Grants Coordination Team: Grant Monitoring & Reporting

The Grants Coordination Team often need to set up the structure for grant monitoring and reporting. Naturally, the team members and business processes for these stages vary from one organization to the next. This guide includes general guidelines for the Grants Coordination Team to manage the following Grant Management stages using the Amp Impact Grant Management Plugin:

Grant Monitoring

Coordinators can monitor grants, schedule disbursements, approve modifications, and document communication on the Grant record.

Schedule and Approve Disbursements

The Coordinator can schedule Disbursements using the Disbursement table on the ‘Financials’ tab of the Grant. 

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From the Disbursement table, the grant coordinator can:

• Create and schedule Disbursements using the ‘Add New Disbursement’ button.

• Edit or delete a Disbursement by clicking on the pencil icon or trash can icon respectively.

• Approve a Disbursement by updating the Disbursement’s Status to ‘Approved’.

When a Disbursement is approved, an email alert is automatically sent to the accounting team to initiate the Disbursement on the scheduled date.

Approve/Reject Grant Modifications

The Coordinator can access grant modification requests by navigating to the ‘Modifications’ related list on the ‘Setup’ tab. 

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Then, to approve or reject the Modification:

• Click on the Modification name.

• View all the details filled in by the grantee.

• Update the ‘Status’ picklist to ‘Approved’ or ‘Rejected’ and save the record.

  • If the modification is approved, the Coordinator can either incorporate the changes in the grant record or notify the grantee to make those changes themselves.

Update Grant Performance 

Once the grantee has reported results for the grant indicators (see below), the Coordinator can indicate performance by updating the ‘Grant Performance’ picklist on the Details tab. 

Grant Reporting

Grantees often submit a range of reports to funders to demonstrate their impact. This could include reporting on:

1. Results from various Indicators

2. Financial management (e.g. expenditure or budget vs. actuals)

3. Narrative reporting, depending on the nature of the grant

Processes vary from one organization to the next: Some funders have a defined framework and indicators for grantees to report on, while others set high-level objectives and allow more flexibility on indicator reporting. Amp Impact allows organizations to set up and track grants in a way that aligns with their business processes.

Indicator Result Reporting

In order for grantees to report results on the indicators they are tracking, they need a Framework and Indicators.

1. Frameworks allow organizations to define and visualize progress toward Grant objectives. A framework can include Impact, Outcome, and/or Output statements which can be nested underneath each other in a hierarchy.

2. Indicators (KPIs or metrics) are then defined to set targets and report results through the grant lifecycle.

   1. Indicators can be connected to the Framework - visit this page for more details.

   2. Indicator Targets can be set depending on the impact measurement structure for the organization - visit this page for instructions on setting targets.

   3. Grantees then report Indicator Results at predefined frequencies to share progress toward the grant objectives - visit this page for more details.

Financial Reporting

Amp Impact allows organizations to define a project budget and track revenue and expenditure through the grant lifecycle. Some funders require applicants to submit a budget during the application stage while others create a detailed budget only once the grant has been awarded.

Organizations can set up a budget (or multiple budgets) with related financial line items to track budgeted vs actuals for predefined reporting periods.

Additionally, they can download a budget as an Excel document, make changes or add inputs, and re-upload it to reflect the latest financial line items.

Narrative Reporting

Funders often require narrative reports and the Submissions feature is regularly used to create the narrative reporting structure. This allows the Coordinator to create form templates with different types of questions (long text, picklist, etc.) for the Grantee to complete. Narrative Reports (Submissions) can be reviewed, assigned a score, and visualized in a radar chart if needed.

Invite Grantees to Report via Email

System Administrators can configure various email alerts for grantees, reminding them to create and submit the relevant reports.