Essential Grant Management Tools Every Funder Should Utilize

For the majority of studies, causes, or purposes related to medicine, art, business, or the environment, there is likely grant funding available. However, despite the numerous opportunities for grantseekers to pursue, many grantmakers still rely on a single method for managing the lifecycles of all their grants: spreadsheets. 

Starting a new funding cycle? Make a new spreadsheet. Tracking grant recipients’ reported expenses? Make a spreadsheet for each award.

For all the utility that digital grids offer, there comes a point where the continued reliance on manually managed spreadsheets hampers funders far more than it helps them, especially when scaling programs. 

Modern grant management tools, however, solve those pain points. The difference in efficiency and functionality between modern tools, like those found in Foundant GLM, and a folder full of spreadsheets grows as wide as the disparity between 1979’s introduction of VisiCalc and filling out ledgers by hand.

Put simply, it’s time to break out of the cells.

Why grant management tools are more essential than ever

Funders are under pressure: more applications, accelerating operations, deluges of data, fewer staff, and tightening compliance requirements comprise just a portion of the contributing factors. As the demands of grant management increase, spreadsheets and siloed data simply can’t keep up, let alone achieve more with less.

Today’s grantmakers need solutions and tools that optimize efficiency. This involves streamlining audit-ready workflows, centralizing data, automating repetitive tasks, configuring notifications, and facilitating collaboration and communication among all personnel, grant recipients, and other stakeholders. 

In such an environment, it becomes easier to reclaim bandwidth and prioritize higher-value tasks. Not to mention, staff can accomplish more with less risk of overextending themselves and burning out.

Ultimately, funders leveraging sophisticated grant management tools spend more time focused on achieving their intended outcomes.

Consider how implementing the tools below would help:

• Improve internal processes

• Evaluate strategically aligned opportunities

• Build more meaningful partnerships

• Maximize the impact of every award

Centralized application intake and review coordination

A modern grant management platform optimizes the entire grant lifecycle, starting with potential grantees’ applications and funders’ review processes. Among the tools should be functionality that provides applicants with clean portals, establishing a professional first impression.

Tools should also include form-building capabilities that minimize data entry errors and further enhance the experience of potential grantees (e.g., auto-saving partially completed applications). Templated forms offer easy repeatability with each new funding cycle, while form customization facilitates top-level screening, filtering out those with misaligned missions and strategies.

You virtually eliminate lost emails or version control issues with centralized application intake. What’s more, providing clear instructions and guidelines directly within the portal and customized application forms minimizes unnecessary back-and-forth.

After gathering the applications, reviewers shouldn’t need to wait until in-person meetings to begin their evaluations. Cloud platforms that provide flexible (but secure) access enable application assessment from any location and at each reviewer’s own convenience. Reviewers should also be able to configure these workflows and track their progress through the applications via intuitive dashboards.

Automated task management and notifications

As staff progress through application reviews and other tasks, workflow tracking should be handled automatically by any modern grant management platform. This includes monitoring progress, automating reminders and notifications, and adhering to configured approval flows. With status updates keeping all personnel informed, each individual knows their next steps and any processes awaiting their input.

Everyone from board members and stakeholders to program officers and their teams maintains alignment. Between automated task management and more consistent, organization-wide alignment, funders can stay focused on making strategic decisions, building partnerships, and improving outcomes.

Outside of internal workflows, automated notifications can also help keep grantees compliant. For example, configuring reminders both a month and two weeks before upcoming deadlines will help ensure grantees always submit the necessary reports on time.

Integrated communication, data, and document storage

Operational and technological siloes rank high among funders’ biggest pain points if they’ve yet to implement a purpose-built grant management platform capable of integrating communications, data, and storage. 

When staff work in isolation or cannot synchronize real-time data, mistakes become more likely, such as manual data entry errors, version control issues, using out-of-date data, and duplicating work.

However, when tools provide built-in messaging within a centralized, cloud solution, all personnel and stakeholders can quickly and easily communicate with each other. Likewise, synchronized data establishes a ‘single source of truth,’ which prevents anyone from accidentally using old or inaccurate data.

In conjunction with automated task management, update logs, and document storage (that ensures nothing gets lost), integrated communications make it easier than ever to coordinate grantmaker operations.

Built-in compliance tracking and audit readiness

If grant management platforms and tools don’t continuously compile activity logs and timestamps (especially for key decisions), funders won’t be able to rapidly generate audit trails. In that case, proving regulatory compliance and demonstrating transparency, equity, and accountability becomes substantially more difficult.

As with configuring audit-ready workflows, any ‘solution’ lacking these compliance tracking capabilities will fail during one of the most critical moments throughout the entire grant lifecycle. The consequences of such might include incurring steep penalties, jeopardizing future funding, or losing the trust of board members and essential stakeholders.

Given the strict scrutiny and compliance requirements funders and grant recipients must adhere to, both entities should protect against risk. Implementing technology that automatically monitors activity and simplifies audit trail generation might prove to be the wisest investment possible. 

Whether or not funders receive any federal awards and oversee pass-through funding, the Audit Requirements (Subpart F) expanded upon within 2 CFR Part 200 can help inform the evaluation standards that grant management tools should meet.

Real-time reporting and outcome measurement

When staff log into modern grant management tools, they should immediately gain access to a dashboard that intuitively displays program performance and outcome metrics. Without that information, it becomes significantly more challenging to guide process improvements or demonstrate the impacts of grantees and programs.

Funders looking to assess their impacts according to more granular categories will require tools capable of filtering or organizing their data. For example, modern grant management tools should provide capabilities to track impacts by different funding cycles, geographies, or strategies. 

By comparing this information, funders can better understand the factors behind their most significant impacts and begin tailoring processes to replicate or improve those outcomes.

Moreover, as key funders communicate with board members and stakeholders, access to dashboards and visual reports that break down information makes it easier to convey results. These metrics also help create content for awareness and donation campaigns. 

Combining testimonials with this data helps shape or support the storytelling efforts that are crucial to helping donors and volunteers understand the tangible impact of their contributions.

The ability to generate real-time reports is one of the major benefits achieved by centralizing data and establishing a ‘single source of truth’ within a grant management system. So, when evaluating platforms, real-time reporting should always be regarded as essential functionality.

Systems that scale with you

While every funder and grantee seeks to make an immediate impact, they’re also continuously looking for ways to achieve better outcomes, facilitate more grant funding, or serve more people within their target populations. 

However, scaling funders also need to consider how their systems will support that growth. Just as spreadsheets can become cumbersome at scale, the same can occur with some platforms.

Implementing grant management tools that don’t provide the necessary support will only lead to spending time away from your mission, evaluating upgrades, and investing more resources into technology instead of grantees. 

Instead, future-proof operations with technology that supports:

• Unlimited users: The ability to add any number of users will help keep costs lower, both now and during periods of growth. After all, there may be users across your organization, like board members and stakeholders, who’d benefit from accessing dashboards or workflow management capabilities despite not needing daily access.

• Multiple funding cycles: Funders seeking to facilitate more grants simultaneously or reduce the time between cycles will require the same capabilities, replicable processes, and configurable, real-time reporting to monitor each distinct award.

• Diverse program types: If funders want to expand their strategic initiatives, opportunities, or fundraising events, they may need to set up different applications, methods for reviewing applicants, and post-award follow-up processes. Doing so shouldn’t require a new grant management platform. 

Scaling funders, from small foundations to large philanthropic organizations, will discover all the functionality and program support they need through Foundant’s GLM (Grant Lifecycle Manager). And if funders also manage donor-advised funds, integrating GLM with CommunitySuite will help further scale their grantmaking programs.

Both Foundant’s GLM and CommunitySuite platforms have been designed with growth in mind by developers who hold extensive experience within the philanthropic sector.

Learn more about grant management tools that work for you

If you’re spending more time wrestling with spreadsheets and internal processes than celebrating major funding wins, it’s time to consider implementing purpose-built grant management tools. 

From collecting and reviewing applications to measuring and reporting post-award impacts, the right platform will streamline operations throughout (and across) each end-to-end funding cycle.

And if your priority is improving processes and outcomes, the right platform is Foundant’s GLM.

Contact us to learn more about how Foundant’s grant management solutions can make your day-to-day easier and your impact greater.