If you’re reading this, it hopefully means congratulations are in order!
After taking in such a huge accomplishment, it’s time to get started on the post-notification stages. These next steps will likely require strong time management and organization, regardless of the type of funding secured.
To make the process easier, we have developed a checklist to ensure you’re looping in the right teammates, experts, and/or consultants in the post-award stages of grants management.
Check it out below!
Ensure Your Team Is on Board
Before getting into the weeds of managing and delivering grant expectations, it’s important that your team is looped in. If teammates are informed from the start there is less potential for delays, miscommunication, or misunderstandings down the line.
It’s also important to update the whole team on the success of a grant application. This is a win for everyone! ‍
Making sure all members of your team are aware of their role in fulfilling the grant requirements and expectations can save lots of time and energy moving forward.
The size and depth of your nonprofit team will determine what the processes below will look like for you and your colleagues. Regardless, over-communication at this stage doesn’t hurt!
Who’s Been Involved and Who Needs To Be Brought In?
Once you’ve been awarded funding, it’s important to think about who has been involved up to that point and who needs to be brought in for successful post-award management.
For example, the grant writer is not always involved in programming, data collection, and reporting when it comes to the implementation of the award. Keeping this reality top of mid is a great lens for prepping your organization for success.
On smaller nonprofit teams, it may have been all hands on deck when submitting the application—so everyone has somewhat of an understanding of what’s going on. In these situations, it still doesn’t hurt to re-share information about the award as a friendly reminder of what’s to come.
For larger or more siloed teams, updating team members may require more thought and planning. In these cases, it’s unlikely that the entire team was involved from the start so providing additional context about the funder, application process, and award expectations will be necessary to prepare them for next steps.
In my experience, most grant management processes require collaboration between the following departments/roles:
Development/ Fundraising
Marketing and Communications
Programs
Measurement, Evaluation, and Learning/ Data and Impact
Finance and Operations
Board/ Upper Management
The need to inform and bring others along will vary by stage—which we will outline later in the sections below.
Create a Template for Assigning Responsibilities
Creating a plan to tackle all grant requirements can be overwhelming. Thankfully there are plenty of resources out there to help you.
In my experience, the “RACI” (responsible, accountable, consulted, and informed) format is one of the most helpful guides for teams to assist in determining who needs to be involved in each stage and at what level.
If your team has not already developed a RACI chart, now would be a great time. Creating this document for your team will not only be a helpful exercise, but will also serve as a guide as the grant cycle progresses.
Depending on the workload associated with the grant, you may have to reach outside your team for support. Here are some resources you can think about tapping into depending on the level of additional support needed:
After working through the RACI document with your team, review the expectations for each team member to see if their capacity alone is enough to handle what is required. If there are areas that may need additional support, you now have a simpler way to see where and when you may need to invest in extra resources.
Once you’ve ensured that your team is on board and that you have the right resources in place, you should be ready to use our checklist for successfully assigning post-award responsibilities. This checklist can help guide you through the entire process from start to finish and keep you and your team from missing important steps along the way.
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Step 1: Reviewing the Timeline (Then Reviewing It Again)
We’ve all been there: managing a variety of grants at one time, all with different timelines, reporting requirements, and expectations. This juggling can feel impossible, especially if you’ve failed to prepare from the very start.
Creating an internal timeline can help alleviate the future stresses of grant expectations.
Using the funder’s timeline for guidance, you can create your own that works backwards from due dates provided. This will help ensure that your entire team is aware of the deadlines from the very start, not mere days or weeks before a grant deliverable is due.
This timeline should sit alongside the RACI document and can be a great resource for team members involved in post-award stages.
Step 2: Contracting, Budgeting, and Providing Required Documentation
Typically following the notification of an award comes the process of completing and submitting all required documents to the funder.
If you’re lucky to have designated finance and operations staff in house, these processes should be relatively straightforward. However, teams without these resources have even more reason to stay on top of budgeting processes and ensure all dollars are accounted for and approved before spending begins.
Regardless of your team’s size or expertise, this is the stage you want to pass though seamlessly so as to not delay the grant start date and/or disbursement of funds.
Some example questions to consider in this stage are:
In your organization, who has the authority to sign off on or approve grant spending?
Do you need your Board of Directors involved?
Do you need legal or finance expertise? Will that be in-house or external?
How much time should be set aside for these processes to be completed?
It’s important for your team to understand the complexities and necessary support needed for this stage so that there are no delays or issues in getting contracts finalized and payments processed. For more on the intricacies of this period, see ​​How To Ensure Grant Compliance After You Win Funding.
Grant awards should be celebrated, so don’t forget to share the news!
Sometimes funders will share processes for announcing the grant partnership. They may provide copy about the opportunity, approved logos, and other guidance to let your audience know about the award.
In my experience as a grant maker, awardees typically want to share the news on social media and add the grantee logo to their website. If a grantor does not provide guidance or materials and you wish to share something externally, it’s always best to check with them first.
Here’s some great advice from Carolyn M. Appleton, Nonprofit Fundraising and Communications: ‍
“The exhilaration you feel at having received a grant is addictive! Of course, you want to brag. But take a few minutes to reach out to ask, "exactly how should we list you online, including on our social media" (if at all). That may be spelled out in the letter of transmittal, but it is good still to ask in real time out of courtesy”.
During this stage, make sure your organization’s marketing team has clear direction on how and when they should be sharing this exciting news. Sharing about the award can help bring credibility to your nonprofit, attract other funders, and bring attention to your mission.
Step 4: Executing the Program
You’ve put the thought and planning into the request already—now it’s time for the real work to begin!
If the grant funding will be used to support an existing program, this stage may feel more natural. You’ve executed it before and clearly the funder agrees it’s a worthy investment. All that’s left is for you and your team to continue knocking it out of the park.
However, if the grant is being used to scale or create a new program, executing what was proposed can be a steeper climb. Communication is essential here, especially if your team is divided into different departments.
In my time assigning, reviewing, and aggregating data from grantee reports I feel like I’ve seen it all. The common thread amongst grantees that are successful and timely is preparation.
Here are a few tips for ensuring your team members can successfully navigate the reporting process:
First, don’t wait until the last minute to review report forms. When your team completes both a RACI and timeline, reporting should be highlighted on both. From in-person site visits to more traditional report forms, be prepared for what the grant requires.
If a report form is required, hopefully you’ll get access to it with plenty of time to make a plan. Reach out to the funder so that you know what to expect, especially if the report itself or timing for its release is not provided at the time of the award.
Once you have the template, loop in the team members who will need to contribute and give them time to provide their insight. For example, the person responsible for measurement, evaluation, and learning (MEL) may have all the data points needed for submission. Or, the programs team might have participant stories that should be included as well.
Finally, think about data collection as an ongoing process. Narratives, case studies, surveys, and photo and video content can all be helpful in reporting impact back to a funder. This data is often more easily collected as the program progresses. If program colleagues are aware of this, they can help gather this information most effectively.
Overall, preparation is key. But don’t just take my word for it—here’s what Jeannette Archer-Simons, a nonprofit consultant had to share: ‍
“Collecting data and submitting reports (is one of the most common compliance issues). Often a nonprofit is so excited about receiving a grant or funding that they just start running. When the funding is accepted, take a breath. Look at what the reporting requirements are”.
Step 6: Learn, Assess, Improve: Set Your Team Up for Future Success
Not to add another thing to your already long list of to do’s, but the close of a grant cycle can be a great time to reflect, learn, and prepare for grants that come next.
Running through a review process of the grant cycle while the experience is still fresh can allow teams to share out and ensure increased future success.
Some things to consider during this learning period are;
What did and what can your team learn from this experience?
Are there changes you would like to implement next time around?
What were the accomplishments, or what worked so well that you’d want to replicate it next grant cycle?
Did all team members feel like they were set up for success throughout the process?
Does your team need additional capacity next time around?
It’s important to allow space for members from all departments to provide feedback—even those who may have been involved in only one of the stages above. Being inclusive in this process promotes honest feedback and a culture of learning and improvement.
Wrapping Up: Post-Award Checklist
Breaking up the process into stages and ensuring all of the correct people are looped in to each can help make post-award management less daunting.
Hopefully the above checklist provided helpful context, but as a quick refresher here’s a quick outline of the stages and who’s often involved in each:
Timeline review: All team members or department leads
Contract and budgeting: Finance, Operations, Legal, Board of Directors
Sharing the great news: Marketing and Communications, Development
Execution of the program: Programs
Preparing for reporting: All team members or department leads
Learning from the experience: All team members or department leads
And don’t worry too much if you don’t have a large team to divide tasks up. Leaning on resources like Instrumentl can help move the work forward in more efficient and organized ways. Bottom line is, you got this!
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