How to review grant eligibility

Work from the funder's own current guidelines. Grant aggregators, newsletters and summaries are useful for finding opportunities and unreliable for details. Programs change eligibility between intakes, and last year's PDF may still be circulating.

• Use the program page on the funder's website
• Confirm the intake year and version of the guidelines
• Check for addenda, FAQs or updated question-and-answer documents
• Note the date you reviewed the guidelines

Guidelines usually mix conditions that must be met with characteristics the funder prefers. The language is a reasonable signal: "must", "required" and "only" indicate mandatory conditions; "preference will be given", "priority", "encouraged" and "may" indicate weighting rather than a barrier.

Treat mandatory conditions as pass or fail. Treat preferences as part of the competitive assessment covered in a fit review, not as reasons to abandon an otherwise eligible application.

• Organization type and legal status
• Charitable or qualified donee requirements
• Years of operating history
• Geographic location and service area
• Populations served
• Eligible and ineligible activities
• Eligible and ineligible costs
• Funding minimums, maximums and request caps relative to budget
• Matching contribution requirements, and whether in-kind counts
• Project start and end date windows
• Limits on the number of applications per organization or per intake
• Restrictions tied to other funding from the same funder

These are the conditions that most often surface late:

• A mandatory registration, pre-application or letter of intent with an earlier deadline
• A required funder portal account that takes days to be approved
• Requirements that apply to partners as well as the applicant
• Reporting obligations from a previous grant that must be closed first
• A requirement that the project has not already started
• Restrictions on activities that duplicate services funded elsewhere
• A cap on administrative or overhead costs
• Language, accessibility or official-languages obligations

Record each requirement, the wording it came from, your conclusion, and the evidence. A simple table is enough: requirement, source, status (met, not met, unclear), and note.

This record is useful for three reasons:

• It prevents the same question being re-argued at each internal meeting
• It gives the board a clear basis for approving or declining to apply
• It can be reused when the program opens again

Most programs publish a contact for eligibility questions, and asking is normal. Prepare a short, specific question rather than a general one, quote the section you are reading, and keep the reply.

Where a program forbids contact during an open intake, note the restriction and record the ambiguity as an unresolved item instead.

Three outcomes are possible:

• Eligible — mandatory requirements are met and evidenced
• Unclear — one or more requirements need confirmation, with a named person and a date
• Not eligible — a mandatory requirement is clearly unmet

If an item remains unclear as the deadline approaches, treat it as a reason to stop rather than a detail to resolve after submission. Submitting on an untested assumption spends the same effort with a materially higher risk of being screened out.