Grant Strategies for a Competitive Funding Landscape: How to Make Your Proposals Stand Out
- Candace Kohli, PhD
- Oct 15
- 7 min read
Changes in federal funding priorities in 2025 have spurred what the Nonprofit Finance Fund calls a period of “heightened uncertainty and competition” for U.S. nonprofits. Survey data shows the majority of organizations report rising demand for services, stagnant or declining grant revenue, and increasing operational costs (Nonprofit Finance Fund, 2025 State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey).
The strongest financial strategy in this climate is revenue diversification to reduce dependence on any one funding source. Even as nonprofits diversify their revenue portfolios, though, grants remain an important part of most funding strategies - and the sector-wide funding shifts in 2025 are driving greater grant competition and increased funder scrutiny. To stand out in this crowded landscape, organizations need to craft compelling grant portfolios that demonstrate funder alignment, evidence of impact, long-term sustainability, uniqueness, and visionary leadership.
Below are four strategies we recommend when helping clients position their proposals for success in this environment. These tips can help you sharpen narrative, tighten impact logic, and articulate resilience to funders. Click each strategy to expand more detail.
Competitive Grant Strategies
🧭 STRATEGY 1 — Sharpen Relevance & Fit
When writing a grant proposal, it’s tempting to focus on your organization’s mission and noble purpose. These are important – they’re why your organization exists and we, too, often get excited about an organization’s important work and want to get funders excited about it, too. While your grant narrative absolutely should accomplish this, you need to tailor your entire proposal to the funder’s priorities.
Funders want to see two key components in your proposal:
that you understand—and are responsive to—the world as it is today, not as it was when your last proposal template was written. This means you need to show how your organization is evolving to meet the needs unfolding around you.
That your work aligns with and contributes to the funder’s goals and purpose.
When public programs are being defunded, local economies are shifting, and new community needs are emerging, a strong proposal acknowledges how that new reality impacts the community you serve and how your organization is adapting. The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s 2025 “State of Nonprofits” report notes that funders increasingly expect grantees to demonstrate “strategic responsiveness to changing community conditions,” not simply to restate their mission (CEP, 2025).
This is where data and story work together. A credible application grounds its case in both the human story and the statistical landscape. A brief vignette—a family facing food insecurity, a student struggling with digital access—brings urgency to life and keys into review committee members’ empathy. You also need to connect these stories to data and community statistics because they prove that story represents a systemic issue, not an anecdote. Data can also contextualize underlying drivers of risk factors and other issues affecting the community you serve.
To drive home relevance and responsiveness, be sure to describe where you are showing adaptation. That might mean shifting delivery methods, forming new partnerships, or refining strategy in response to an unfolding need. Funders notice organizations that evolve; they worry about those that don’t.
When I was a college professor coaching students in critical writing skills, I always reminded my students to write for their audience, anticipating and answering their readers’ “who cares?” question. The same applies to grants. Relevance alone will not secure your funding. You must clearly tell the funder how your mission and services align with and further their goals and priorities. State this alignment clearly and upfront to grab your readers’ attention and motivate them to read your application more carefully.
Remember, review committee members are reading dozens if not hundreds of applications. Where your application falls in the proverbial pile is outside of your control - at the top and you get a reader with fresh eyes but risk being forgotten; at the bottom and you get a reader who’s tired, bleary eyed, and ready to be done. Regardless of where you land, you must use your first few sentences to grab their attention and make them want to keep learning more about your work.
📊 STRATEGY 2 — Elevate Evidence
A compelling story opens the door; evidence keeps it open.
The Urban Institute’s 2025 guidance on successful grant applications emphasizes that “narratives grounded in data and clear logic models signal credibility and readiness to implement” (Urban Institute, 2025). Funders aren’t expecting every organization to have a randomized control trial—but they do expect plausible evidence that your work produces results.
Here’s what that looks like in practice:
In narrative questions related to need, programs/services, and intended outcomes,
Show alignment with peer-reviewed research or cite credible sector or local data to show your issue matters beyond your own projects. It shows funders you understand the bigger landscape.
Set the need you address and your interventions into established models or best practices
For impact and evaluation questions,
Set precise, measurable outcomes. Use SMART framing—each outcome should specify indicator, baseline, method of measurement, timing, and target.
Gather baseline data on clients served through intake forms or other “pre-service” questionnaires
Track progress using simple tools like GoogleForms that provide feedback opportunities during a participants’ engagement with your programs.
Cite outcomes from recent program evaluations or organizational reviews to show change across time.
Weave together qualitative insight (stories, interviews, quotes) and quantitative data (pre/post measures, trends, evaluation findings). This hybrid approach reinforces the human and systemic aspects of your work.
Be transparent about learning (and shape yourself into a learning organization!). If data or evaluations are preliminary, say so—and show how the funding will strengthen monitoring or evaluation systems. Funders often appreciate honesty about competing constraints.
Our team of PhD-level researchers help clients build effective practices for collecting data that can be used to tell persuasive stories of progress and impact. Funders don’t fund potential—they fund performance that’s moving in the right direction. Pairing credible data with authentic narrative creates a proposal that feels both human and evidence-based.
According to Submittable’s 2025 Funder Survey, 61% of funders say their top priority in application review is “clear demonstration of results and impact,” while only 18% cite “innovative ideas” as the primary draw (Submittable, 2025). The takeaway: innovation matters, but evidence wins.
💰 STRATEGY 3 — Communicate Sustainability
Right now, funders are focused on investments poised for long-term returns. The Nonprofit Finance Fund and Council of Nonprofits both report that organizations with diversified revenue and reserves are significantly more likely to secure repeat funding. The upshot is that funders want reassurance that their investment will continue to grow when the grant award period expires.
When I advise clients on tricky financial narratives, we work to make this section convey careful planning and confidence. This involves:
Diversified revenue models. In 2025, diversification is nearly universal: reports suggest that almost all nonprofits (97 percent) plan to diversify revenue in the coming year (Morningstar, 2025). Also, nonprofit leaders have placed revenue diversification as the second-highest organizational priority, second only to major gifts (NonProfit PRO, 2025). Be specific: what portion of your future revenue might come from contracts, earned income, recurring donors, etc.
Partnerships and contracts. Describe how your project may be sustained through partnerships or contracting into existing systems (e.g. municipal or school systems).
Financial resilience strategies. Outline reserve policies or plans for building a reserve, contingency plans, and scalable staffing models to absorb uncertainties and protect programs from disruptions.
Exit/transition or scaling plan. Whether it’s a phase-down or expansion, show that your thinking includes the “after grant” scenario—not leaving the future ambiguous. “If-then” statements (e.g.“If state reimbursements are delayed, we will draw on our six-month reserve fund to maintain program continuity”), can communicate institutional maturity and strong, strategic leadership that builds funder confidence in your organization.
Organizations that show credible sustainability tend to win repeat funding and longer-term support. For many organizations, these questions are anxiety-producing, but thoughtful framing can highlight strong planning and foresight that funders want to see.
💎 STRATEGY 4 — Differentiate Strategically
Great proposals don’t just describe programs—they tell a story of leadership. And leadership is exactly what funders want to invest in.
When we work with clients, our focus is not just on tightening sentences or rearranging sections – though we do that, too. Our primary focus is reframing a proposal as a strategic communication document: one that positions your organization as a high-impact partner leading change in your service area, not merely an applicant in need of funds. That’s where we come in to help you:
Identify the funder’s real priorities and decision drivers.
Translate outcomes into narratives that resonate.
Build systems for data collection and evaluation that feed future proposals.
Strengthen sustainability planning to attract long-term partnerships.
Grant writing in 2025 isn’t about filling out forms. It’s about leading with clarity, evidence, and vision. Funders are looking for organizations that embody those qualities—and we help clients articulate them. Here are some of the strategic differentiators we leverage to craft proposals that stand out.
Differentiator | Why It Matters | What You Can Do |
Rigorous funder match | Because grants are more competitive, every proposal must hit the mark on fit. | Do deep research on funder priorities, past grants, geography, community. Tailor your framing to mirror what the funder cares about. Borrow their terminology and phrasing to show alignment. |
Strong assessment and evaluation tools | Gathers ongoing data you can use to show the impact of your program and help improve programmatic performance over time. | Devise logic models to help you think through the flow of need → intervention → expected outcome. Use free resources like GoogleForms to build simple surveys that help you gather information to track and test your results. |
Transparent governance and operations | Clarity in how your organization is run builds trust with funders. | Include financial statements, oversight structures, risk mitigation, and governance practices in appendices or attachments. Ask “what story do these documents tell?” when you review them as part of the picture alongside your narrative. |
Clear language, confident tone | In competitive settings, clarity ensures reviewers see why they should fund you. | Use active verbs, short sentences (2 lines or less), precise numbers, and avoid jargon. Let every sentence serve a clear purpose. |
Flexible planning | Funders like to see you’ve thought through uncertainties. | Build contingency scenarios; include “if-then” statements about delays, cost changes, or funding gaps. |
Final Thought: Write to Express Your Vision
In this precarious historical moment for nonprofits, winning proposals don’t plead for rescue—they invite partnership in impact.
As the Council of Nonprofits observed earlier this year, “Funders are rewarding adaptability, transparency, and collaboration—traits that point to systemic impact, not short-term fixes.” Your proposal should read like a roadmap to that future.
Let’s Strengthen Your Grant Strategy. If your organization is ready to strengthen its grant strategy, refine its evidence base, and tell a more compelling story of impact, we would be glad to help. Together, we can turn your next proposal from a request for funding into a statement of collaborative leadership.
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