The Readiness Gap

Most people believe a grant is won on the page: the right narrative, the clean budget, the persuasive case. But before a reviewer scores a single word of your project description, they have already started asking a quieter set of questions about the organization behind it. Can these people track the money? Can they deliver the work? Will they stand up to an audit?

That space between a strong idea and the systems that make it fundable is the readiness gap, and it is where capable organizations doing excellent work quietly lose funding they should be winning.

In this first episode of Hard Work Doesn't Win Grants, Catherine Riggs gives you one idea and one action. You will hear what the readiness gap actually is, why it is so hard to see from inside your own organization, and what separates a team that scrambles when an opportunity appears from one that responds from a position of strength.

What you will hear:

• Why reviewers evaluate your organization as closely as your narrative
• The real reason readiness work gets crowded out by application deadlines
• Two organizations chasing the same grant, and the gap made visible
• One action you can take this week that costs nothing but honesty

Resources:

• The Grant Project: https://thegrantproject.com