For nonprofits, cities, counties and districts
The Grant Desk
Grant deadlines are published a year ahead. That means this work can be planned, and planned work wins more than panicked work does.
A grant application is scored on a logic chain: documented need, the activity that answers it, the output that activity produces, the outcome that follows, and a measurement plan somebody could actually run. Every link has to hold, the budget has to tie line by line to the narrative, and the need has to be grounded in real local numbers rather than adjectives.
The mechanical half of that is the same work as a bid. A notice of funding opportunity gets shredded into every obligation, deadline and scoring criterion exactly the way a solicitation does. The difference is what happens after you submit, and it is a large difference.
Six to nine months of waiting, then eighteen to thirty-six months of funded administration. Certified payrolls on covered construction, drawdowns, status reports on a fixed schedule, monitoring files, closeout, and five years of retention after that. It is tedious, it is paid out of the award, and it is the part everybody wants to hand to somebody else. We are happy to be somebody else.
Two very different conversations
Where the money to pay us comes from.
If you are a nonprofit
It comes out of your budget
Grant writing is generally not an allowable pre-award cost under 2 CFR 200, so it cannot be paid from the grant you are chasing. That is the structural reason nonprofit grant work is priced the way it is, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.
What we would rather do is start you small. Prospect research at $500 to $1,500 tells you which funders are realistic before you spend anything on writing, and a fair share of the time it saves you the application fee entirely by showing you the odds were never there.
We never receive, hold or control your contributions and we do not solicit on your behalf. That boundary is what keeps this work outside Tennessee's professional solicitor regime, and it is written into the engagement letter.
If you are a city, county or district
It comes out of the award
This is the important one. Grant administration is paid from the award's own administrative allowance. The percentage is set program by program and state by state, so we will pull yours before either of us relies on a number. As an example of the range, Tennessee has set that at six percent on CDBG-CV food insecurity and seven percent on CDBG Child Care Creation, and the program guidelines say those costs should generally be covered with grant funds awarded to the local government applicant.
On a million dollar construction award that is sixty to seventy thousand dollars across the life of the project. You are not writing a check out of the general fund. You are directing a line that already exists and that somebody has to earn.
Verify the current allowance percentage for your specific program before you rely on it. We will pull the guidelines with you.
Published, same as the bid side
What it costs.
Flat fees. Never a percentage of the award, never a finder's fee, never a commission. Percentage compensation is unallowable under 2 CFR 200 and a plain ethics violation in this field, and any grant writer who offers it is telling you something about how the rest of the engagement will go.
| Service | Fee |
|---|---|
| Prospect Research Report Best place to start Which funders actually fit you, ranked by realistic odds rather than by grant size. Eligibility screened against your organization type, budget, geography and audit posture. Deadlines, typical award ranges, match and cost share requirements, and the ones to skip and why. Cheapest way to find out whether the next twelve months hold anything worth chasing. | $500 – $1,5001 – 2 weeks |
| Small Foundation Application Letter of inquiry or a short application to a private or community foundation. Need statement built on real local data, activity and outcome logic that holds together, and a budget that ties to the narrative line by line. | $1,000 – $3,0002 – 3 weeks |
| Mid-Size & Federal Application Full narrative, logic model, evaluation plan, budget and budget justification, and every attachment the notice requires, tracked against a shred of the notice itself so nothing goes missing. Federal notices increasingly carry restrictions on AI generated text; those get checked and honored on every submission. | $3,000 – $8,0003 – 5 weeks |
| Municipal CDBG or Infrastructure Application For cities, counties, utility and special districts. Community needs documentation, beneficiary and income survey support, environmental review sequencing, and the application itself. Priced as a flat fee and typically payable from the award's administrative allowance once funded. | $3,000 – $10,0004 – 6 weeks |
| Opportunity Map Twelve months of funding you are eligible for, with deadlines, amounts, match requirements and a ranking by realistic odds. Built once, and it becomes the calendar the whole year runs on. Easier to build on the grant side than the bid side because the deadlines are published in advance. | $1,500 – $3,0001 – 2 weeks |
| Grant Desk Retainer The calendar plus the writing plus the reporting. A set number of applications per quarter, deadline management across your whole funding portfolio, and post-award administration: drawdown support, status reports on schedule, certified payroll review on covered construction, monitoring file preparation, and closeout. Priced monthly against the scope, and for a local government usually funded from the administrative allowance. | $1,500 – $5,000per month |
An example of the homework
Every state has programs that are not the ones you read about.
Here is what that looks like where we sit, so you can judge whether we would do the same for your state. The Appalachian Regional Commission does not cover northwest Tennessee. The Delta Regional Authority does, and its State Economic Development Assistance Program applications come due in early summer and are expected to be developed with the local development district. That is the kind of detail that gets missed by somebody who did not check, and you would not find out until the application was already in. Your state has its own version of that, and finding it is the first thing we do on a new file.
Every state calendar has a wall in it somewhere, and knowing where yours falls is most of the planning. Tennessee's runs like this. Intent to apply for TDEC lands in mid January, CDBG applications in February, the Opioid Abatement round runs March into April, Site Development applications in late March, all five TDEC parks programs on the first of April, and CDBG status reports on the twenty-fifth of February and April. Then a second bump in early summer for Delta Regional Authority and a late July THDA deadline.
Late August through November is the quiet season, and it is the right time to build next year's map. If you are reading this in the fall, you are early, which is the best thing you can be.
On the development districts
Most states run some version of a regional planning or development district, and those offices write and administer a great deal of municipal grant work with very small staffs. Here that is the Northwest Tennessee Development District, covering nine counties and doing good work. We are not trying to displace that relationship anywhere. Where the district has more work than hours, or where a project falls outside what it covers, that is where we fit. If you are a member city, talk to yours first. We will still be here.