Organizations face distinct responsibilities and requirements throughout the grant lifecycle. Each phase has its own set of requirements for reporting, accounting, administration, and management.
The awarding stage is generally the shortest phase. It’s where the grantmaker awards the grant, works with the awardee on a final agreement, and awards funds.
Here are the 3 steps involved:
- Notify successful and unsuccessful applicants.
- Finalize legal agreements.
- Award funds.
During the awarding stage, the grantor notifies all applicants of their decision. The funder then drafts an agreement that spells out the terms of the grant. The recipient and grantor both sign the agreement, and the funds are disbursed to the recipient.
This might seem fairly straightforward for grants with a single recipient, but managing awards for a larger grant program can become overwhelming without a strong grant management system in place.
Post-award stage
After the grant agreement has been signed and the funds have been disbursed, the post-award stage begins.
During this stage, the grantor and recipient work to ensure any expectations or requirements outlined in the agreement are being met. This stage includes the implementation, monitoring, and closeout of the grant program.
Here are 3 Post-Award Tasks:
- Provide support and oversight.
- Report on results.
- Closeout the grant.
Consider, how will your grant recipients report on their progress?
As the grantor, you may require the recipient to send you periodic reports about how the funds are being used and what is being accomplished. You can also set up an auditing program with on-site visits and in-person interviews or presentations.
Getting updates on how your grant money is being used can be crucial to funders, for meeting federal requirements or making case studies to communicate your organization’s impact.
Other grant reporting best practices include forging partnerships, structuring the report for learning, and seeking feedback from applicants.
The post-award period is also a crucial time to reflect and report on your own internal process.
- What worked well? What didn’t?
- Did your organization hit goals for efficiency, applicant numbers, diversity, and more?
- What rules and regulations should you revisit or add?
Digging into the data and analyzing the outcomes is the first step in understanding past results to inform future action.
Upon completing all the closeout requirements, including a review of the final financial reports and results from the awardee, the grant lifecycle comes to an end.
There’s a lot involved in the grant management process, but the right grant management platform can make it easier to handle–and produce more impactful results.
Discover how we can help your organization get the best return on your grantmaking process:
Distribute and Track Awards
Streamline your awards process with easy-to-use tools to notify awardees and disburse awards with a simple process. View allocated budget, top-ranked applicants, and scoring breakdown with a glance. Say goodbye to manually keeping up with tracking, and monitor your funding process all within the same platform.
Advanced Reporting Tools
Slice and dice that data however you wish using real-time ad-hoc reporting. Create and organize flexible reports, export, and quickly transform raw data into useful and readily understood information. Easily measure your impact and make decisions for a more efficient grants process.
Grants United is the leading cloud-based solutions provider with a robust user interface and end-to-end life cycle automation. Maximize your efficiency, simplify complex processes, and improve the way you collaborate with our intuitive platform.
