Collaborating on Grant Proposals Using GrantCraft's Share Feature

Why Collaboration Improves Grant Proposals

The best grant proposals are rarely written by a single person. They benefit from the expertise of program staff who understand the day-to-day work, finance staff who can build accurate budgets, evaluators who design measurement frameworks, and leadership who ensures alignment with organizational strategy. The challenge is coordinating all of these contributors into a coherent, well-organized proposal.

The GrantCraft Proposal Builder includes a share feature that allows you to share your proposal draft with collaborators. This feature streamlines the review and feedback process, making it easier to produce a polished, multi-perspective proposal without the chaos of emailing document versions back and forth.

How the Share Feature Works

The share feature allows you to generate a shareable version of your in-progress proposal. Collaborators can review the content you have entered in each step of the builder and provide feedback. This eliminates the common problem of team members reviewing outdated versions or losing track of which document is the most current.

The feature is designed to support the typical grant writing workflow where one person serves as the lead writer and coordinator, while others contribute content and feedback to specific sections. The lead writer maintains control of the master document in the Proposal Builder, incorporates feedback from collaborators, and manages the overall revision process.

Setting Up a Collaborative Workflow

Before you begin writing, establish a clear workflow for your team. Effective grant writing collaboration requires defined roles, clear deadlines, and an organized process for integrating contributions.

Define Roles

Assign specific responsibilities to each team member. Common roles include:

• Lead writer and coordinator: Manages the Proposal Builder, writes the narrative sections, ensures consistency, and integrates all contributions.
• Program expert: Provides detailed content for the project design, methods, and staffing sections based on operational knowledge.
• Budget developer: Builds the budget in collaboration with the finance department, ensuring accuracy and compliance with funder requirements.
• Evaluation specialist: Designs the evaluation plan, including metrics, data collection methods, and analysis approaches.
• Executive reviewer: Reviews the complete draft for alignment with organizational strategy and makes final approval decisions.

Set Internal Deadlines

Work backward from the funder's submission deadline to set internal milestones. A typical timeline might look like this:

• Six weeks before deadline: Complete funder research and outline the proposal using a GrantCraft Template.
• Four weeks before: Complete first drafts of all sections in the Proposal Builder.
• Three weeks before: Share the draft with all team members for review.
• Two weeks before: Integrate feedback and produce a revised draft.
• One week before: Final executive review and approval.
• Two to three days before: Export, format, and submit.

Collecting and Integrating Feedback

When you share your proposal using the share feature, ask collaborators to provide specific, actionable feedback rather than vague impressions. Provide each reviewer with questions to guide their review:

• Is the need statement supported by current, relevant data?
• Are the objectives specific enough to be measurable?
• Does the project design describe activities in sufficient detail for implementation?
• Is the budget accurate and aligned with the narrative?
• Does the evaluation plan include realistic data collection methods?
• Does the organizational capacity section accurately represent our qualifications?

As the lead writer, your job is to synthesize feedback from multiple reviewers, resolve any conflicting suggestions, and maintain a consistent voice and format throughout the document. The Proposal Builder's structured format makes this integration easier because each section is clearly defined and contained.

Collaborating Across Organizations

Many grant proposals involve partnerships between multiple organizations. The share feature is particularly valuable in these situations because it allows partners to review the complete proposal and verify that their roles, contributions, and commitments are accurately described.

For multi-organization proposals, share the draft early and often. Partners need to confirm that their organizational descriptions are accurate, that their budget contributions are correctly represented, and that they agree with how the collaboration is characterized. Waiting until the last minute to share with partners frequently results in rushed corrections and miscommunications.

For guidance on structuring partnerships within grant proposals, see our resource on organizational capacity and partnerships.

Version Control Best Practices

Even with the share feature, maintaining version control is important. The Proposal Builder's auto-save feature ensures that the lead writer's master copy is always current. When incorporating feedback from shared reviews, make changes directly in the builder rather than in a separate document. This keeps the master copy in one place and prevents the proliferation of conflicting versions.

If you need to track changes over time, consider exporting the proposal at key milestones, such as before and after each round of feedback, and saving these PDFs with date-stamped filenames. This gives you a record of how the proposal evolved and allows you to revert to earlier versions if needed.

Final Review Before Submission

After integrating all feedback, do one final review of the complete proposal. Check for consistency in terminology, tone, and formatting across sections written or edited by different people. Verify that the budget totals match any numbers cited in the narrative. Confirm that partner organizations' names and roles are accurate.

Use the GrantCraft Tips section for a final round of section-by-section quality checks, and run through the Readiness Checklist one more time to ensure nothing was overlooked during the collaborative process. For more on preparing for peer review and submission, see our guide on grant submission and peer review strategies.

Collaboration Workflow Summary

• Assign clear roles: lead writer, program expert, budget developer, evaluator, and executive reviewer.
• Set internal deadlines working backward from the submission date.
• Use the share feature to distribute drafts for review rather than emailing documents.
• Provide reviewers with specific questions to guide their feedback.
• Integrate all feedback in the Proposal Builder to maintain a single master copy.
• Share with partner organizations early and often to verify accuracy.
• Conduct a final consistency review before exporting and submitting.

Learn more about grant writing strategies at Subthesis.

Ready to build a complete grant writing skill set? The Complete Grant Architect course covers everything from needs assessment to budget construction to post-award management.