Matthew J.

OVERVIEW I'm Matthew Johnston, founder of MFJ Grant Strategies, a boutique federal grants consultancy based in the Washington D.C. and Richmond, Virginia corridor. I've spent the past decade on every side of the federal grant table. I've sat in the funder's chair at USAID designing and awarding grants, managed a $86M sponsored research portfolio on the recipient side at Virginia Commonwealth University, and currently administer an active $30M federal grant portfolio for a sovereign tribal government. I've also served as a federal peer reviewer, scoring applications against the rubric and sitting in panel deliberations. That combination is uncommon, and it's the foundation of how MFJ works: I know what funders want because I've been one, and I know what recipients live with because I've been that too. Across my career I've administered $400M+ in federal, state, tribal, and foundation funding across more than a dozen agencies including HUD, DOT, DOJ, USDA, EPA, HHS, DOE, NIH, and NSF. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHAT MFJ GRANT STRATEGIES OFFERS → Funding Strategy and Readiness — An honest assessment of where you're positioned to compete before you spend time and money chasing the wrong opportunity. → Opportunity Research and Prospecting — Curated funder matches aligned to your mission and capacity, not a generic list of every open RFP. → Proposal Development and Writing — Compelling, compliant applications including narratives, logic models, budgets, budget narratives, and all supporting documentation. → Grants Management and Compliance — Post-award support including reporting, reconciliation, subrecipient monitoring, and audit readiness through closeout. → Fractional Grants Administration — For organizations without dedicated internal capacity, MFJ serves as the grants department you don't have in house, at a fraction of the cost of a full-time hire. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ WHO I WORK WITH MFJ Grant Strategies works best with organizations that think strategically about funding, not just transactionally. That includes nonprofits and mission-driven organizations pursuing federal or major foundation grants, local governments, municipalities, and counties, tribal nations and sovereign tribal governments, and housing, community development, public safety, health, and environmental programs. A single grant creates isolated impact. A coordinated funding portfolio builds capacity that lasts. That's the distinction MFJ is built around. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ HOW I WORK I can't guarantee funding outcomes and won't pretend otherwise. What I do guarantee is strategic, well-researched recommendations, competitive and compliant proposals, responsive communication, and on-time delivery. If you're pursuing significant grant funding and want an experienced, strategic partner, send me a message about your goals and timeline. I'm happy to have an initial conversation about fit and give you an honest read on your grant readiness and strategy.