Mini-Project 3: A Grant Pipeline & Deadline Tracker

Grants are free money with one catch: hard deadlines. Miss the window and you wait a year. This project builds a tracker that keeps every opportunity visible and every application accountable.

Step 1 — Seed it with real programs. Create a Grants tab and pre-load the recurring FRC grant programs so you never miss the obvious ones:

Always confirm current amounts and dates on each program's official page — grant terms change season to season.

Step 2 — Status and columns. Headers: Program, Amount, Open date, Deadline, Eligibility check, Owner, Status, Submitted date, Decision, Award amount, Reporting deadline, Link. Use a Status dropdown: Watching → Eligible → Drafting → Internal review → Submitted → Awarded → Declined.

Step 3 — Countdown column. Add a Days left column that makes urgency unmissable:

Days left (M2) = IF(D2="", "", D2 - TODAY())

where D2 is Deadline. Conditional-format: red under 14 days, orange under 30. Sort ascending by Days left at every meeting.

Step 4 — Eligibility gate. Before anyone drafts, the Eligibility check column must say yes. Many teams burn hours on grants they cannot win (wrong region, wrong nonprofit status, wrong age range, or — as with the NASA grant in recent cycles — a veteran team in a rookie-only year). A 10-minute eligibility read saves a 10-hour wasted application.

Step 5 — Close the loop with reporting. Awarded grants almost always require a report. The Reporting deadline column is as important as the application deadline — missing it can disqualify you from future cycles. NASA-funded teams, for example, are required to complete surveys and an annual report essay documenting how funds were used. Add those report dates the moment you are awarded.

Step 6 — Build a reuse library. Add a Boilerplate tab with reusable paragraphs: mission statement, team history, demographics, impact numbers, budget summary. Most grant questions repeat across applications; a maintained boilerplate turns a 6-hour application into a 90-minute customization job.

This tracker pairs directly with the sponsor CRM: grants are the institutional half of your funding mix, sponsors the corporate half, and your budget's committed-income line is fed by both.