Six weeks into my new full-time role at work with the additional two days a week focussed on fundraising for a new youth work.

I’ve scoped about 15 potential grant funders, small and large, and submitted 4 applications or pre-applications.

It seems to be grant application season as many of the closing dates are in February and March.

Unfortunately, one funder switched their closing date to Thursday last week after previously advertising it as Friday (The Wayback Machine agrees with me). Another closed their online form the day before or on the morning of their published closing date (Friday). Luckily, perhaps, they didn’t remove the live application form page I had bookmarked so I could still submit.

It will be annoying if our applications are disregarded in these two cases, although the lesson is don’t wait until deadline day.

I’m not beating myself up about it. We only had a few days to put something together, and I was chasing/waiting on my boss to draft and agree final wording. It’s a learning curve for all of us, and lots we can do better.

AI tools were genuinely helpful, and also provided useful feedback on our applications - need to remember to do that step before submitting them next time.