[TULSA] Grant Prospecting and Selection: Choosing the Right Opportunities

Not every grant opportunity is the right opportunity. Chasing the wrong grants wastes precious time and sets you up for rejection, while missing the right ones leaves funding on the table. Strategic grant prospecting is about working smarter, not harder; identifying opportunities where your organization has a genuine competitive advantage and saying no to long shots that don't align with your mission or capacity. This course teaches you systematic approaches to finding, evaluating, and prioritizing grant opportunities. You'll learn to research funders effectively, assess organizational fit, calculate your odds of success, and build a sustainable grant pipeline that maximizes your return on effort.
Learning Objectives:
Participants will be able to:

• Use grant databases, funder websites, and networking strategies to identify potential funding opportunities.
• Analyze funder priorities, giving patterns, and requirements to determine organizational fit.
• Assess organizational capacity and readiness to pursue specific grant opportunities successfully.
• Develop scoring criteria to prioritize opportunities based on likelihood of success and potential impact.
• Build relationships with program officers and foundation staff to increase funding competitiveness
• Create grant calendars and pipelines that ensure steady funding flow and manageable workload.
• Make strategic go/no-go decisions about pursuing grants that balance opportunity against organizational resources.