This checklist is a tool to use as you work on your artist grant applications. It outlines the steps I have found to be the most fundamental priorities during the process, which can also be the most easily overlooked. Follow the checklist as you go through each grant application process and you will eliminate common mistakes that can easily be avoided, and give your work the opportunity to be seen clearly.

This past year, I read an excellent book called The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by surgeon Atul Gawande.  In it, Gawande looked at how checklists have been used in tasks of great complexity and high risk scenarios (such as landing a plane during engine failure and surgery) to prevent errors. He found that it was frequently the most basic steps that got overlooked when dealing with complex tasks and therefore caused major (preventable) problems.

His book describes how to create a checklist that ensures you hit on all the most basic steps of a complex task, since your brain may be distracted with the more advanced aspects. What is brilliant about this idea is that a checklist done properly can improve outcomes with no increase in skill. This is why I created a Grant Application Checklist: so that you can ensure that your applications avoid preventable oversights and errors so that your outcomes are improved.