With a grants management solution built on grant-making best practices, grant managers can expect improved productivity through more efficient application and assessment processes, and stronger alignment between programs and organisational objectives.
OmniStar is an industry-leading, cloud-based, end-to-end grants management solution. Built in consultation with experts and grant-making practitioners, OmniStar can be personalised to suit individual organisations’ objectives. It has been continuously improved over the past 15 years, on advice from grant-making professionals.
OmniStar is based on grant-making best practices, making it the gold standard solution to support grants management. OmniStar ensures grant-making decisions are informed by real facts in real time.
What is Grant Making?
Grant-making is a complex process. Organisations often tackle big issues, such as alleviating poverty or improving the quality of women’s education in the world’s most vulnerable populations. When the scope is wide, defining what matters can be complicated.
Additionally, resource constraints often limit grant-making organisations’ ability to make the best of their programs. Research shows that following grant-making best practices can help deliver optimal results. Missing information or scattered data from poorly defined metrics are also common risks that will leave you with little insight as to the effectiveness of your grant.
As a result, designing grant programs is never an easy job. However, applying grant-making best practices can help you focus your efforts where they are needed most.
Common Issues in Grant Making and How to Avoid Them
Even after carefully researching how to manage grants, organisations can still experience issues when implementing their programs.
Poor program planning can derail applications and cause applicants or evaluators to expend unnecessary effort. Grantors should take the time to establish priorities and eligibility criteria upfront and post this information in an easily accessible and understandable form.
Inefficient application processes can create administrative delays that push out deadlines. Simplifying lengthy processes such as eligibility screening and reviewing applications minimises effort and improves workflow.
Scattered or uneven data collection makes it difficult to track the program’s performance and compile accurate reports. A system that facilitates consistent data capture provides the reliability and transparency needed to make critical decisions concerning the grant.
Ineffective communication with applicants jeopardises trust and creates confusion. Definite expectations and touchpoints throughout the grants process allow stakeholders to provide updates, feedback, or outcomes that enhance the program’s effectiveness.
Proactively addressing these issues assists grant-makers in building stronger and more accountable programs from the outset.
Nine Grant Management Best Practices
Even after you’ve designed your program, there are several challenges of grant management to overcome, including implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
Building on long-term industry experience, we summarise nine grant-making best practices that every grant maker should implement.
1. Establish a Clear Vision and Mission
One of the best practices in grant-making is to establish a clear vision and mission for your program. Spend time during the planning and design phase to flesh out your program’s vision and mission. It will help you stay focused on the outcomes and impacts you want to achieve with your funding. Your grant seekers will also know whether or not your funding opportunity aligns with their values. As a grants program manager, you can review your organisation’s strategic objectives and then think about how funding can make these objectives operational. The mission will then inform your grant-making strategy.
2. Determine the Funding Focus
One strategy for good grant-making is to have a specific focus for your funding. Having a funding focus can help you to develop your grant assessment guidelines by defining “deal-makers” and “deal-breakers”.
“Deal-makers” might include grant applications that:
- Match your geographic or demographic area of focus
- Are from organisations with a strong network of community leaders who align with your niche community focus
- Come highly recommended by trusted colleagues.
On the other hand, “Deal-breakers” might be grant applications from organisations that:
- Have a notable deficit in their financial report
- Lack project experience
- Don’t have an organisational sustainability plan
- Have biases and prejudices that conflict with your organisation’s values and objectives.
3. Provide Clear, Transparent Guidelines for Grant Seekers
Once you know your focus, it’s then important to develop clear guidelines for your grant applications. Comprehensive submission guidelines would include:
- Clear details about eligibility
- Timelines outlining each stage of the application and evaluation processes
- Details about the information you’ll need from grant seekers at each stage of the grant's lifecycle
- Evaluation criteria
Remember to keep the guidelines succinct to make it easy for your grant seekers to understand their obligations.
4. Ensure Expectations are in Line with the Size of the Grant
It’s logical to anticipate that you’ll expect more from larger grant programs. If you’re following grant management best practices, it’s important to make your expectations clear. Be specific about the level of detail you need in your applications and the evidence your grant seekers will need to provide when reporting. Clarifying your expectations will help ensure your grant seekers aren’t unnecessarily overwhelmed with administration for small grants, while also understanding that larger grants require more comprehensive reporting on outcomes and impact.
5. Streamline the Application Process as Much as Possible
When you start accepting applications, you can expect your administrative load to build. To keep on top of your workload, you need to streamline your grant application process as much as possible. Savvy grants managers who are looking to follow grant-making best practices, are benefitting from using Grant Management Software (GMS). GMS will reduce your manual workload with automated workflows and advanced record-keeping and help you to better manage your grant applications.
6. Rely on a Multi-faceted, Efficient Platform Like OmniStar Grants
Not all grants management solutions are created equal. Your organisation may already have an existing solution in place, such as an online survey tool or Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. These solutions may address some of your grants management pain but are unlikely to include the tailored functionality of grant management software.
OmniStar Grants, one of the leading GMS solutions, is specifically designed for grants management. It will maximise your productivity with automated features such as notifications, workflow, dashboards and reporting. OmniStar Grants can adapt to meet your specific grant-making processes.
7. Design a Process that Will Filter Out Unfit Applicants
Grant management best practices include having a process to filter out unfit applicants. This starts with defining your eligibility criteria and then excluding applicants who don’t meet your mandatory requirements as early as possible. Many grant makers use an online survey for this purpose, and then manually apply the results to their assessment process. With a purpose-built GMS, you can incorporate this functionality to automatically filter out unfit applicants at the outset and email them to let them know that they’ve been unsuccessful.
8. Set Reporting Requirements in Place
Once your grant program has rolled out, you and your grantees need to work together to keep track of the project’s progress. You can implement the following grant-making best practices to ensure stewardship and accountability in the reporting process:
- Establish and reinforce performance measures based on the impact your grant program is trying to achieve
- Create a consistent reporting template to ensure you have the data you need to confidently track your grantees’ progress
- Establish checking mechanisms to ensure targets, milestones, and reporting deadlines are met.
9. Use Data to Improve the Process for Next Time
A good reporting system will gather critical data to provide meaningful insights into your grants program. These data and insights will help you to measure the impact of your program and provide comparison data over time, and between programs. Having access to the right data will also help you to design and improve future programs. To have quality insights, you’ll need efficient ways to capture and report on your grant programs. Do you have the right system in place?
Evaluate the Effectiveness of Your Grant Program
Once a grant program has been implemented, it should be evaluated for efficiency. The evaluation can include how the program has demonstrated value, what insights can be used to improve future programs, and how it maintained alignment with organisational goals.
Blurred or inconsistent measures of performance make it difficult to know if a program has achieved its intended impact. Set clear success metrics during the design phase and check them at key milestones to accurately track progress.
Inconsistent reporting by grantees can lead to gaps in program data. Providing a standardised template assures you receive the insights you need to evaluate the program’s success.
Limited transparency makes it hard to apply insights to future grant programs. Organised data collection methods help build a more refined picture of its performance over time, identifying trends, revealing risks, and observing where funding is having the greatest impact.
Implement Grant Management Best Practices with OmniStar Grants
Some organisations have limited knowledge on how to manage grants most effectively. They will often refrain from using purpose-built grant management software (GMS), and rely instead on existing tools or inefficient manual processes.
Grants management is complex. It makes sense to have a system to seamlessly manage the entire process, from program development through to acquittal. More efficient administration means more targeted funding, and more time to focus on your grant funding strategy.
OmniStar Grants, a cloud-based, end-to-end grants management solution, is one of the leading GMS solutions. Its automated workflows help reduce the time, cost, and effort of managing grant programs.
Implementing grant-making best practices is easy when you rely on OmniStar Grants. Contact us or book a demo with us today.
