At least once a day someone will ask me to provide them some tips and strategies to improve their grantseeking efforts. As simple as the request sounds, it actually is a very difficult one to address. Volume is not the issue, as there are reams of information that can be provided to organizations seeking to maximize the potential of grant funding. Unfortunately, this may be an instance where the right answers are being provided but the wrong question has been asked. In other words, the problem is that when folks are seeking information at such a high and unspecified level, they usually don' t know where to start. When organizations are just getting their feet wet with grants, information overload may have the reverse effect of intimidating involved staff members to the point where they become discouraged with grant funding mechanisms and throw in the towel. This article is intended for those organizations that may be asking the wrong question and really want some feedback on where to begin.

As many of us know, the release of a grant program’s guidance document usually occurs roughly six weeks before the grant’s application deadline date. In the event that a current deadline is missed, common practice indicates that a would-be applicant should be targeting a submission to the next available offering.
Don’t approach this “down time” with idle hands–understand that there is always important work to be done with the next submission in mind.