Once you are awarded a grant, it may be tempting to breathe a sigh of relief–the hard work is over, and now you are equipped to carry out the projects you outlined during the application process. As in just about any application process, however, the real work does not even begin until after the grant has been awarded. After an application has been approved, the grantee enters into a working relationship with the granting organization, in which they are obliged to fulfill certain expectations and requirements in order to receive the promised funds. This is grants management, which includes both financial reporting as well as the execution of the programs described in the application.

All of your grants related materials should be saved and gathered together in a single place. If the grant writer and the grant manager are different people, these materials should either be duplicated or transferred so that the manager is prepared to carry out the work set into motion by the writer. Organization is key throughout the management process, as expenditures must be documented and reported to the granting agency. Keeping orderly track of everything grants related is also helpful for meeting deadlines, as it is important to not procrastinate. In order to maintain a positive relationship with the granting organization and ensure timely disbursement of funds, all paperwork and tasks should be turned in or completed on time or early.

This may all seem straightforward, but grants are often thought of as merely the application process rather than a fully monitored and managed endeavor that requires the cooperation of two groups with coordinated but still separate goals and workloads. The granting organization has expectations for the usage of the grant money, and the recipient has made budgetary commitments in return. One of the key aspects of grants management is ensuring alignment between the the usage of funds and their stated purpose in the application itself. Attempting to alter this later without permission or trying to pass off unapproved purchases using grant funding will diminish the trust between the organizations and potentially jeopardize future funding or even the continued disbursal of the current grant. Consistency and accountability are vital throughout this process.

As in many things in life, grant writers can easily fall into the pitfall of believing that the endeavor is all about themselves. Grants do not exist in a vacuum, however, and once submitted they are read by reviewers who are also individuals with certain backgrounds and biases. Thus, the grants process is relational and community-oriented rather than a solitary task. As discussed previously, the grant writer must consider the reviewer when writing grants and tailor the application to a general audience–that is, one that is unfamiliar with the organization and its work–while still ensuring fulfillment of the stipulations of the granting organization.

While the review process can vary somewhat from organization to organization, there are some general stages that tend to apply in most cases. The first is a preliminary completion screening. In this first step, staff at the granting organization reviews applications for completion and fulfillment of basic requirements. Once applications have made it past this screening, they can move into the more thorough programmatic review and assessment stage. In this stage, the applications are reviewed for their quality, rather than just for their completion. Instead of the granting organization’s staff carrying out this review, this process is often carried out by panels of either independent experts or peer adjudicators. The role of the staff in this process is to monitor these reviewers and ensure that uniform standards are being applied to all applicants.

In some cases, there may be a separate financial review to ensure that the budgetary components of the application are complete, high-quality, and aligned with the rest of the application. If this does not occur separately, it will occur in one of the previous two steps. After these reviews, a decision will be made based on the available funds and the rating system used by reviewers. Some granting organizations allow organizations to appeal these decisions after notifications are made, but in many cases the reviewers’ decisions are final.

While the grant writer may feel solitary and even self-interested in seeking funds for their organization, it is important to keep in mind that the grant making organization seeks to give funds to groups which uphold some aspect of their mission. The reviewers and the staff are people as well, and the staff in particular are often accessible to the grant writer to some extent. Grant writers should consider reaching out to the staff of the organizations they are applying to for grants. These individuals can serve as invaluable resources in strengthening their applications, as the staff knows precisely what the agency is looking for and what their priorities are. This is an insight I have gained from my time at the Commission and it is something that was quite surprising to me at first–not only that this was an aspect of the program directors’ jobs, but that the relational aspect seems to be one they embrace.