Grant management process starts long before grants are awarded. Well prepared pre-award steps ensure that ultimate goals and results are achieved successfully. Even though distributing grant money might seem simple, making sure that the grant money is spent effectively can be challenging. Therefore, a cleverly designed grant program is crucial to the overall success of the program. In order to establish a grant, some crucial steps need to be considered.

1. Set the aims

Determine the primary aims and objectives you want to achieve. It is important to consider how the major objective of your grant program aligns with this. Use your research findings to identify the goals and results you want to achieve overall.

2. Establish the guidelines

Once your primary aims have been determined, the next step is to establish the grant program’s fundamental guidelines and standards. Compose essential eligibility criteria, terms and conditions, scope, purpose, as well as reporting requirements. Well-defined expectations, timelines, and objectives will ensure grant fulfilment runs smoothly from start to finish.

3. Fine-tune funding details

Decide whether you intend the funding to be for one grant cycle or a multi-year grant cycle. Another important point to consider here is how you want financial reports to align with grant progress status.

4. Design the submission form

Create specific requirements for applicants, such as history, accomplishments, requirements and other areas that needs to be found in documentation. This should be a give-and-take arrangement between asking the right amount of questions and not being so demanding that the applicant is discouraged from applying in the first place.

5. Choose the application method

Determine whether the application will be available on your website or if you will send the application by mail. If you want select a grant management application, consider one that is easy to use and covers all requirements of your grant program workflow.

6. Define the decision-makers

Now that the application method is set, you need to clearly outline responsibilities and the key decision-makers in the ongoing management of the grant program. All members of the delivery team should be provided with training or specific knowledge around the grant program.

7. Determine the promotion strategy

At this stage, when all other points of designing a grant program have been covered, it is time to decide how you will promote the grant program to the public. It is important to make the public be aware of the initiatives you want to support. Among other possible methods, you can use your organization’s website, social media channels, newsletter, or local media to reach the public and describe your program.

Once all of the above outlined basic steps are thoroughly addressed, you have ensured that your grant program is successfully planned and the chances of achieving real impact are high.