Continued evolution of funder requirements is driving the need for more sophisticated grant management systems and processes—especially for grantors managing multiple recipients. The all-too-common approach for managing grants and recipients with spreadsheets, word documents, and email exposes those regranting federal funds to risks that are no longer tolerable. If your subrecipients are not in compliance, neither are you.
Effective risk management–and subrecipient monitoring–requires implementing the right processes supported by the right technology.
We work with customers every day who’ve implemented grant management software (GMS) to empower them to better manage subrecipients and improve compliance. With this technology grantors can:
- Manage the award process from application creation to grantee review and selection.
- Collaborate with recipients on budget and performance plans.
- Assign and monitor recipient financial and programmatic performance goals.
- Provide recipients program management guidance.
- Gather the right data from recipients to demonstrate compliance with funder requirements.
Here are 3 benefits of GMS that make effective subrecipient management possible:
1. Consistent Processes
Effective collaboration between internal and external teams is critical to ensure proper management, monitoring and reporting of the full grants lifecycle. If your organization still uses ad hoc systems to manage recipients, it can be difficult to keep processes consistent across teams. Not to mention, disorganized data and documents can lead to siloed communication, and a lack of transparency into progress and performance.
With grant management software, grantors can record expected outcomes, outputs, milestones, activities, timelines and deliverables for all parties involved in a project. This gives recipients greater insight into their responsibilities, and a consistent way to report back on their financial and performance progress.
2. Centralized Information
From pre-award planning to reporting, each stage of the grants lifecycle requires diligent data monitoring and the successful transfer of information. If managed manually or with disparate systems, the grant process can be stressful, time-consuming and prone to error. Documents may need to get filtered through one individual or department; multiple file formats and versions may abound; and key stakeholders may be left waiting for the information they need to do their jobs better.
A centralized hub that consolidates data, documents, communications, and task assignments empowers teams stay on track and ensures everyone has the information they need. Grantors, lead recipients and sub-recipients no longer have to waste time requesting information from one another. Instead, they can focus on driving real performance results.
3. Automated Reporting
Our team creates Explainers that detail the impact on grant managers of changes to the UGG, SLFRF requirements, and other federal grant programs. We’ve drafted more of these over the last 12 months than at any other time. One thing is very clear–funder requirements continue to evolve and the only way to keep up is to have easy access to the right data when you need it.
What’s more, quantitative data is becoming more essential. Performance-based reporting is the crux of many of the federal changes. Yet to successfully report on outcomes, grantees must be able to effectively monitor their own activities, spend and performance in real-time, as well as that of their subrecipients.
With grant management software, grantors can automate subrecipient data collection and reporting, making it possible to check on status at any time. If spend or performance isn’t trending inline with grant goals, the grantor can proactively address issues before they become a larger problem–and, more over, in time to improve outcomes in advance of reporting and audit deadlines.
To learn more, download our Managing Subrecipients and Maintaining Compliance Guide: