Kimberly and I often preach that grant writing is NOT a solo sport, so it should come as no surprise that grant management isn’t either. In fact, we are preaching all about this on the latest Fundraising HayDay episode.
Whether you are a team of grant professionals at an organization or a party of one (been there, done that), it takes a village y’all. Grant management involves many important aspects and it’s a good framework for understanding who belongs on your team.
And trust me, you want to build your team long before the first grant is awarded. Because if you don’t educate your colleagues, bosses, and board members about effective grant management before the first dollar arrives, everyone will turn to you to do it all.
Whether you are a large organization or small one, you want a handful of people involved in grant management – it helps with checks and balances and ensures that all the funder’s requirements are met. Trust me, when you are managing a grant from a federal agency, there are A LOT of requirements. Make sure you’ve got the right people at the table.
The money is the major focus for many. Did you spend it on the right things? Did you spend it in a timely manner? Did you follow your agency’s procurement policy? Did you document everything? Did the funder give you the award up front or reimburse you for every allowable expense? Did you document your match? Did you get permission if a budget adjustment was needed?
Yep, you want a finance person involved – could be your finance director, an accountant, your board’s treasurer, or even a trusted volunteer with a background in finance. And often it’s more than one person involved. When I worked in local government the program officer would spend the grant funding, someone in finance would make sure procurement was followed, as the grants administrator I would make sure it was an allowable expense found in the approved grant budget, and someone else in finance would do a final review of everything. It’s a lot of checks and balances, but it helped our organization ensure the funds were properly accounted for.
Your grant application promised you would carry out certain activities, like serving a certain number of people, holding trainings, delivering a specific tonnage of food, hiring staff members, and so on. Did you track all these activities? Did you report your outcomes to the under? Did you evaluate your successes and failures?
Your program director(s) is vital to grant management success. As the grants administrator, you’re likely not implementing the program (unless you work at a very small agency), so you’ll need information from program staff to submit accurate reports to your funder. It’s vital that everyone understands what information must be tracked from the beginning so you aren’t left with nothing to share. (That’s never happened to me. Okay, only once. And only the first month of the grant. But we rallied!!!)
The truth is, no two funders are exactly alike, so the information requested from funder to funder can vary. That means you need to ensure all the other grant requirements are followed. And depending on what those requirements are, you may need assistance from any number of people.
Examples include Davis Bacon Act and Disadvantaged Business Enterprise monthly reports (read all about that HERE) that probably require the help of whomever in your organization is overseeing your grant funded construction project. In my case, it was the project manager from our Engineer and Public Works Department.
You need a team of folks to help with funder site visits and audits (read all about that HERE). That includes finance and organizational leadership.
Some projects require public input, which may include meetings and/or surveys. Do you have a marketing or communication team that can help with that? Or maybe your organization hires a consultant for that aspect of work. Either way, you want them on your team.
Think through all the moving parts of grant management and build your team. Some members may be involved no matter what the grant award is. Others, particularly project directors, may only be on the team for specific grant awards.
How ever you create your grant group, make sure that you spend time educating them on the importance of quality grant management. I like to remind my team that bad grant management leads to less grant funding, so we all need to stay on top of things. I also share horror stories of bad grant management and the consequences, because why not learn from the mistakes of others?
You may be the only person with “grant” in your title, but it takes a village to manage grants and manage them well. Remind your leadership that quality grant management means you keep your grant awards and will likely lead to additional grant awards. And having one person juggling it all guarantees that one of the many balls will be dropped. No one wants that.
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