Unwritten grant management rule #7. Quantify but not just in terms of the evaluation measures in the grant. Try to go beyond that. Think in terms of how many new jobs were created (if you hired new people with the grant funds); how many contractors were put to work; the efficiency of the grant dollars […]
Unwritten grant management rule #6. Sing their praises whenever you can. If your grant program is really successful, you need to crush it with your communications plan: Promote the hell out of it on social media; contact your local and state officials; and of course, notify all your federal officials—either though professionally made communications materials […]
Unwritten grant management rule #5. When you’re successful, they will look successful. The more successful their grantees are, the better they look to Congress. Your grantor-grantee relationship is a partnership. Work it! Your success is their success.
Unwritten grant management rule #4. Small problems: fix internally Big problems: notify the feds (inform them of the problem and, more importantly, tell them about your active corrective action plan). You want them to know you discovered the problem and that you’re already fixing it. First thing, decide what’s a big problem vs a small […]
Unwritten grant management rule #3. Returning money to the feds—because you either didn’t spend it or because you misspent it—makes the funding agency look bad to Congress and the administration. Nobody wants that. If you end up returning money prematurely, the agency can probably find another organization to utilize the funding but it’s a giant […]
Unwritten grant management rule #2. Again. This should be common sense. I’ve seen many cases where organizations are awarded millions of dollars, but at the end of their grant term, they’ve spent only a few hundred thousand and they’re scrambling to get a one-year extension to try and salvage something positive out of their program. […]
Unwritten grant management rule #1. This sounds like common sense but you would be surprised how many grantees decide to completely change their program once they receive funding. I’ve been in numerous meetings where the program manager says, “I know we said we’d do X but we’re going to do Y instead.” And my favorite […]
Consider the ROI—or the return on your time investment—before applying for a federal grant. As you read a grant’s description, pay attention to the number of projects that will be funded. Is the department funding 50 or 60 projects or is it highly competitive with less than ten awards? If it’s less than ten, think […]
In every federal grant application you submit, make sure to include a budget item for staff training, and any necessary travel expenses. Organizations get so focused on serving their clients, and getting the most out of their grant dollars, they often forget to develop their own capacity. Training funds are hard to find and even […]
Is your organization a pass-through entity? Heads-up: if you issue an RFA to make sub-grants, you can’t change the rules after organizations submit their applications. Organizations prepare their responses based on the terms you establish (and those terms should be based on the rules in the Uniform Guidance—the same ones the Feds follow). Once the […]