The Most Important Grant You'll Never Write

The Most Important Grant You'll Never Write

The Grant Wasn't the Finish Line

Congratulations! You got the award. Now the real work begins.

Most nonprofits celebrate when the award letter arrives. The check comes in. Everyone breathes a sigh of relief. The project gets underway.

Then the report gets shoved to the bottom of the priority list. Six months later... "Oh yeah. We should probably do that." Yes. You should. Because you don't disappear after the award. The funder is still watching.

• Did you spend the money as proposed?

• Did you accomplish what you promised?

• Did you submit your report on time?

• If the project changed, did you communicate that?

And perhaps most importantly, can the funder tell what happened with its investment? Because I've said it before, and it needs to be repeated. Grants aren't free money. They are an investment in your organization.

Think of a funder like a silent partner you don't have to pay back. They gave you money because they believed your organization could accomplish something that aligned with their mission.

Your report tells them whether that investment did what everyone hoped it would do.

Before Your Next Application Ever Reaches Me

I served on a grant review committee for nine years as the token accounting specialist. Three years as a committee member. Three years as Vice Chair. Three years as Chair.

Every year, we'd come into the room and start discussing applications. Of course I remembered who we'd funded the year before. When one of those organizations came up again, I would look at the Executive Director and ask:

"Did they file last year's report?"

If the answer was yes, my next question was:

"Did they spend the money as directed?"

If the answer was no, my question went to the room:

"Why should we fund them again if we don't know what they did with last year's funds?"

That's a fair question.

I'm not sitting in that room to judge whether an organization is worthy enough or needy enough. I have a fiduciary responsibility to the board and organization to help recommend sound investments. Need may be part of the equation, but need alone doesn't win grants.

Funders are investing in organizations they believe can responsibly use their money to accomplish something. If you received funding last year and didn't tell us what you did with it, you've made that investment much harder to recommend the next time around.

Some Applications Never Made It Into the Room

As Chair, my perspective changed. I reviewed applications after the Executive Director and before they went to the committee. Some were disqualified before the reviewers ever saw them.

Maybe the budget requested expenses our grant specifically didn't cover. In this particular grant program, administrative expenses weren't allowed.

Or maybe the organization had received funding previously, hadn't submitted the required report, and hadn't responded to the Executive Director's attempts to get one. Those applications didn't make it into the room. I was ready to put them in the circular file. And yes, that's the garbage.

There was one instance when I went digging through an organization's year end financials to see if I could determine whether the previous grant had at least been spent toward the appropriate expense. I couldn't.

That's not necessarily proof that they spent the money incorrectly. Financial statements use broad categories. Bookkeepers don't always know which expenses are tied to a specific grant or project, and accounting systems aren't always set up to give a grant reviewer that level of detail.

I always comb through financials to understand the fiscal health of an organization. But financial statements can't necessarily tell me what a required grant report would have told me. That's why the report matters.

Read What Comes With the Check

Usually the reporting requirements arrive right alongside the payment. You may even be asked to sign an additional agreement before receiving the funds. That agreement may reiterate exactly how the money can be spent, what reporting will be required, and when that report is due.

Do not miss this information while you float into the bank to cash your check.

And don't file it away somewhere because the deadline seems so far into the future. Put the reporting deadline on your calendar immediately. Read what you're agreeing to. Know what information you'll need to collect. Because a year from now, when you apply again, somebody may ask:

"Did they file their report?"

You want that answer to be yes.

Projects Change

Here's something else nonprofits sometimes forget. Projects change. Maybe you planned to serve 500 people and served 437. Maybe a program started later than expected. Maybe a vendor changed. Maybe something cost more than anticipated and another expense cost less. That doesn't automatically mean the project failed.

Communicate. The Executive Director sitting in the room with the grant committee is there to answer questions like:

• Did the organization serve who it said it would serve?

• Did the project happen?

• Were the dollars spent roughly as proposed?

• If something changed, did they explain why?

Funders understand that real life happens. The problem isn't necessarily that something changed. The problem is when nobody knows what happened.

500 Coats Isn't the Whole Story

There isn't one universal formula for a good grant report. Reports are individualized. Some funders will give you specific questions to answer. Some require receipts or financial statements. Some want photographs. Some want numbers. Give them what they ask for.

But whenever you have the opportunity, tell them the story too. Let's say a grant paid for winter coats for children. You can report: "We provided winter coats to 500 children." That's important. It tells the funder the scale of its impact.

But somewhere among those 500 children, there's probably one child your staff remembers. Maybe it's the little girl who put on her new purple coat, looked down at herself and said: "I feel like a princess!" That's the story.

The funder didn't invest in 500 coats. The funder invested in 500 children being warm. Tell them both.

Don't Write the Report the Night Before It's Due

You don't need to wait until the project ends to start your report. In fact, please don't. Collect the pieces as you go. Save the photos. Write down the testimonials. Track participant numbers. Track expenses. Document outcomes. When something happens that makes you think, "This is why I do this," write it down. Future you will be very grateful.

More importantly, you'll have a much better story to tell the funder than you will if you're trying to reconstruct an entire project the night before the report is due.

Reviewers Remember

Most grant review committees operate like other boards and committees. People serve terms. A few members cycle off, and new people come in. That means you may be sitting in front of many of the same reviewers year after year.

We remember. We remember the organizations that consistently do what they say they're going to do. And we remember the ones that don't.

Not filing a report can create a reputation for your organization. Because once I know you didn't report back to us, another question enters my mind: Are you doing this with your other funders too? You don't want a grant reviewer asking that question.

You want them remembering that you did good work, communicated well, spent the money responsibly, and followed through.

A post award report isn't paperwork. It's the first page of next year's application.