The Institutional Grant Review
Bi-weekly writing on federal NOFOs, foundation priorities and post-award compliance, by former reviewers and grant officers.
Grant StrategyThe anatomy of a 100-point federal grant proposalHow federal review criteria and point weights should shape the structure, page budget and evidence plan of a competitive grant application.Kavya Iyer / Oct 20, 2026 / 6 min
- Oct 2, 2026How to write a Statement of Need that moves foundation trusteesA practical method for writing foundation need statements that pair credible local data with a clear, specific gap your program closes.Grant Strategy
- Sep 15, 2026Mastering Grants.gov Workspace in 2026Registration, roles, form handling and submission tracking in Grants.gov Workspace, plus what Simpler.Grants.gov changes for applicants this year.Grant Strategy
- Aug 27, 2026The 2024 Uniform Guidance revisions: what grant writers must knowThe 2024 changes to 2 CFR 200 that affect budgets and narratives: the 15% de minimis rate, new thresholds, subaward rules and closeout timing.Compliance & 2 CFR 200
- Aug 10, 2026How to document indirect costs without a federal NICRAYour options for recovering indirect costs on federal awards without a negotiated rate: the 15% de minimis, direct charging and a first-time NICRA.Compliance & 2 CFR 200
- Jul 22, 2026Avoiding Single Audit findings in federal subrecipient awardsWhere Single Audit findings come from on subrecipient and pass-through awards, and the controls that prevent them under the 2024 Uniform Guidance.Compliance & 2 CFR 200
- Jul 6, 2026Why nonprofit grant teams burn out, and how to fix itThe workload patterns that exhaust nonprofit grant writers, and the calendar, intake and reuse practices that make the job sustainable.Development Operations
- Jun 17, 2026How to build a reusable institutional knowledge vaultA step-by-step method for building a maintained library of approved organizational facts, documents and narrative blocks for grant writing.Development Operations
- May 28, 2026From LOI to full proposal: streamlining the foundation pipelineHow to run a foundation pipeline from prospect research to letter of inquiry to full proposal without losing track of stages, owners or deadlines.Development Operations
- May 7, 2026Building a Theory of Change that funders trustHow to build a theory of change with explicit causal links, stated assumptions and evidence, and how it differs from a logic model in a proposal.Program Design
- Apr 15, 2026How to set realistic, measurable grant evaluation KPIsA practical method for setting grant evaluation measures with baselines, realistic targets and data sources you can actually collect and report.Program Design
- Mar 24, 2026Writing to the rubric: how federal objective reviewers actually scoreA former federal reviewer explains how objective review panels read and score applications, and how to write sections that earn every point.Grant Strategy
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