“How many grants should I apply for?” is an age old question that nonprofit founders, Executive Directors, development professionals, and many more have sought an answer to throughout their careers.

Why do so many seek to know the answer to this question? Because grant writing is a time consuming process. Those who opt to do it “whenever they have time,” find little to no additional funding dollars (coupled with a whole lot of stress).

And those who are familiar with the grant seeking process want to know how much time, money, and effort they should expect to invest before they see a return.

Finally, what we all want to know regardless of prior grant writing experience, “How many grants should I apply for to increase my odds of winning?”

Ah, yes. That is the question.

Thanks to recent research, we have answers!

Data from The State of GrantSeeking Report 2024 provides some key insights on this topic. We distilled some essential statistics and takeaways to help you make an informed grant seeking plan for your nonprofit organization.

The Research

According to the 2023 GrantStation report, 90% of respondents applied for grant funding in 2022. Among these, 41% submitted between three and ten applications, 16% submitted between eleven and twenty applications, and 16% submitted more than thirty applications.

Data from 2,306 respondents revealed that of those who submitted…

• One Application: 72% of respondents were awarded at least one grant.

• Two Applications: 80% of respondents were awarded at least one grant. 

• Three to Five Applications: 88% of respondents were awarded at least one grant; 70% of respondents were awarded two to five grants.

• Six to Ten Applications: 96% of respondents were awarded at least one grant; 79% of respondents were awarded three to ten grants.

• 11 to 20 Applications: 97% of respondents were awarded at least one grant; 76% of respondents were awarded six to 20 grants. 

• 21 to 30 Applications: 100% of respondents were awarded at least one grant; 71% of respondents were awarded 11 to 30 grants. 

• Over 30 Applications: 100% of respondents were awarded at least one grant; 85% of respondents were awarded 21 or more grants.

It’s important to note that this data is biased, because a massive majority of people who participated in the survey also won a grant. There are certainly many applicants who applied for grants in 2023 and were not awarded funds. According to the Grant Professionals Association, the average success rate for grant applications is 15 percent.

Based on this research, our team recommends striving to submit 6-8 grant proposals per funding priority. If you win one out of 6 proposals, your win rate is about 16.7 percent. And if you win one out of 8 proposals, your win rate is 12.5 percent. That’s something to keep in mind if you are brand new to grant writing, or if you’re writing for an organization with no history of winning grants. Your win rate is likely to be lower in the first year, but will improve as you start winning proposals and leveraging those wins to acquire more private funding.

Okay, so we know that at a minimum, you should plan to write 6 grant proposals. But what if you have more than one funding priority? Let’s say, for instance, your nonprofit wants to acquire ten new water quality testing kits and run a series of community workshops at the local river. Those are two separate funding funding priorities. Considering that, should you try to write more grants?

Our answer is YES. Plan, at a minimum to submit 6 proposals requesting funding for ten new water quality testing kits, and plan to submit an additional 6 proposals to support the series of community workshops.

Finally, if you’re a grassroots nonprofit entity, we recommend creating a grant seeking strategy around 1-3 funding priorities each year. Any more than that is quite overwhelming, especially if you don’t have an in-house or contracted grant writer.

The Competitive Nature of Grant Writing

As mentioned, the Grant Professionals Association reports an average success rate of 15 percent for grant applications, indicating that many applications are unsuccessful.

Grant Writing is a competitive process. Grants evaluators are often reviewing hundreds, if not thousands, or in some cases tens of thousands of applications depending on the scope of the grant. Your grant proposal may be expertly written, and your application may still not be selected due to the fact that there was another organization or another program that was slightly better aligned with the funder’s priorities or perhaps they have a preexisting relationship with the funder.

For this reason, it is important to know that grants should never be your only fundraising strategy, and they will never be the solution to all of your financial programs. In our free webinar, “Budgeting and Fundraising for Grassroots Organizations,” we dive into 14 different types of fundraisers for nonprofits.

In Conclusion

Simply put, the more grants you write, the better your odds are of winning a grant! Consider this from Write Epic Grants, “In 2023, I wrote 60 grants for one of my clients and we were awarded 25 grants for a total of $120,025. It was their first year hiring a contract grant writer and applying for grants, so that was a win, and they renewed their contract with me. This year, we will do even better.”

Sixty grants may send your head spinning, but if you start by identifying six excellent fit grant opportunities for your funding priority, this gives you a great start and decent odds of winning at least one grant. If you want want to apply for more grants than what is possible to do on your own, you may also want to consider hiring a dedicated grant writer. We explore the benefits of hiring a grant writer in our blog post, Why Your Nonprofit Needs a Dedicated Grant Writer.

The quality of the research, writing, data collection, collaboration, and budgets also heavily influence your odds of success. To explore our advice on how to write compelling and data-driven grant proposals, you can refer to the advice in our other blogs How to Craft A Powerful Problem Statement and Tips for Efficient Grant Writing.