Grants Management

A grant is an award of financial assistance from an external agency, such as a Federal agency, to a recipient agency to carry out a public purpose of support.  Most grants are made to fund a specific project (for example, increased security at an airport) and require some level of reporting.  The process involves an applicant submitting a proposal to a potential funder, either on the applicant's own initiative or in response to a Request for Proposals from the funder and then tracking the details associated with a potential award.  When awarded, this process covers the tracking and maintenance of the award contract information.

Agencies or departments, which are pursuing additional grant funds for projects due to changes in state/local funding structures and the ever-present need for additional funding, benefit from a central repository to track these opportunities.  eCivis will be used by the State to track the grant opportunities, applications, and awards, interfacing the information to Arizona Advantage’s Grant Lifecycle Management (GLM) module.

Grants Management can allow users to view the global life cycle of a grant from the opportunity identification to the audit/close-out stages in order to analyze funding streams that are in the pipeline. Grants Management can function as a tool for Grant Managers, Project Managers, and Fiscal Officers to manage and track funds throughout the grant life cycle. 

Grants Management:

• Provides a global view of grant opportunities, potential grant revenue, and grants status.
• Facilitates grant opportunity, application, award, and incremental amendment tracking at all organizational levels thereby improving visibility into grant opportunities and forecasting resource needs.
• Identify patterns for lost grant dollars or failures to win competitive awards.

Grants Management differs from Cost Accounting in that Cost Accounting tracks the grant AFTER the award of grant funds and the grantee (entity awarded the grant) is spending money from the grant. However, grant funds and any applicable grantor requirements must be continuously monitored to ensure that departments will not be forced to return awarded funds that have not been spent at the end of the eligible grant period.

Grant Management - Criteria for Measuring Success:

• Standardized Grant Accounting and Reporting processes.
• Multi-year grants set-up with user defined periods that represent the grant funding period.
• Grants recorded and processed in one system eliminating manual spreadsheets and reconciliation processes.

Examples: How it might affect you …