If you run a small nonprofit and grants are even somewhat on your radar, you’ve probably been told some version of this:
“There’s a ton of grant funding out there!”
“You just need to submit as many applications as you can.”
“Have you looked at a grants database?”
None of this is technically wrong. But it’s also how a lot of small nonprofits end up doing a lot of grant work without getting very far. Over our years of work directly with small and mid-sized nonprofits, we’ve watched the same patterns play out again and again. Organizations get access to more tools, more lists, and more opportunities, yet still struggle to get started, maintain momentum, and consistently win grants.
There are four very common grant writing traps that specifically afflict small nonprofits that don’t have dedicated grant writing staff. Understanding these traps and how to avoid them is essential to redirecting your time and energy in ways that will help you make meaningful, long-lasting progress with grants.
1. The Unending Prospect List Trap
At some point, almost every nonprofit leader gains access to an elusive grants database where they can search for grants that might be a fit for their organization.
Many nonprofit associations offer free access to specific grant databases that their members can use for free or at dramatically reduced cost. Here in New England, associations such as the Connecticut Nonprofit Alliance offer well-known grants databases like Grants Station nearly for free, while groups such as the Massachusetts Council of Nonprofits and Common Good Vermont provide regularly updated listings of local and regional grant opportunities. Public libraries often provide access, too. For example, Boston Public Library (BPL) provides free access to Foundation Directory Online Professional and GuideStar Pro, while Impala was offered to nonprofits for free for over two years..
And despite the fact that many databases and award listings can be accessed for free or at reduced cost, nonprofit leaders are often convinced to pay for ridiculously expensive databases that promise to make it simple to find “the right grants for you!”
Through one pathway or another, eventually you are able to access a grants database and you run a search. With no background in working with these databases and no clear idea of what end goal you are working toward, it’s almost impossible not to generate a list of possible foundations that runs into the hundreds.
When it comes to researching possible grant opportunities, how can we not believe that more is better? What nonprofit leader would want to waste access to a grants database and walk away with a cute little list of 20 organizations to share with their Board? No one.
And so, you have the unending prospect list trap. You walk away from any database experience with a list of prospective foundations that is hundreds of organizations long, rendering the idea of going through each foundation one at a time (to actually investigate whether or not they could be a good fit for your organization to apply to, if you even meet their criteria!) basically impossible. To do that well yourself, you’d better buckle up for 20-30 hours of work, and that’s just completing the research.
No nonprofit leader has that kind of time, and even if he or she did, it’s not clear what exactly to do with the research. What is the next step?
If you don’t know what comes next, you are likely to print that list out and hide it in a junk drawer to be forever ignored, or to dig it out of your shared files every so often to glance it over to see if any names magically pop out at you (“Apply to me! Ignore the rest!”). The unending prospect list trap keeps us stuck at the starting blocks
Are you stuck in this trap? Watch for this:
You have a list of 100+ potential funders – and you’re not sure which 5 you should actually start with. And if you need help, check out our article on how to quickly and effectively research a short list of strong prospects for your small nonprofit.
2. The Spaghetti-at-the-Wall Grants Calendar
It takes a seriously disciplined nonprofit leader not to take that Unending Prospect List and interpret it as a Grants Calendar. Just pick up that big ol’ pile of grant opportunities spaghetti and throw it – smack! – at the wall. Something’s got to stick, right?
When it comes to grants, most nonprofits default to a quantity-over-quality mentality. It’s not unusual to see application goals ranging from 5 to 10 grants per month. On paper, this looks like momentum, but in reality, creating a Grants Calendar with this kind of volume – especially without dedicated development staff – is setting yourself up for failure.
No small nonprofit can keep up with that pace. And most mid-sized nonprofits (even with staff) struggle to sustain it. So what happens when you have a Spaghetti-at-the-Wall Grants Calendar?
Deadlines start slipping. Applications don’t get finished. Or they get submitted in a rush and half-formed.
As the months go by, the calendar starts to lose its meaning. It stops being a tool and starts becoming a reminder of everything that didn’t get done. Applications that haven’t been submitted start to snowball into an avalanche.
And pretty quickly, you stop wanting to look at the calendar at all.
Are you stuck in this trap? Watch for this:
You technically have a Grants Calendar, but you’re already behind on at least half of it, and it isn’t an effective tool to use “at-a-glance”. If you need some help reorganizing your Grants Calendar, see our article on simple updates you can make to streamline this essential tool.
3. The “Grants-Are-the-Answer” Board Member
Everyone has one. Everyone. It’s the Board member who believes (and you know where I’m going with this) that grants are the answer to all of your organization’s revenue problems.
Not only does this Board member think grants are the answer, but they know with 100% certainty (because of that other nonprofit they used to be on the Board of… you know, the one that’s much bigger than yours, with a full development team and $5 million in annual revenue) that there are endless opportunities out there. All you need to do is apply!
They can usually name a few major foundations, too. The “no-brainers” that you need to prioritize. Never mind that:
- Those foundations are some of the most competitive in your region, or
- Their funding priorities only loosely align with your work, or
- They often fund at a completely different scale than your small organization.
Of all the traps small nonprofits fall into, this is one of the hardest for leaders to manage. Because this isn’t just about writing grants: it’s about expectations for grant writing as a piece of your revenue puzzle, and it’s also about the relationships you have with your Board. I’ve spoken with dozens of nonprofit leaders who are trying to navigate this exact dynamic. And while it’s incredibly frustrating, it’s also very normal at this stage of growth, and likely to repeat itself as your Board composition changes over time.
It is a good thing to be pushed to pursue grants. But not to plug holes. And not to solve immediate or oversized revenue pressure.
Are you stuck in this trap? Watch for this:
You are dreading every Board meeting because you know you will circle back to the same conversation about grants. You feel like if you don’t come in with a list of 20 grant applications you’ve put in (regardless of fit), you will be seen as not working hard enough. For help with this, review our article on What Grants Can and Can’t Do for your organization for talking points to share with your Board.
4. The “AI Can Do This for Me (Right?)” Mentality
We’re only at the beginning of what AI will look like in nonprofit work. And because nonprofit leaders are stretched so thin (overseeing programs, staff, operations, fundraising), it makes sense that people are looking for shortcuts.
Make no mistake, AI can be a huge time-saver when it comes to grant writing. But using AI for grant writing is only effective when paired with existing systems and narratives. Systems and narratives created by you. A human person, with knowledge of your community, its needs, and how and why your program will address those needs.
With hundreds (sometimes thousands) of nonprofits competing for the same funding, your greatest strength is your unique voice and story. When you over-rely on AI, your language flattens, your story gets increasingly vague, and your proposals start to sound like everyone else’s.
Don’t believe us? Check out recent updates from major regional and national foundations are making on specifying the use of AI in grant applications. Recently, The Tower Foundation added guidelines on the use of AI, noting that while they encourage applicants to use AI to “strengthen” requests they are ” not big fans of using generative artificial intelligence to write grant proposals.”
But beyond flattening your narrative, the other major danger with over-relying on AI is that you get used to the speed. You start completing applications a lot more quickly, and that list of “to-dos” gets shorter. It can feel so enticingly productive!
Unfortunately, that speed often comes at the cost of quality. And over time, you won’t be able to notice the effects of AI anymore on the quality and specificity of your work. What you gain in productivity, you lose on the “soul” side of the ledger, that special gift and voice your organization brings to the world. And that’s assuming you’ve mitigated the data quality and accuracy risks that come with generative AI.
When it comes to grants, AI can help, but it cannot lead the work. Oh, and don’t be surprised if that same Board member who believes grants can solve all of your problems is also the one telling you AI can do all of this for you!
Are you stuck in this trap? Watch for this:
You’re producing more applications faster, but they’re starting to sound interchangeable. You are missing major mistakes because you aren’t editing your work closely enough. Your grant applications are devoid of data and real-life stories.
What to Do Instead (Without Burning Out Yourself or Your Team)
If you’ve fallen into any of these traps, the answer is not to work harder or apply more. It’s to get more selective – and more honest – about what you can truly sustain, and to sharpen your understanding of what grants can actually do for your organization (and what they can’t).
A few shifts that actually make a difference:
1. Shrink the prospect list on purpose
If your prospect list has 100+ funders, you are at high risk of getting stuck at the starting blocks.
A strong goal for a small nonprofit is 10–25 well-researched foundations that:
- Show a clear history and a strong desire to fund organizations like yours
- Align with your work (your mission area, your geographic region, your population served)
- Have an open, competitive grant process
That’s it. You’re not trying to capture everything. You’re focusing your time where it can have the biggest potential impact.
2. Build a Grants Calendar you can actually keep
If your Grants Calendar requires 8–10 applications a month, it’s going to break down. Quickly. Not because you aren’t disciplined, but simply because no nonprofit leader has the time to sustain that output rate. For most small nonprofits, a sustainable pace looks more like:
- 1–3 strong applications per month
- Leaving space for research, follow-up, and relationship-building – and the writing and submitting of reports on those grants you DO receive!
It’s less exciting, but it works a lot better.
3. Treat grants as part of a system
Grants work best when they are reinforcing a clear, strategic direction for your organization and are just one component of a broader revenue mix. When it comes to grants, a proactive approach is required.
Grants don’t work well when they’re:
- Filling urgent gaps
- Chasing money without alignment
- Driven by pressure from the outside (reactive approach)
To apply for – and win – grants consistently, you need systems and tools that support the work, and you need clarity of vision.
4. Use AI to support your thinking, not replace it
Your voice, your positioning, and your clarity are still what make your proposals stand out. AI can help you execute on those once they are in place, but not before. Do not lose your voice (and your power) to AI: your voice is your number one asset.
What This Really Comes Down To
Most small nonprofits don’t struggle with grants because they aren’t trying hard enough. They struggle because of a false narrative that grants are quick and easy wins, and because they’ve been handed a model that prioritizes volume and are expected to make it work with limited time and capacity. This leads to burnout, disappointment, and missed revenue goals.
The key is to refocus your time on what matters:
- Fewer opportunities that are truly aligned with your mission
- Narratives that retain voice and paint a clear, strategic picture of your organization
- Systems that support the work over the long-term
This is the work we do every day at Page Consulting Group. We help organizations move out of reactive grant writing and into something more intentional and sustainable. In the coming months, we will be providing more content geared specifically to the needs of small nonprofits, a vastly underserved part of our field that can benefit greatly from real-world grants knowledge. Our aim is to help you build the skills, knowledge base, and simple tools to be successful with grants.
About Page Consulting Group
Page Consulting Group helps nonprofits secure foundation funding through a proven three-phase process grounded in research, strategy, and execution.
We bring senior-level expertise and real client experience to help small and mid-sized nonprofits build grant approaches that are clear, focused, and sustainable.