Coffee grounds are a part of making a good healthy soil, and the link below will help some.
I have plunked wet and dry coffee grounds onto soils and I find the same results, when added to other types of organic matter the plants grow better with fewer problems. However, where just coffee grounds are used the plants seem to be more attractive to insect pests than where the plants get a more balanced diet.

Here is a link that might be useful: About coffee grounds

Coffee grounds and corn meal have about the same protein content (lowest of all the popular ground grains). Still I use corn meal to the max and have great results with it. Thus I think there is more to the organic food value than just protein.

There used to be a lady on the Organic Forum from the PNW who fertilized exclusively with coffee grounds. She posted pictures which were very convincing as to the effectiveness. The app rate is 10-20 (up to double) per 1,000 square feet.

I've tried drying coffee grounds. Don't expect great results. Even if you get it very dry, it is still moist enough to support fungal life. The fungi will first clump it together and defeat the reason you dried it. Then the fungi will bloom and you'll have a lot of blue-green hyphae everywhere. The coffee is still very usable and even more beneficial because those blue-green fungi are beneficial, but it makes it less easy to apply. Probably the best/easiest thing to do is spread them out on newspaper or cardboard in the direct sunlight for several hours on a dry day. Then fling the dried grounds out by hand like chicken feed.

They stain by the way.

Coffee grounds are pretty low in N compared with other sources, so it takes comparatively more.

I've never tried to use a spreader. I just walked around the lawn, flinging the coffee grounds around as I walked. I never bothered to collect and/or dry them, either. I would just spread them as I got them, starting in a corner of my lawn and spreading until I ran out. I'd make a mental note of where I ran out and start spreading there when I next got grounds. Since they're mild and slow acting, you don't get a flush of growth where they have been spread.

I do what bpgreen does with the coffee. I also use milorganite 2x per year, steal extra leaves in fall from curbs to spread over lawn and mow in, and mow at 4 inches. Pull dandelions with weed hound. Rain is our only watering. Lushest lawn in neighborhood and people ask me what my secret it. I am afraid to tell them since I want the grounds at Starbucks, but I do tell them my "secret."

oops! Grounds, I meant!

Thanks for the great advice. I guess I don't need a structured plan like I thought. I'll just throw em' out in the yard when they are used in different spots trying to keep track, ala Bp and MS.

I stopped in starbucks 2 days a week all winter long for their used coffee grounds. I would get enough to fill 2 or 3 5 gallon buckets a week.

i would just walk the yard and shake them out of the bucket. Too much in one spot will cake up and repel water. After a rain, i would rake the areas i dumped the grounds a bit to spread them and break up any "pucks".

I never dried them out at all, since my application method was non-mathematical. I do other organics too... chicken manure, grains.

It will be interesting to see what they do this year. I was only able to cover my front and side yards... so i can compare them to the backyard.

I just recycle my own grounds - eight "cups"/day. I pull the filter and grounds and plop it upright into a tunafish tin and let it sit on the counter until I brew the next morning's batch. I then sprinkle whatever is loose around the perimeter of a three-gallon bucket and then turn the filter (and the one half of the grounds that didn't spill out) upside down in the bucket. The next morning the remains are dry and I tap out the last of them into the bucket and toss the filter into the recycles. Never had any mold appear in the bucket and when it's full, they go into the Earthway. I have no drying suggestions for those coming home with pounds of wet grounds other than broadcasting them by hand as they come out of the car trunk.

I just started collecting from a local Starbucks and threw them out onto the lawn about 20 minutes ago.

I have a small lawn, about 700 square feet, of bermuda grass and know coffee grounds will not feed the needs of bermuda. But hey, its free and every little bit can help....and plus I like the smell. :)