Managing Multiple Grants at Once: Tips for Jugglers

If you’ve ever felt like a circus act with one hand on a quarterly report, another on a new proposal, and a foot trying to kick off a reimbursement request, you’re not alone. Managing multiple grants at once can feel like juggling on a unicycle. The trick is to find your rhythm before the balls start dropping.

1. Build Your Grant Dashboard

The first secret to calm grants administration is visibility. Create one simple dashboard in Excel, Asana, or your preferred grant management system. Track deadlines, deliverables, contacts, and payment schedules all in one place. When you can see everything, you can plan anything.

2. Protect the Calendar

Your grant calendar is more than a reminder system. It is your brain’s backup drive. List every submission window, reporting date, and renewal cycle. Add internal checkpoints for data collection, narrative drafts, and finance reviews. Share it with your team so everyone knows what is coming next. Managing multiple grants only works when your people stay in sync.

3. Standardize What You Can

Stop rewriting your mission statement every time. Build a library of core language that includes your mission paragraph, organizational history, impact statistics, and leadership bios. Great grant professionals treat efficiency as leverage, not laziness.

4. Keep the Money Aligned with the Mission

When several funders are in play, even small misalignments can multiply. Maintain a clear record of allowable expenses, budget codes, and matching requirements. A single missing receipt can throw off a reimbursement. Connect every expense back to a deliverable or impact metric so you can tell your story in both data and dollars.

5. Run Grant “Air Traffic Control”

At least once a quarter, stop juggling and look at the sky. Which grants are closing soon? Which reports are coming due? Which funders need a relationship check-in instead of another PDF upload? Good grants administration depends on people as much as paperwork.

Self-check: Are you managing your grants with intention or just trying to keep everything in motion? Pick one grant this week and map its key dates, reports, and expenses. Then use that same structure for every grant you hold. The calm you create will pay off in accuracy and confidence.

Want to go deeper? Join the Grant Writers Circle on Skool for weekly “Ask the Expert” Q&A sessions, templates, and tools that help you manage multiple grants without the chaos.