OUR FLAGSHIP PROGRAM
Get Grant Ready!
You don’t become grant-ready the day you find the perfect application.
Grant readiness starts much earlier—with a clear program, measurable outcomes, a defensible budget, the right funding prospects, a sustainability plan and a compelling story about why your work matters.
Getting Grant Ready is Sunflower Scholar School’s five-week interactive training program designed to help nonprofits build those pieces before they hit “apply.”
💪 Five weeks to build the foundation for a stronger grant program.
Getting Started
We’ll build a strategy that’s just right for you
Over five weeks, you’ll work directly with the Sunflower team to examine your organization through the same lens we use when preparing our own clients to pursue funding.
You’ll learn what funders are looking for, identify gaps in your current grant readiness and—most importantly—build real materials and a practical roadmap you can continue using after the program ends.
This isn’t just a class.
You’ll leave with something
By the end of Getting Grant Ready, participants will have:
- A clearer understanding of what makes an organization competitive for grants
- Stronger language about your organization, programs and impact
- Defined outcomes and a framework for measuring them
- Greater confidence in your program budget and financial story
- A strategy for sustainability beyond a single grant
- A better understanding of funder fit and prospect research
- A personalized roadmap for what to do next
- Three funding prospects selected specifically for your organization
Who Is Getting Grant Ready For?
Getting Grant Ready is designed for organizations that:
- Know grants should be part of their funding strategy but aren’t sure where to begin
- Have applied for grants without getting the results they hoped for
- Depend on one person to “figure out the grants”
- Want to build internal grant-writing capacity instead of outsourcing everything
- Have a strong mission but need help translating their work into funder-ready language
- Are growing and need a more strategic, sustainable approach to funding
You don’t need to be a grant expert to join us. That’s why we’re here!
Everything you need
Get Grant Ready includes
🧱 Concrete steps
Walk through the seven easy steps with Katie to get you Grant Ready with detailed instructions and information
📣 Learn from others
Hear real-world examples and learn where others have gone right and wrong from the beginning
📘 Custom Plan
Map out an individualized plan for you and your organization to help you meet your goals
🛠️ Tools you need
Receive resources to support you along the way
☎️ Access to our experts
Have the opportunity to ask your questions about Getting Grant Ready and have them answered by a Specialist
What We’ll Build Together
WEEK ONE
Are You Grant Ready?
- Organizational Readiness + Program Planning
- Understand what funders need to see before you apply and strengthen the foundation of the program you’re asking them to support
WEEK TWO
How Will You Prove It Works?
- Outcomes, Objectives + Evaluation
- Turn the work you already do into measurable outcomes—and learn how to tell a compelling impact story with them.
WEEK THREE
Do Your Numbers Tell the Same Story?
- Budgets + Financial Storytelling
- Build stronger program budgets and understand how funders interpret the financial story behind your proposal.
WEEK FOUR
Who Should You Ask—and Why?
- Sustainability + Funder Fit
- Think beyond one grant, identify the right funding partners and learn how to stop wasting time on opportunities that aren’t a good fit.
WEEK FIVE
What Happens Next?
- Grant Strategy + Your Roadmap
- Bring everything together into a practical grant strategy and leave knowing exactly what your organization’s next steps should be.
Your Grant Guide
Meet Katie LeDoux
I’ve spent years watching brilliant, mission-driven people do extraordinary work while struggling to access the funding that could help them do even more.
Not because their programs aren’t worthy.
Not because they aren’t working hard enough.
But because no one ever taught them how grants actually work.
That’s why I created Sunflower Scholar School.
I want organizations to have access to the knowledge we’ve gained from doing this work every day—the strategies, tools and lessons that turn grant seeking from a frantic search for the next application into a thoughtful, sustainable funding program.
You already know how to do the work that matters.
We’ll help you get grant ready.
— Katie LeDoux, Founder & CEO, Sunflower Grant Writers
📌 Simply put, our experienced and dedicated team is here to help you secure the nonprofit and for-profit grants you deserve.
Our organization has been working with Sunflower for several years now, and they have been instrumental in helping us grow our foundation to fund downtown improvement projects outside of our annual budget.
Holly Barrett
Downtown Omaha Improvement District Association
Not only did Katie research the grants but she did the necessary leg work to make sure the grants we were applying for fit our organization. Katie is incredibly good at answering questions and her response time to emails and phone calls are remarkable.
Kione Lowe
Our Light, Inc.
Katie was instrumental in finding and gaining for me a state government grant. She gave me frequent updates as she waded through the complicated and cumbersome government bureaucracy.
Utopia Massage
Ready to Get Grant Ready?
Five weeks. Practical tools. Personalized feedback. A grant strategy built for your organization.
Not sure you’re ready? Start with our free Grant Readiness Checklist »
GET GRANT READY!
Program Investment: $2,500.
$500 deposit secures your place.
Scholarship Opportunity from First Interstate Bank
First Interstate and its Foundation are driven by a vested interest in the health and strength of our communities, working to make them better places to live, work, and raise families.
Please visit firstinterstatebank.com/give to learn more and submit for a grant request.
First Interstate offers Community Checking, a checking account designed for nonprofits that creates an opportunity for small nonprofit organizations, benefits, memorials, and club-type entities to easily and conveniently manage their finances.
For expanding financial services our Treasury Solutions provide several options to help nonprofits take greater control of their finances:
- Remote Deposit Capture reduces the time and costs associated with handling paper checks by making deposits electronically right from your desktop
- Lockbox Remittance Processing is designed to accelerate the receipt and deposit of check and credit card donations sent through the mail. This cash flow improvement solution collects donations at a centralized post office box rather than your nonprofit address, which reduces fraud risks and postal delays associated with mail delivery and in-house processing.
For employees or members of nonprofits we also offer our Orange Checking, a checking account with no minimum balance and no service charge with Online Banking and Online Statements.
First Interstate Bank. Member FDIC. Equal Housing Lender.