3 Mistakes Secretly Sabotaging Your Grantmaking

Your grantmaking program is probably running "just fine...". Proposals come in, reviewers score them, funds get awarded. But underneath that cycle, there's a constant grind most program officers and grant administrators know all too well —

• Wading through proposals from organizations that never should have made it through your intake process, because eligibility wasn't enforced from the start
• Managing reviewer assignments across a committee of volunteers and board members with no shared structure, no balanced workloads, and scoring that's nearly impossible to defend when questioned
• Spending hours — sometimes weeks — chasing grantees for agreements, disbursement documentation, progress reports, and impact data that your board and funders are asking for and you simply can't produce

This webinar is about the three places grantmaking programs silently break down — and what it actually looks like when they don't.

What We'll Cover:

✦ No Eligibility Screening & Application Fit

‍When any organization can submit a full proposal regardless of fit, your reviewers are buried in applications that were never viable — and your most qualified grantees are competing against a diluted pool. We'll show how eligibility gates and LOI-based screening protect your reviewers' time and surface the right organizations from the start.

✦ Reviewer & Committee Fatigue from Unstructured Evaluation Processes

‍Grant review committees are made up of board members, program officers, and volunteers — all with limited time and no obligation to return. Unbalanced assignments, inconsistent rubrics, and no blind review don't just slow you down — they compromise the integrity of your funding decisions. We'll cover how structured assignment, weighted scorecards, and PII redaction produce defensible outcomes your committee can stand behind.

✦ No System for Grantee Deliverables, Compliance & Impact Reporting

‍Awarding funds is the beginning of the grant lifecycle — not the end. Without a structured post-award system, grant agreements go unsigned, disbursement documentation gets lost, progress reports come in late or not at all, and the impact data your board and funders are asking for simply doesn't exist. We'll show what a modern post-award workflow looks like — and how it transforms raw reporting data into the impact story your organization needs to tell.

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