The Nonnegotiable Skills Every Grant Manager Needs

Without an effective grants management structure, nonprofit fundraising teams will struggle to succeed.

Here at Instrumentl, we want to make sure you’re well-equipped with the skills needed for successful grant management. To do so, we’ll explore the expertise of Sheleia Phillips, Founder and Principal Consultant of SMP Nonprofit Consulting.

In her workshop, How To Effectively Manage Your Grants Department With a Lean Team, Sheleia highlighted three areas that are nonnegotiable for successful grants management:

1. Efficiency: working smarter not harder
2. Symbiosis: working together and prioritizing collaboration
3. Tech-savviness: leaning on helpful platforms available to streamline workloads

Below, we’ll take a deeper dive into these three categories so that you and your team can be equipped with the skills needed for a successful grants management journey.

We’ve all heard the concept of working smarter, not harder. If you’re working on a “small but mighty team” as Sheleia says, this is always top of mind. But what steps can you actually take to make this a reality?

First, you can ensure your work is efficient. You can’t afford to waste time, so building out a streamlined process or workflow can be a great way to set you and your team up for success.

A streamlined grants management workflow helps reduce time spent on the administrative and logistics work, and leaves more capacity for other necessary functions. When you’re working on a small team, time is your most valuable resource.

Teresa Huff, a Nonprofit Grant Strategist, explains it best:
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“By setting up systems, we can alleviate some of the stress that we're all under from day to day, we can help prevent mistakes. By setting up…really good systems, you can take [your team’s] skills and put your brain power into [making] your work even better. So good systems help lay the foundation”.

She shares even more expertise in this Instrumentl Partner Webinar: Step Up Your Systems for Success: How to Simplify, Streamline and Support.

The Importance of Sharing Knowledge for Streamlined Processes

Not only does a streamlined workflow set up your current team for efficiency, it also protects your organization in the future.

Small nonprofits often face losses in institutional knowledge due to frequent turnover, burnout, and lack of capacity. Building institutional knowledge through a clear and concise workflow can help your team avoid future knowledge gaps.

When a clear, concise, and shared workflow is followed, your organization is less likely to lose this valued institutional knowledge. Here’s some more advice from Teresa Huff:
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“If somebody is sick and out for some time, if you're on vacation, or if someone leaves the organization, it allows for smoother transitions when you have a system in place...This is a complex process. We've got to make sure things are covered. So we set up a system and it gives us the tools to do our job well when we have that in place”.

So how can you actually develop a streamlined system? Keep reading!

The Elements of a Streamlined Process

Although there are best practices in developing workflows within nonprofits, there will always be unique variables given your team dynamics and type of work.

Generally, breaking the process into stages (pre-award, award, post-award), assigning duties to team members, and agreeing on a timeline with clear deadlines can help move workflows along effectively.

In creating a streamlined grants management system for your team, you should make sure to consider the following:

• The capacity, skills, and expertise of your team members. The makeup of your team can help determine what steps need to be built into grants management processes.
• The free resources you have available to stay organized.
• The funding (if any) that you have to spend on technology and platforms to automate or further organize the process you develop.
• Dedicated time to review and critique the agreed upon workflow at set times to make needed updates and changes.

For more helpful tips on streamlining grants management workflows and processes, reference this in-depth Instrumentl resource: How Nonprofits and Consultants Are Streamlining the Grant Management Process.

The Need for a “Databank” to Maintain Streamlined Grants Management

Creating an organized databank for your team can cut down on the time spent recreating the wheel with each grant application.

Typically, funders ask for pretty standard information about your organization, especially in the first stages of applying for funding. Having this information and “boilerplate” language in one place can reduce the time it takes to get an application finalized.
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“Your grants data bank is just your vault of information that you can find in one place. And in the event you're running tight on time, you already know where to go”. - Sheleia

What should be in your grant databank? Sheleia recommends the following:

• Organizational history: a brief summary of how and why the organization came to be
• Mission and vision statements
• Organizational or program specific budgets
• Other relevant attachments: annual reports, logic models, project plans, curriculums, etc.
• Assessment/impact data
• External reports

Ultimately, the databank should include materials that don’t change regularly grant to grant.

Updating the grant databank every so often can be a helpful team exercise as well. These updates will not only ensure that the application process continues to be more efficient, it will also familiarize staff with the materials, language, and attachments available, and where they can go to find them.

The most effective grant management teams are those that prioritize collaboration and can work together seamlessly.

Whether your nonprofit has large departments, departments composed of one staff member, or staff members that work across several departments, these entities need to know how to talk with one another.

For example, finance and programs departments often work hand in hand to approve budgets and get contracts signed. Or marketing and communications departments might work alongside the development team to create strong funding requests and impact stories. On nonprofit teams, there is a constant need for inter and intra department collaboration.
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How can you get your grants management to a state of symbiosis? It takes strong leadership, buy-in from the team, and clear communication to keep all departments on track.

To ensure your team is communicating effectively within and between departments, consider the following best practices:

• Ensure clarity of roles and responsibilities. If expectations are not clear from the start, team members will not be set up for success. With clear roles and responsibilities, all staff understand what they need to do and what they can expect from those in their department and other departments.
• Create “norms” around how your team communicates. From selecting which form of communication is most effective (email, text, phone call, instant messaging, etc.) to setting expectations for timely replies, understanding how to best communicate within a team is important.
• Select a platform (or platforms) that keeps everything organized. We’ll dive into this more in the next section, “tech-savviness”.

With effective communication, even the smallest of teams can work in symbiosis to deliver on their mission and increase their intended impacts.

When you’re dealing with a large quantity of work and lower capacity, this is more important than ever.

There’s no need to go about it all on your own or recreate the wheel. Instead, use the tools and technology available to streamline, organize, and expedite your grant management processes.
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“Be looking for ways in your work that you can offload some of that work to systems. It's kind of like hiring an assistant that we all would love to have. Can you hire a system?”. - Teresa Huff

Having a tech platform that helps you stay organized and work efficiently is essential in the world of grants management. Instrumentl is a perfect option if you’re looking to do it all in one place.

Sheleia’s Recommended Tools for Grant Management

Sheleia shared with us the tools that she and her teams/clients have used in the past for the most effective grant management.

• Instrumentl: Sheleia describes Instrumental as THE tool for all things grants management.
• Google sheets: Google Suites is great for drafting grant proposals, especially because of its collaboration features.
• Asana: Asana is Sheila’s recommended project management software, used in conjunction with Instrumentl.
• Zapier: Zapier is the automation platform that integrates all of the tools Sheleia uses for a seamless flow.

With so many resources out there, deciding on the correct tools for your grants management needs can be difficult. Thankfully the Instrumentl team has done their research. To learn more about what options may work best for you and your team, reference The Best Grant Management Software for Nonprofits Guide.

The Perks of Using Instrumentl

Like Sheleia highlights throughout the webinar, Instrumentl is the top resource for small teams who need systems to help them do their best work in grant management.
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“Instrumentl is the, and I mean, the, institutional fundraising platform built specifically for your grant prospecting, tracking, and management all in one place.” - Sheleia

Unlike other tools, Instrumentl offers end-to-end solutions that cover the entire grant lifecycle:

• Prospecting: Instrumentl uses Smart Matching technology to automatically match you with active grants that fit your organization’s mission and funding needs.
• Tracking: Every grant you save in Instrumentl is automatically added to your Tracker. Your Tracker organizes all of your saved opportunities by name, deadline, funding amount, next tasks, and more.
• Management: Once you win a grant, Instrumentl’s Awards dashboard makes it easy to track your funding, generate reports, and maintain compliance—all in one place.

One of the most helpful features of Instrumentl as a management tool is the ability to keep all grants information in one place. Within each saved opportunity you can create notes, assign tasks to team members, save documents, and reference details about the funder and the specific project.

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This dashboard lays out a lot of helpful information that can take the administrative burden off your team. From assigning tasks to team members, to changing the status of an opportunity, to setting deadlines, Instrumentl can help you track it all!

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Instrumentl also makes it easy to track grant spending in the system. Budgeting can be challenging, especially for smaller teams that may lack financial expertise. With Instrumentl some of that burden is relieved.

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Finally, Instrumentl makes it easy to create reports with the click of a button so that you can update your team and organization’s stakeholders—ensuring everyone is on the same page!

Want to learn more about how to leverage Instrumentl? Read: Instrumentl Is Your Edge In Grant Management: Chaos to Control. If you’re interested in giving it a try yourself, try Instrumentl's free 14-day trial.

Training and Onboarding

Sheleia also shared with us how her team uses technology to their advantage when training and onboarding staff.

As Sheleia put it:
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“If you don't have the manpower, you'll learn how to use technology to be on your side”.

A few examples of using technology to relieve some of the burden on nonprofit teams when it comes to training and onboarding include:

• Sharing training videos or modules with employees.
  • Individuals can access and review these whenever they need.
  • Team members can find times that work for them to complete them, instead of trying to add additional calls or meetings to already busy calendars.
• Providing onboarding guides for new and/or remote team members.
  • These can be especially helpful if your team is reliant on consultants, interns, or associates new to the space.
• Creation of an online library for useful articles/ resources.
  • Instrumentl has a ton of great resources you can incorporate! To get started on this, here are some topics worth exploring:
    • Fundraising resources
    • Budgeting resources
    • Funder Relations resources

Not only will this relieve some of the immediate pressure from team members, it also creates an easily accessible record of training, onboarding materials, and resources for current and future staff to access when needed.

Let’s bring it back to the three nonnegotiables Sheleia highlighted in her webinar:

1. Efficiency
   • Streamline processes
   • Share effectively and avoid the loss of institutional knowledge
   • Develop and maintain a grant database
2. Symbiosis
   • Prioritize collaboration and communication within and between departments
   • Ensure team members understand roles and responsibilities
3. Tech-savviness
   • Find the right tools and systems that work for your team
   • Lean on technology to save time and automate work

We recommend incorporating these practices within your own teams, and learning as you do. As with everything, change takes time so be patient with yourself, your team, and your organization.

We also hope that you’ll use the incredible resources Instrumentl has to offer to nonprofit professionals, especially those working on those small but mighty teams. Sign up for a free trial and learn how to make the most of it with this helpful Trial Guide.