TLDR
Grant pipeline management tracks each opportunity through five stages from prospect to awarded or declined, with probability-weighted revenue forecasts, deadline alerts, and a full submission history per funder. The pipeline lives in the same system as the donor CRM and restricted fund ledgers, so the forecast a board sees is the same forecast the development director runs on.
Grant pipeline management tracks each opportunity through five stages from prospect to awarded or declined, with probability-weighted revenue forecasts, deadline alerts, and a full submission history per funder. The pipeline lives in the same system as the donor CRM and restricted fund ledgers, so the forecast a board sees is the same forecast the development director runs on.
TL;DR
- Five default stages (prospect, LOI, applied, awarded, declined), configurable per org
- Probability-weighted forecast rolls up to a single expected-revenue number by month
- Deadline alerts fire at 30, 14, 7, and 1 days by default
- Awarded opportunities convert directly into grant records and open the restricted fund
- Funder-level history tables show win rate, average award, and cycle time
What this feature does
The pipeline holds every grant opportunity your team is pursuing or considering, at every stage. It answers three questions a development director gets asked every week: what is coming in, when, and how confident are we. The answer is not a separate spreadsheet maintained by one person; it is a report that runs on the same data the proposal writers update when they move a stage.
How it works
- Create an opportunity with funder, program, amount requested, LOI and proposal deadlines
- Assign a stage (defaults to prospect) and an owner
- Update the stage as the opportunity progresses; probability auto-adjusts unless overridden
- Deadline alerts route to email and the task queue at configurable lead times
- On award, convert the opportunity to a grant record, which opens the restricted fund
- On decline, log the rationale and set a re-apply window for the next cycle
Who it’s for
Development directors and grants managers at mid-sized nonprofits with three to thirty open grant opportunities at any given time. Executive directors who want a weekly pipeline report without asking for it. Finance leads who need the next six months of expected grant cash to plan payroll.
Why GrantPipe built it this way
The split between pre-award tools (Instrumentl, GrantHub) and post-award tools (spreadsheets, QuickBooks classes) is the single biggest reason grants information goes stale. The same grant is modeled twice, in two systems, with two sets of custodians. The architectural decision here was to make the opportunity and the grant the same record, just at different lifecycle stages. Pre-award fields are editable through prospect, LOI, and applied stages. On award, post-award fields (reporting schedule, fund restrictions, allocation rules) unlock and the pre-award history becomes read-only. No data is re-keyed at the handoff because there is no handoff.
What it replaces
- The pipeline spreadsheet the development director maintains alone
- Instrumentl subscriptions used only for pipeline tracking, not prospect research
- The manual handoff from the grant writer to the finance team on award
- The board report question “what is coming in next quarter” that takes half a day to answer
- Missed deadlines because the alert was in a calendar no one shared
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Source: Candid Foundation Stats 2024
Q&A
What is a probability-weighted grant forecast?
The expected value of each opportunity, computed as requested amount times probability. Summed across the pipeline, it is the single number a board uses to plan cash flow. Candid has published foundation grantseeking data showing average win rates in the 10-25 percent range for cold prospects, which anchors the default probabilities.
Q&A
How does deadline tracking work?
Each opportunity carries LOI deadline, full proposal deadline, and reporting deadlines. Alerts fire at configurable lead times (default 30, 14, 7, and 1 days). Alerts route to email and to the in-app task queue.
Q&A
Can I filter the pipeline by program or by portfolio?
Yes. Every opportunity tags to one or more programs and one or more staff owners. Pipeline views filter by program, staff member, stage, funder, or submission date range.
Q&A
Does the pipeline show expected cash timing?
Yes. Each opportunity carries an expected award date and an expected disbursement schedule. The forecast breaks down by month so cash planning is not a separate exercise.
Frequently asked