations of every structure, fiscally sponsored projects, and brand-new ventures.
Confirm You Are Ready
The quiet, unglamorous work that makes you fundable before you submit.
Are You Grant-Ready?
What it takes before your first dollar
An honest look at the three layers of readiness: whether you can legally receive the money, make a credible case, and compete and then deliver. Includes the truth about legal structure that most organizations learn too late.
Funding Readiness Checklist
Find your gaps, assign them, date them
Shared readiness checks first, then the pathway checks that match your applicant status — nonprofit, church, for-profit, fiscally sponsored, faith-based, or new. Ends with three priority actions, a named owner for each, and a due date.
Understanding Fiscal Sponsorship
Pursuing funding before you have your own 501(c)(3)
How fiscal sponsorship actually works, when it makes sense, the two models you will hear about, and the questions to ask a sponsor before you sign. Includes what a sponsor is legally required to do that a pass-through arrangement is not.
Qualify the Opportunity
Separate the grants worth pursuing from the ones that waste your time.
Funder Fit Worksheet
Decline faster, and on evidence
Three gates in disqualifying order: can we enter, does it fit, can we deliver. Ten minutes here saves three weeks on an application you were never positioned to win. Includes a prompt to research what the funder actually funded, not what they say they fund.
Build the Application
The narrative, budget, and attachments that make a reviewer say yes.
Writing a Needs Statement That Wins
Make the problem undeniable
How to make a reviewer believe the problem is real and you are the answer: leading with the community rather than your organization, using data without drowning in it, and describing barriers without describing people as broken. Includes a drafting sequence and a worked example.
One-Page Organizational Overview
The document funders and partners ask for first
Fill it in once and paste from it into nearly every application, capability statement, and partnership request you send. Mission, who you serve, scale, leadership, and proof — with a timeframe required on every number.
Logic Model Template
Inputs to impact on one page
The one-page map from what you invest to the change you create. Includes target population, program timeframe, a measurement method and date for every outcome, and the output-versus-outcome distinction that reviewers notice.
Program Budget Template
Line-item, and it holds up under review
Categories that survive review, cash match tracked separately from in-kind, and a basis-of-calculation column for every figure. Includes current guidance on the federal de minimis indirect cost rate and what funders may and may not require. Totals are entered by hand, not calculated.
Manage What You Win
Compliance, reporting, and the discipline that earns the next award.
Reporting & Deadline Calendar
Never miss an application, report, or renewal
Your opportunity pipeline, active-award reporting, and renewals in one place. Internal deadlines set ahead of funder deadlines, time zones recorded, a named owner on every date, and somewhere to paste the submission confirmation.
Proposals & Contracts
FOR BUSINESSES AND NONPROFITS BIDDING ON RFPs, RFQs, AND GOVERNMENT CONTRACTS
These resources follow the order proposal work happens — from confirming readiness through building the response. Use them to decide, organize, and submit with confidence.
Confirm You Are Ready
The registrations, past performance, and capacity that make you eligible to bid.
Proposal Readiness Checklist
Before you respond to an RFP, RFQ, or RFI
Contracts ask different questions than grants. Registrations and identifiers, insurance and bonding, financial capacity, pricing structure, past performance, teaming, and who holds signature authority — most of which has to exist before a solicitation drops.
Decide Whether to Bid
A disciplined go/no-go process so you chase the right opportunities.
Bid or No-Bid Worksheet
Decide fast, and protect the hours you have
Three gates and an honest competitive picture. Mark every line Known, Estimated, or Unknown so an assumption never quietly becomes a fact. Includes what pursuit will cost you and a place to record why you declined.
Organize Your Evidence
The past performance and documentation that prove you can deliver.
Past Performance Reference
One sheet per project, built at closeout
Filled in while the work is fresh rather than the week a bid is due. Records scope, measurable results, whose experience it is, what your contract lets you disclose, and the problems you fixed alongside the wins.
Capability Statement
Your one-page calling card for RFPs and subcontracts
What a prime contractor or procurement officer scans in fifteen seconds. Core competencies in the buyer's language, concrete differentiators, company past performance distinguished from the founder's, and your codes and certifications in one clean page.
Build the Response
The compliance, narrative, and pricing that win the contract.
RFP Compliance Matrix
Shred the solicitation before you write
Submission instructions, evaluation criteria, scope, attachments, and amendments — every requirement given a home, an owner, and a page number, plus a final verification pass before you submit.
Scope of Work & Pricing Worksheet
Price from your real cost floor
Define the scope, break out tasks and level of effort, and build pricing from what delivery actually costs you rather than from a competitor's number.
One-Page Offer & Pitch Builder
For the room, not the portal
Problem, solution, value, proof, price, ask. One page for a sponsor meeting, a client pitch, or a warm introduction that needs something to leave behind.
Grant & Fundraising Glossary
Your complete reference for 77 grant writing, fundraising, and advancement terms — searchable, categorized, and always available.
Not sure which of these you need?
Take the free readiness assessment and get a personalized report with your scores, gaps, and prioritized next steps.
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