Free tool
Grant Deadline Risk Calculator
Put a dollar figure on the renewals, reports and invitation windows your office let slip in the last twelve months.
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Deadline Season Workload Planner
Compare the hours your fall applications and reports will take against the hours your office genuinely has in the window.
September through mid November is when foundation deadlines stack up and reports for grants already won come due at the same time. Most small offices go into that stretch without ever adding up the hours, then discover in week four that the math never worked.
This planner does the addition in advance. Put in the applications and reports landing in the window, your honest hours per piece, and the weekly hours your team can actually give to grant work once meetings, program duties and everything else are taken out.
Your result
Grant hours the window demands
162
Everything the applications and reports will take together.
Hours your team actually has
144
Total grant hours available across the whole window.
Share of capacity consumed
112.5%
Anything above one hundred means the season does not fit.
Extra hours needed each week
3.0
Hours per week you must add, move earlier or drop.
Run this in July and you can still move a deadline; run it in October and you are only choosing what to drop.
Why fall overloads a two person office
Applications and reports peak together, and that is not a coincidence. Foundations that close applications in the fall also set interim reports twelve months after a fall award, so the same weeks carry both sides of the cycle. The office feels the collision without ever seeing it laid out as a total.
Reports are where the estimate usually goes wrong. Six hours of writing is realistic, but that figure quietly assumes program data arrives on request and finance has already closed the month. Add the chasing and most small offices are closer to nine or ten hours per report.
What to do when the load runs over capacity
There are only four honest moves: pull work earlier, add hours, cut an application, or ask a funder for a report extension. The first is best and needs the most lead time, which is the entire argument for running this calculation in the summer rather than the second week of October.
If you have to cut, cut applications rather than reports. A skipped application costs you a chance at new money. A late report on a grant you already hold puts a renewal you had already earned at risk, and that is the more expensive mistake for a small nonprofit.
Questions about this calculator
How many weekly hours should a two person office enter?
Track a normal week before you guess. A development director who nominally spends half her time on grants often reaches twelve to fifteen real hours once board work, donor meetings and program support are subtracted. Entering the nominal number is the fastest way to make this planner useless.
Should a letter of inquiry count as a full application?
No. A letter of inquiry usually runs a fraction of a full proposal, so either enter it separately with a lower hours figure or fold it into your average and keep the average honest. If most of your fall is letters of inquiry rather than full proposals, lower the hours per application accordingly.
What load percentage should a healthy grants office target?
Aim to leave headroom rather than filling the window. A season planned at roughly eighty percent of capacity absorbs one sick week, one funder question and one late program report without anything slipping. A season planned at exactly one hundred percent will slip, because something always happens in six weeks.
More free tools and working documents
Working document
The Award Letter Intake Checklist
Work this list the week an award letter arrives and no date inside that grant will surprise you eleven months from now.
Now put that figure on a twelve month calendar
The number on this page came out of dates that already exist in award letters sitting in your files. GrantClock is what moves it: period of performance, interim and final report dates, invitation windows and registration expirations pulled onto one view, each with a reminder far enough ahead to chase program data. Book a demo and we will work from the awards you just counted rather than a sample nonprofit.