Is Your Website Grant-Ready? A Checklist for Massachusetts Non-Profits

Before anyone finishes reading your grant application, someone on the funder’s team has opened your website. Massachusetts has one of the most competitive non-profit funding landscapes in the country, and a website that contradicts your application, or looks abandoned, costs you credibility at the moment you need it most.

The reviewer’s five-minute visit

Put yourself in their chair. They have your application in one window and your website in the other. Consciously or not, they’re checking:

• Does the mission match? If the application says one thing and the homepage says another, or says it in ten-year-old language, that’s friction.
• Are the programs you described visible? A program that appears in the budget but nowhere on the site raises an eyebrow.
• Is anything current? A latest news item from three years ago suggests capacity problems, which is what funders worry about.
• Who runs this? Board and staff listings, even short ones, signal governance. Reviewers look.
• Does anything work? Broken links and dead contact forms read as neglect. Test your own contact form today. It’s the most common silent failure I find.

The checklist

• Mission statement on the homepage, matching your current application language
• One page per active program, each updated within the last year
• A who-we-are page listing board, staff, or both
• Current annual report or financials linked, if you publish them
• Contact page with a tested form and a street address
• Something recent: a news item, event, or photo from this season

The shortcut

If that list made your stomach drop, the fix is usually smaller than a redesign. Most grant-readiness problems are repair problems rather than rebuild problems: updating text, fixing forms, adding missing pages. That’s the kind of work a care plan covers month to month, so the site stays ready.

Applying for something this fall? Send me your site and the deadline, and I’ll tell you what a reviewer will see.