If your nonprofit doesn’t have a grant manager, it needs one.
This essential role can take your funding strategy to the next level. But what does a grant manager do? And how can you advocate for the importance of one in your organization?
In this article, we’ll go over the roles and responsibilities of a grant manager, helping you understand the impact they can have on your nonprofit’s fundraising and sustainability. Whether you’re looking at adding one to your team or taking on the role yourself, you’ll learn all you need to know about this mission-critical role by the end.
Let’s jump in!
Identifies Funding Opportunities
Grant managers are responsible for identifying open funding opportunities that align with their nonprofit’s mission and that they are eligible for.
Because grants are highly competitive, grant managers are tasked with researching and identifying the best-fit opportunities to increase their organization’s odds of success. Part of this involves making sure they have a deep understanding of funder requirements. They may ask themselves:
Do our missions align?
Do we meet the grant’s eligibility requirements?
Are we located in the right geographic location?
Do we serve the communities they want to impact?
Do we have the capacity to complete the application?
Has the funder awarded grants to nonprofits like ours in the past?
Would we be a competitive applicant?
All of this research ensures that nonprofits spend their time wisely, only applying for opportunities where they have the highest likelihood of success.
How Instrumentl can help: Instrumentl streamlines grant-finding efforts, allowing grant managers to set up projects and parameters that auto-populate funding opportunities that meet their needs. These matches include different types of public, private, foundation, corporate, and government grants. No more manually searching through lists of irrelevant opportunities!
Instrumentl’s Smart Matching technology makes it easy to get matched with good-fit funding opportunities in seconds.
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Manages Grant Applications
Finding the grants is just the start of a grant manager’s job.
Sheleia Phillips, the Founder and Principal Consultant of SMP Nonprofit Consulting, has a lot of experience leading grant management teams, especially lean ones. Here are some tips from her Instrumentl Grant Writing Class, How To Effectively Manage Your Grants Department With A Lean Team.
“A Lean Team is a group of one to three non-profit professionals who are responsible for finding, crafting, submitting, and managing grant proposals… You'll see that this structure will fit you if you're a non-profit that doesn't have a lot of human or financial capital to staff a large grants team or if you're a newer organization and you're working on what I call smaller margins and utilizing a lot of volunteers.”
Before you can apply, there’s a lot of pre-work that falls into a nonprofit grant manager's duties. They play different roles, including:
Strategic director: Helping set and guide the overall funding strategy, making sure there’s a diversified mix of funding opportunities throughout the year.
Project manager: Organizing grants to apply for, prioritizing based on fit, funding priority, dollar amount, deadline, and more. This helps nonprofits have a clear plan of where to start with grants to maximize time.
Board Liaison: Connecting with the board and nonprofit leadership to drive alignment before applying.
Once the team has decided on applying for a certain opportunity, the grant manager oversees the entire application process:
Reviews the grant requirements and makes a list of all the information that needs to be gathered.
Organizes all required documentation in a single location, such as organizational budgets, project plans, impact reports, etc.
Once a grant has been awarded, the grant manager is also responsible for overseeing funding usage to maintain grant compliance.
They help ensure the grant requirements are being met, including:
Creating and managing project budgets to ensure they align with the funding requirements. This will be part of the grant application process, and it is a grant manager's responsibility to oversee they are being executed properly.
Monitoring project progress to recommend and make adjustments as needed. The grant manager is responsible for ensuring the project is being executed as outlined in the grant.
Evaluating outcomes to ensure they are within the scope of the project’s focus and sharing progress with key stakeholders as needed.
Ultimately, it is the grant manager's job to ensure that the nonprofit is meeting funder expectations and using funds appropriately.
She recommends setting up a dedicated time to review progress, whether weekly, bi-weekly, or quarterly:
“These reviews will help with any challenges your team may be facing during the grant management process. If a problem does arise or if you see the project heading in a different direction, your entire team will be in continuous communication to solve any issues as they arise.”
Nonprofits must be responsible stewards of funds, and grant managers can serve as champions of this important work.
How Instrumentl can help: Instrumentl has tools to help grant managers oversee funding usage, allowing them to pull reports, track spend down, payments, and more. This will streamline the workflow and drive efficiencies.
Instrumentl’s awards section makes it easy for nonprofits to track their current awards.
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Reports to Stakeholders
Grant managers are also responsible for reporting progress to key stakeholders, including both funders and nonprofit leaders.
Funders often require formal reports that are outlined in the grant requirements. These reports, which are often delivered quarterly or annually, are developed by grant managers who pull all of the required information together in a neat package. In these reports, funders want to see how nonprofits are spending the award, progress to date, community impact, and so forth.
Sometimes, these reports aren’t always going to be easy to deliver, but grant managers know it is important to be honest.
Just ask Rachel Gruisin, project coordinator for the Legal Aid Society of San Diego.
“It's essential to keep your funders in the loop. Rather than just providing generic reports, try offering regular updates highlighting successes and challenges. Even when things don't go according to plan, being transparent about setbacks can help build trust.”
Not only do grant managers help projects stay on track, but they can also make adjustments quickly to bring them back in line as needed. They can communicate changes to impacted parties if changes need to be made and keep everyone on the same page.
How Instrumentl can help: Instrumentl can help grant managers with reports to stakeholders with the click of a button. Once they set up the report in the platform, they can re-rerun it with ease, saving countless hours.
Grant managers can create reports they can easily re-run on Instrumentl to keep everyone in the loop.
Facilitates Collaboration and Communication
Grant managers are responsible for collaboration and communication within the nonprofit and with funders.
Think of grant managers like air traffic control. They help facilitate collaboration within the building, ensuring everyone is staying in their lanes to ensure a smooth execution and landing. When something unexpected occurs, they keep open lines of communication until the problem is solved.
How?
They break down barriers to execution, ensuring no one is working in silos.
They make connections, driving efficiencies in the workflow through collaboration.
They keep the project on track, regularly reviewing requirements and communicating with others to make adjustments as needed.
They are able to accomplish all of this through open and honest communication, both internally and externally. This is critical, especially when it comes to establishing and maintaining a good reputation, securing future funding, and more.
Grant managers make sure to bring the funder along the journey with them. Some examples of this can include:
Sharing program updates, including small impact statements or in-the-moment progress outside of reporting requirements.
Offering personal anecdotes that connect back to previous conversation topics or points of connection.
Asking for feedback if they face a roadblock or need advice.
Grant managers engage with stakeholders throughout the entire grant lifecycle. They aren’t afraid to ask for guidance. Funders want to see nonprofits succeed, and a grant manager can act as a liaison to get their input. Rachel Gruisin shares more about the importance of this below:
“Show your funders that you value their input. Ask for their feedback on your programs or strategic direction. They might have valuable insights you still need to consider. This can show them that you see them as partners, not just funding sources.”
How Instrumentl can help: Instrumentl can help grant managers streamline collaboration with task management, assigning milestones to team members so you never miss a deadline. Additionally, you can put in communication touchpoints to track outreach.
Instrumentl’s tasks can help you assign milestones to team members, set reminders for ongoing communication, and more.
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Wrapping Up
So what does a grant manager do? Well, by now, you should know the answer is a lot!
Grant managers help:
Oversee the entire grant management lifecycle
Identify new grants
Manage the application process
Navigate expenses and reporting requirements
Foster collaboration throughout it all
This critical role helps centralize ownership, driving efficiencies throughout the grant management process.
Many grant managers use Instrumentl as a tool to help them streamline the entire grant lifecycle. Whether they’re looking for new grants, assigning tasks to their team, tracking deadlines, or more, Instrumentl can help them be more effective at what they do.
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