If your nonprofit successfully secures grant but your grant reporting operation is sub-par, then the odds that you’ll get a second grant from that founder are low.
Luckily, there are some key best practices you can follow and processes you can put into place to help ensure your grant reports will make funders excited to work with you again.
Let’s dive in!
Understanding Grant Reporting
Grant reporting is the process of providing regular updates to funders on how the grant funds are being used, detailing both your progress and your impact to demonstrate accountability and compliance with the funder’s guidelines.
The purpose of grant reporting within the larger score of your grant management program is to build trust with funders by showing that you’re meeting your goals and using the funds as intended. That trust then serves to help secure future funding.
There are three main kinds of grant reports that your nonprofit will (likely) need to produce. They are:
- Financial Reports: Financial reports provide detailed information on how the grant money has been allocated and spent, including budget breakdowns, expense tracking, and any financial adjustments made during the project. These reports help funders understand exactly where and how their money is being spent, ensuring that all expenditures align with the approved budget and grant objectives.
- Progress Reports: Progress reports offer updates on your project’s advancement towards achieving its goals, keeping funders informed of ongoing activities and milestones. These reports highlight completed tasks, upcoming activities, and any deviations from the original plan, demonstrating continuous progress and addressing any issues that may have arisen.
- Final Reports: Final reports summarize your entire project’s lifecycle, including outcomes, impacts, and any challenges faced. These reports provide a comprehensive overview of your project’s overall effectiveness and its impact on the target community. Final reports help funders assess the long-term value and impact of their investment.
While the report types differ on what parts of the grant project they choose to highlight, they all are working towards the same common goal—to foster a strong and transparent relationship with your funders that can lead to ongoing support.
Key Components of a Grant Report
Any time you write anything—grant reports included—it’s a good idea to keep the needs of your reader in mind. And, when it comes to grant reports, your readers are likely going to be sifting through many reports from many nonprofits to determine how effectively their funds are being spent.
While you want to stick out from the crowd in terms of conveying your nonprofit’s success, you also want to make sure that that information can be conveyed quickly and easily. Just like with any other piece of writing, the ultimate goal is for your reader to want to keep reading.
By making you include all of the elements we lay out in this section, your readers will have everything they need to know—and they’ll appreciate that they didn’t have to go digging for it.
Let’s talk about the key components that every grant report should include.
Executive Summary
The executive summary provides a concise overview of your project’s goals, activities, and outcomes, giving funders a quick snapshot of its overall performance.
This section should highlight the most significant achievements and impacts of your project—the parts that, no matter what, you want your reader to remember.
It’s important to keep this section brief but informative, focusing on the key successes and major milestones reached.
The executive summary sets the tone for the entire report, so it should be engaging and compelling, encouraging funders to read further.
Financial Details
Financial details include a breakdown of expenditures—showing how the grant funds were used—with supporting documents such as receipts and invoices to ensure financial transparency.
This section should align your expenses with the budget initially proposed to the funder and explain any variances.
By providing a clear, itemized list of expenditures—with helpful, non-evasive explanations for why certain things might have changed from what was submitted in the grant proposal—you’ll be demonstrating prudent financial management and accountability.
Financial transparency reassures funders that their contributions are being used effectively and responsibly.
Project Activities
This section describes the specific activities undertaken during the grant period, highlighting how these actions aligned with the project’s objectives and any changes or adjustments that you made along the way.
Be sure to include timelines, key milestones, and any partnerships or collaborations that were crucial to the project—while also explaining any significant deviations from the original plan and the reasons for those changes.
Detailed descriptions of activities help funders understand how the project was implemented and the steps taken to achieve the project’s goals.
Results & Impact
At the end of the day, what funders really want to know is that the funds they gave you translated into a positive real-world impact. By showing them how you achieved just such an impact, this is your change to really shine!
Results and impact are demonstrated through both quantitative data (e.g., number of beneficiaries, improvements) and qualitative data (e.g., testimonials, case studies), supported by visual aids like charts and graphs.
This section should also connect your activities to their outcomes, showing the tangible benefits you achieved.
Quantitative data provides measurable evidence of success while qualitative data adds personal stories and testimonials that illustrate the project’s impact on individuals and communities. Use both!
Visual aids can help to make complex data more accessible and highlight key achievements. When in doubt, make a graph.
Challenges & Lessons Learned
Trust and transparency with funders aren’t built solely on showing what a great job you did stewarding these funds. In fact, sometimes, it’s built on the opposite—on owning up to your mistakes.
An honest reflection on the challenges faced during the project, how they were addressed, and the lessons learned provides valuable insights for future projects and demonstrates transparency.
Discuss any unexpected obstacles, how they were mitigated, and what was learned in the process. This section should not shy away from discussing difficulties but rather show how the nonprofit adapted and overcame challenges.
Funders will appreciate transparency about your challenges as it shows the organization’s resilience and capacity for problem-solving. On your nonprofit’s end, formulating these insights can also help improve future project planning and execution.
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5 Best Practices for Grant Reporting
The stakes for writing a grant report can be pretty high. After all, your funder is going to be using a lot of what’s in this report to determine your eligibility for future grants. That’s real money on the line!
Here are five best practices you should follow that will help ensure that your reports stand out.
1. Write Clearly and Concisely
Use straightforward, jargon-free language to ensure your report is easy to read and understand.
Communicate key information clearly and concisely, avoid technical terms unless absolutely necessary, and always explain them when they are used.
The goal is to make the report accessible to all readers, regardless of their familiarity with your project’s specifics.
Clear and concise writing helps to avoid misunderstandings and ensures that your report’s key points will be easy to grasp.
2. Provide Regular Updates & Tracking
Misalignment between your nonprofit’s actions and your funder’s expectations can lead to significant issues.
That’s why you shouldn’t just wait for the end of your project to send one big final report. Maintain regular updates and track progress continuously throughout the project.
Use project management tools to keep accurate records and streamline the reporting process.
Regular updates help in catching issues early, allowing for timely adjustments to keep the project on track. These updates also ensure that all team members are aligned and aware of their responsibilities.
Consistent tracking makes it easier to compile comprehensive and accurate reports, as all necessary information is readily available. No one likes surprises—not you, not your funders—and this will help keep them to a minimum.
3. Use Data & Evidence
Support any and all claims made in your report with solid data and evidence, including both quantitative metrics and qualitative anecdotes. This will help provide a comprehensive view of the project’s impact.
Use charts, graphs, and tables to present data clearly and compellingly. Visual aids help to make complex data more accessible and highlight key achievements.
When including qualitative data like testimonials and stories to add a human element, make sure that you’re following ethical storytelling principles to share your constituents’ experiences without exploiting them.
When it comes to gathering the data you’ll use in your report, implementing digital tools such as databases or specialized software can streamline the process, making it easier to capture, store, and retrieve the data you need to build a stellar report.
4. Maintain Compliance with Funder Guidelines
Adhere strictly to your funder’s specific reporting guidelines, ensuring all required information is included and following any updated instructions or formats provided by the funder.
Each funder may have unique requirements, so it’s crucial to follow their specific guidelines carefully. Reviewing these guidelines regularly and staying updated on any changes can help avoid compliance issues.
Ensuring that your reporting meets all specified requirements demonstrates attention to detail and respect for the funder’s processes—both of which will help you in the quest for future funding.
5. Prioritize Good Time Management
Effective time management is critical to ensuring that reports are prepared and submitted on time. While a last-minute rush can sometimes be effective, it’s pretty much the opposite of a “best practice.”
Planning ahead by creating a detailed timeline for report preparation and submission is essential.
This timeline should allocate sufficient time for each stage of the reporting process, from data collection to final review, to avoid last-minute rushes.
Using project management tools or software to set reminders and track deadlines can help keep the reporting process on schedule. These tools can also help break down the reporting process into manageable tasks and prevent that last-minute deadline crunch.
Grant Management Software Can Enhance Reporting
Everything that we’ve covered in this article—from the different kinds of reports to key components to best practices—is vital to writing successful grant reports. But, if you’re relying on grants for a sizable portion of your nonprofit’s funding, you need to go one step further and make sure that grant management software is made a core pillar of your tech stack.
Not only will grant management software streamline your processes by serving as a centralized hub for grant activities and documents and by helping automate key tasks, but it will specifically aid your grant reporting process.
Most grant management software programs have robust reporting features and templates that allow you to generate and tweak detailed reports for your funders without first having to build them from scratch.
While the success of your grant reporting will ultimately depend on your staff, the right grant management software solution can make achieving that success—and scaling it up to cover multiple grants—way, way easier.
You probably know Neon CRM as a comprehensive donor management solution, but did you know that—-alongside its fundraising, email, membership, and event management features—the system also sports a whole host of grant management capabilities?
Well, it does! If you want to learn more about using Neon CRM for grant management and how (well!) it stacks up against some of the top grant management solutions available, check out the article below.
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