Grant applications from research to funder reports
How the Non-profit pack takes a grant from research and drafting, through a director's approval and an agreement signed online, to the funder's reports.
By Achekam · · 4 min read · For Non-profit businesses in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya
Launching soon. The Industry CRM add-on described in this article is launching soon. This article describes it as it will work at launch.
Grant funding is won on the quality of the work, but it is often lost on administration. An application goes in without the board's knowledge and commits the organisation to something it cannot deliver. A signed agreement sits in one person's inbox, so nobody else knows the reporting dates. A mid-term report is late because the person who wrote the application has left.
Each of those is a process failure, not a people failure. A grant passes through many hands between the first idea and the final report, and without a shared record, each hand only sees its own part.
The Non-profit & fundraising pack in Achekam's Industry CRM keeps grant applications as their own record and follows each one from research to the reports the funder requires. This article explains the stages and what to put in place around them.
A grant application is its own record
The pack keeps Grant applications alongside Donors, Donations and pledges, and Volunteers. Treating each application as a record, rather than a folder of drafts, means it has a stage, a history and tasks that anyone on the team can see.
A record also survives staff changes. When a programme manager leaves, the application, its approvals, the signed agreement and the reporting tasks stay with the organisation.
Research and drafting
The work starts with research: is this funder a good fit, does the call match your programmes, and can you meet its conditions? Recording that research on the application, even briefly, saves the next person from repeating it, and it builds a picture over time of which funders are worth the effort.
Drafting follows. Applications usually draw on several people: the programme lead for the activities, finance for the budget, the director for the organisational story. Tasks in the Industry CRM can have subtasks up to three levels deep, so an application can be broken into its sections and the people responsible for each, without a separate tracking spreadsheet.
A director's approval before submission
Before an application is submitted, a director approves it. That step protects the organisation from commitments made in its name without authority: a budget that understates costs, a promise of matched funding that does not exist, or a programme the organisation has no capacity to run.
Use the approval for more than a signature. The approving director should be able to answer three questions: can we deliver this, is the budget complete, and are we comfortable with the funder's conditions?
The grant agreement, signed electronically by the funder
When an application succeeds, the pack has the grant agreement signed electronically by the funder. The document is sent with signature and initials fields placed on it, signers can sign in order or all at once, and the request can carry an expiry and reminders.
When everyone has signed, the signed PDF and a completion certificate are filed into Documents. The certificate lists each signer's e-mail address, the times they signed, their IP address and browser, and the document's fingerprint, so there is no doubt later about which version of the agreement was agreed.
Some funders, especially large institutional ones, send their own agreements through their own systems. In that case, follow the funder's process and file the signed copy with the application, so the record is still complete.
The reports the funder requires
Signing the agreement is not the end of the grant; it is the start of the obligations. The pack follows the application through to the reports the funder requires, so each one becomes a task rather than a date in a contract nobody rereads.
When the agreement is signed, read it for every reporting obligation, such as narrative reports, financial reports, final reports and audit or examination requirements, and make sure each one is on the record. A workflow step can also send a request for documents to the people outside your team whose input a report needs, and their answer moves the task on.
Treat late reports as a real risk. Many funders release later payments only once the previous report is accepted, and a funder that has waited for one report remembers it when the next application arrives. Give each report an owner and an internal deadline well before the funder's. If a funder's reporting demands seem out of proportion to the grant, the Trust-Based Philanthropy Project's practices of trust-based grantmaking include simplifying and streamlining the applications and reports funders ask of grantees, a useful reference for that conversation.
For the financial side of reporting, the budget-against-actual comparison in your books does most of the work; see tracking grant spending against the budget.
Keeping grant documents together
Grant files grow: the call for proposals, your application, the budget, correspondence, the signed agreement, each report and the funder's feedback. Achekam's Document Centre is a folder-based store where you can upload files or whole folders, tag and search them, and keep earlier versions when a new one is added. A folder per grant, named consistently, means the whole history can be found in one place by anyone who needs it.
A grant calendar you can rely on
For every live grant, make sure someone can answer these questions from the record, without opening an inbox:
- When was the application submitted, and who approved it?
- Where is the signed agreement?
- What reports are due, and when?
- Who is responsible for each report, and what do they need from others?
- What did the funder say about the last report?
Grants sit alongside your other supporters. For individual givers, see welcoming and thanking a new donor, and for the people who give their time, onboarding volunteers with screening and agreement.
Pick one live grant this week, find its agreement, and list every report it requires. If that takes more than a few minutes, you know where the pack will help most.
General guidance only, not advice on your own circumstances. Tax and payroll rules change: check the current position with the authority or your adviser.
