How a Grant Review Can Increase Your Proposal Win Rate

Being a grant reviewer is like being on the Eurail that gets you to your destination faster than other methods: you go from zero to 100 mph (or, since we’re in Europe, kilometers per hour) in a crash course on what makes a proposal effective, readable, and convincing.

Five ways that being on a grant review panel can improve your grant writing:

1. It gives you insight into how grants *really* get awarded. (Hint: It’s not always objective. Or scorable.)

2. You catch a glimpse of the many behind-the-scenes factors that can impact whether you get the grant and for how much.

3. It gives you the perspective of the grant reviewer who is trying to get through a high volume of applications in a short time. (What, you say? What? The proposal I agonized over for days, weeks, and sometimes months gets just a passing glance from the funder? Why yes, says the bleary-eyed grant reviewer.)

4. You see how others craft responses to those pesky questions in every application. Don’t even get me started on the ever-present sustainability question—How will [my organization] graduate from your grant and magically not need grant funding in the future ever again? See a wealth of interesting answers that actually make sense (and plenty that don’t) during the review process.

5. It makes rejections a little less personal.

I have done enough grant reviews to know that if you’ve reviewed for one funder…well…you know the review process of that one funder. That’s all. Different funders, especially foundation funders, can take vastly different approaches to grant review and award. It also helps to see that even government funders, who are usually scoring against a defined set of criteria, sometimes interpret and score the same proposal differently.

Back to Basics

Reviewing a grant also reminds you of the fundamentals of submitting an application. I’m always shocked at how many organizations FAIL to do all the common sense things listed in the application. But, then again, when you’re an Executive Director pressed for time, running agency programs AND fundraising, it’s easy to understand how things get missed.

So, what are some of the most common proposal submission mistakes?

Niki’s Arbitrary List of 6 Unofficial Rules Learned as a Reviewer

Rule #1. Follow the guidelines. Sounds simple, right? You’d be surprised.

Rule #2. Answer the questions honestly and succinctly. A beautifully worded vague answer doesn’t fool any reviewers. Flowery language is superfluous in these days of character counts and page limits. Get. To. The. Point.

Rule #3. Provide the requested attachments…or risk getting your submission thrown out.

Rule #4. Ensure the proposal narrative and the budget match. Even if the budget is not scored, savvy reviewers will check to see all the boxes are ticked and cross-referenced by you. It’s one way you build credibility from afar and distinguish yourself from a sea of applicants.

Rule #5. If you’ve reviewed for one funder, you’re not an expert reviewer. You know one funder.

Rule #6. You can be pretty sure the proposal you spent days on and labored over is getting skimmed, not fully read. Yup. 

Our Simple 4-Step Grant Review Process

If you’re submitting a federal proposal for the 1st time or the 100th, it helps to have someone outside your organization review the finished proposal for content and compliance. There are two main reasons why:

• Increase your chances of getting funded (pre-submission).

• Conduct a deep analysis of why you didn’t get the grant (post-submission).

Our simple, 4-step process is designed to make it easier for you to win the grant. We review your proposal carefully against the funder criteria, mock score the grant, and give you actionable feedback to improve your proposal and give you the best chance of getting the funding. We serve as your expert grant review team before the actual review—so that you can course correct if necessary.

Here is what a NWGS grant review looks like:

1. Review NOFO/FOA/RFP
   We do a deep dive of the Funding Announcement and develop a customized rubric so the review is tied directly to the scoring criteria.

2. Develop a Customized Scoring Rubric
   We schedule a call with you to go over the proposal guidelines and highlight the specifics of the requested program and your organization’s approach to solving the problem. We also gather information from you about primary concerns, focus areas, and background information that could impact scoring or competitiveness. Then we set a review schedule that builds in enough time for review (us), editing (you), and submission (you).

3. Score the Proposal
   We score the proposal as if we were a reviewer. We review the proposal for content and compliance so you know exactly where you are strong and where you can make changes to score more points. Feedback is actionable and tied directly to the funding criteria. We note areas of greatness and areas of improvement, and we score each section one by one, independently of the other, just as federal reviewers are instructed to do. We also look over your letters of support, budget, budget narrative, and any other attachments you provide. Finally, we wrap it up with a video or a written report that serves as your step by step guide to increasing your chances of getting funded.

4. Hold Debrief Meeting
   We meet with you and your team to discuss overall impressions and findings, answer any questions, course-correct if necessary, and get the proposal to the long-awaited finish line.

Common Questions

At this point, you may have a few questions. Let me try to answer a couple of the most common ones:

1. Question: Can we guarantee the award of the grant?
   Answer: Heck no. It’s simply impossible to make that guarantee because there are so many factors that are beyond our control. But, working with Niki Wanner Grant Solutions will surely increase your chances.

2. Question: Do we submit the grant, or do you? 
   Answer: You do.

3. Question: Can you still do a review if we are in a time crunch and behind schedule?
   Answer: Maybe. Let’s talk. Rush reviews are sometimes granted if NWGS has availability. They may be subject to a rush fee of 1.5x normal pricing.

Contact Us

Do you want to learn more about how NWGS reviews proposals and provides feedback to strengthen your submission? Book a 20-minutes sales discovery call here. Let us be your review team.

Our Experience

Niki Wanner, CEO of Niki Wanner Grant Solutions, started writing grants in 1998 and hasn’t stopped since. She has written successful proposals for 13 federal agencies, dozens of states/counties, and over 100 foundations. She regularly serves on proposal review and scoring panels.

Niki Wanner Grant Solutions knows what gets awarded and what doesn't. We stay current with the latest in grant seeking and grant making practices to optimize your chances of getting funded. In short, we can help you make grants a sustainable part of your funding portfolio. Book a free 20-minute discovery call here to talk with Niki about taking your grants portfolio to the next level.

Some Final Thoughts

Full disclosure—I’ve actually never been on the Eurail. But I have been a grant reviewer for multiple organizations.

It’s not always about a pre-submission review. If you’re scratching your head about a proposal that didn’t get funded, we can take a look and tell you why, in our opinion, your application didn’t make the cut. So that next time, it will stay far above the other submissions and lead to that big grant you’ve been hoping for.

Are you looking to break into the federal grants scene but feel overwhelmed by the pages of instructions in the RFP? We can help with that and guide you step by step through the process. Federal grants aren’t always scary. In fact, they can be pretty routine, and the RFP and scoring criteria give you a proposal road map. This can actually make it easier than a foundation proposal that gives you much more discretion. And, federal grants can have a big impact on organizational capacity by opening the door to indirect cost recovery, multi-year grants, and/or renewable grants with a set re-application schedule or forecast.

Still not sure about federal grants? 

Download my federal grants checklist at the bottom of this page.