Applying for federal grants can be daunting, but an organized and strategic approach can help local governments navigate the process and increase the competitiveness of their applications. This checklist highlights practical steps local governments can take to plan ahead, prepare strong applications, and avoid common pitfalls.
This checklist focuses on the application stage of the federal grant lifecycle, helping local governments prepare competitive proposals and position projects for successful implementation if awarded.
Planning and preparing:
☐ Use your local government’s existing priorities to ensure efficient grant writing capacity.
Using your government’s existing priorities to monitor upcoming grants and assess whether they are relevant to your needs will help ensure that your government is using its grant writing capacity as efficiently as possible. One way to do this is by grounding your proposed project in already-adopted plans, such as strategic, capital improvement, or climate action plans. Referencing existing plans, policies, and adopted goals demonstrates that the project is not a one-off idea but an implementation step within a broader strategy and will help you craft a more compelling project narrative.
☐ Understand your community’s needs.
Use data, community engagement (e.g., surveys, public forums), and stakeholder input to clearly define the problems you are trying to solve so that grant applications reflect real needs rather than chasing funding opportunities that do not align with local priorities.
☐ Build your partnerships.
When it is time to apply for a grant, leveraging partnerships can be a big advantage for applicants. Many federal programs favor collaborative projects that demonstrate broad impact and strong stakeholder support. Partnering with neighboring jurisdictions, regional planning organizations, state agencies, nonprofits, universities, or private-sector partners before an application can help strengthen applications by expanding project scope, sharing resources, and demonstrating widespread benefit.
☐ Take inventory of your grant portfolio.
Maintaining a clear picture of all active grants, pending applications, reporting requirements, and project timelines will help staff and leadership manage compliance, plan workloads, and identify opportunities to layer or blend additional funding where appropriate. This might also include conducting a “lost funding” analysis to assess where resources are falling short or needs are not being met.
☐ Determine feasibility and identify “pre-requisites” that must be prepared in advance.
Many federal grants require applicants to have specific elements in place — such as engineering or planning studies, environmental reviews, cost estimates, matching funds, or community engagement documentation. Assess these requirements early to determine whether the project is ready to compete and what preparatory work is needed before applying.
Establish processes and procedures for how you will work:
☐ Have a standard operating procedure (SOP) for open funding opportunities.
Develop clear internal workflows for identifying opportunities and deciding whether you intend to pursue them.
☐ Establish roles and responsibilities for the writing, technical, and project management aspects of grant applications.
Identify who is responsible for developing the technical components of the project (budgets, timelines, and implementation plans) and who will lead the writing, coordination, and submission of the application. Clarifying responsibilities early, including establishing a planning team with clearly defined roles, prevents duplication of effort and ensures that all required sections of the proposal are addressed.
☐ Establish grant governance and planning teams.
A team responsible for grant governance can help standardize processes — such as internal review timelines, approval steps, and document templates — common to all federal grants. This helps reduce last-minute scrambling and ensures consistency across applications. Clear procedures also make it easier to coordinate across departments and maintain continuity when staff change.
☐ Build in data and evidence tools from the beginning.
Strong grant applications rely on credible data to define the problem, justify the project, and demonstrate anticipated outcomes. Establishing systems for collecting and analyzing relevant data will strengthen both the application and project implementation.
☐ Identify available application supports.
For many federal grant programs, support is available through regional offices, webinars and guidance resources, as well as local and national nonprofit organizations and philanthropic partners. Taking advantage of these resources can strengthen your application, help fill capacity gaps, and improve the quality of submissions.
Understand and respond to your Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO):
☐ Work to deeply understand the NOFO.
The NOFO is the roadmap for the application. Read it closely to understand eligibility requirements, evaluation criteria, required attachments, and submission instructions. Pay attention to program goals, definitions, and any mandatory thresholds or prerequisites. Ensuring that your project clearly aligns with the program’s purpose and requirements is one of the most important steps in preparing a competitive application.
☐ Go beyond answering questions — craft a compelling narrative.
Strong applications do more than provide technical responses; they tell a clear story about the problem, the proposed solution, and the community impact. The narrative should logically connect the community need, the project design, and the expected outcomes. Use clear language and structure so reviewers can easily follow how the project addresses the program’s priorities and delivers meaningful benefits.
☐ Gather relevant community data to strengthen your case for funding.
Quantifying the specific need and expected outcomes helps reviewers understand why the project matters and why federal investment is warranted. Incorporate relevant statistics, studies, and local data to support your narrative.
☐ Be prepared to address key themes and priorities highlighted by the agency.
Federal agencies often emphasize recurring priorities across their funding opportunities. Look for these themes in the NOFO and incorporate them meaningfully into your narrative. Demonstrating how your project advances these broader agency priorities can strengthen your application.
☐ Create an accurate budget and benefit-cost analysis (BCA).
A credible budget and BCA demonstrate that your project is financially sound and that the benefits justify the investment of federal funds. Develop realistic cost estimates that reflect the full scope of the project, including design, construction, operations, compliance, and contingencies where appropriate. Forecasts and predictions should use reasonable, defensible assumptions and how they were developed should be transparently documented. A BCA should clearly explain how the project’s benefits — such as safety improvements, health outcomes, environmental benefits, or economic development — compare to its costs over time. For additional BCA guidance, see the full BCA guide here.
☐ Map your narrative to the evaluation rubric.
Consider creating a crosswalk table that shows exactly where each rubric element and scoring criterion is addressed in your application narrative. This will help your team confirm that every requirement is addressed and that reviewers can easily locate the information they need for scoring.