Many grant teams have a prospect list somewhere: a spreadsheet tab, a page of bookmarks, a folder of saved notices. The list grows because adding a name takes ten seconds. It stops being useful because nobody can tell which names matter right now, who is doing what or whether anything has happened since the day it was added.
A pipeline fixes that by giving each prospect a stage, a next step, an owner and a date. This article shows how to set one up, how to keep it small enough to work and how to review it without it becoming one more chore.
Define five stages
Keep the stages few and plain. Five cover most grant work:
- Identified. The opportunity or funder is on your radar. The entry needs a name, a link and one line on why it might fit.
- Qualified. It has passed your fit check and a go/no-go decision. You've confirmed that your organization is eligible and you know the key dates.
- Cultivating or preparing. For a foundation, this is the conversation, introduction or inquiry stage. For a federal or state notice, it's the preparation stage: registrations, partner commitments and any letter of intent or preapplication.
- Applying. You're drafting, with internal deadlines set ahead of the funder's.
- Decided. The answer is in, whether award, decline or withdrawn. The entry stays until you've recorded what you learned and set the follow-up, such as a reporting date or a reapplication date.
The key dates in the qualified stage are easier to find than you might expect for federal funding. Under Appendix I to 2 CFR Part 200, a federal notice's basic information section must include key dates, such as the application due date and the dates for any letters of intent or preapplications. A forecast on Grants.gov, which announces a planned opportunity, can also put an item in the identified stage early. The article on grant forecasts covers how to use them.
Registration is easy to leave until the last minute. Under 2 CFR 25.200, federal notices must require most applicants to be registered in SAM.gov before applying, and to keep that registration active while an application is under consideration, reviewing and updating it annually. Put a check of your registration date in the preparing stage for every federal prospect.
Give every prospect a next step and an owner
A stage tells you where a prospect is. A next step tells you what happens next. Each entry needs three more fields:
- Next action, written as a verb: "Email the program officer," "Confirm partner letter," "Draft the need statement."
- Owner, one named person. A shared owner usually means no owner.
- Date, the day the action is due, not "soon."
If you can't write a next action, that is information. The entry either belongs in the identified stage, waiting for a decision, or it should come off the list.
A hypothetical pipeline
Say a small environmental education nonprofit has a quarter to plan. Its working pipeline has four active prospects:
| Prospect | Stage | Next action | Owner | Date | Ask |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| State conservation program | Qualified | Confirm eligibility with agency contact | Director | Aug 5 | $60,000 |
| Community foundation | Cultivating | Send inquiry letter | Development lead | Aug 12 | $25,000 |
| Federal education notice | Applying | Draft program section | Director | Aug 19 | $150,000 |
| Family foundation | Identified | Check guidelines for open applications | Development lead | Aug 26 | $15,000 |
The asks in play add up to $250,000. Seeing the total next to the owners and dates also shows the load: the director owns two of the four next steps, including the heaviest one, drafting the federal program section. The team can rebalance that before a deadline forces the issue.
Keep it small on purpose
A short, worked pipeline beats a long, ignored one. Two limits help:
- Cap the active list at what you can act on this quarter. Count the applications your team can really write, with the review and submission steps, and add a few slots for prospects that stay in cultivation. If you can draft two applications a quarter, an active list of twenty is a wish list.
- Keep a separate parking lot. Interesting but unready prospects go there, with a note on what would bring them back, such as a new program, a new partner or a forecast turning into a notice. Review the parking lot monthly and promote or delete.
Be willing to remove entries. If a prospect has gone two reviews without a next action, either write one or take it off. This takes some discipline, but an old list full of stale names makes the live ones harder to see. The grants calendar is the right home for dates once a prospect becomes an application.
Review it on a schedule
A pipeline works when it's reviewed on a rhythm, so set two:
- Weekly, 15 to 20 minutes. Look only at next-action dates for the coming two weeks. Mark what's done, set the next step for each and flag anything that is slipping.
- Monthly, 45 minutes. Review the whole list, including the parking lot. Move entries between stages, drop the stale ones and add new prospects from your searches.
Record decisions in the entry. When a prospect reaches the decided stage, note the outcome, any feedback the funder gave and the date to reapply or report. That record becomes the starting point for the next cycle.
Where to keep it
Use the simplest tool your team will open. A shared spreadsheet is enough: one row per prospect, with columns for funder, program, stage, next action, owner, date, ask, deadline and source link. Add a column for notes, and sort by date each time you open it. The tool matters less than the habit of using it.
Your next step
Cut your prospect list to the entries you'll act on this quarter. For each one, write the stage, a next action, an owner and a date. Move everything else to a parking lot and set a date for the first review.
Once a prospect is qualified, SoliContraX gets you from its notice to a first draft built from your own materials, so the applying stage can start with something on the page. Start your next application.