5 Mistakes New Federal Grantees Should Avoid

As a new federal grantee, there are certain pitfalls you must avoid. One of the pitfalls is focusing solely on the programmatic output of the funded project without ensuring your organization's financial management systems are reinforced. Below are five of several mistakes some new federal grantees make.

1 - Believing Federal Grants Are Managed Like Foundation Grants

As a new federal grantee, you will need to manage the federal grant with a focus on meeting the performance objectives and spending the award as prescribed in the award notice. This is similar to what is required for a foundation grant.

However, federal grants also require that you comply with specific terms and conditions of the award. Sometimes those terms and conditions stipulate what costs are allowable and others that are not, beneficiary eligibility requirements and documentation, additional reporting requirements, and other processes your team may not have undertaken before.

2 - Ignoring the Terms and Conditions of the Award

When you accept a federal grant, you are agreeing to adhere to all the terms and conditions and, in some instances, the special terms and conditions that may come with the award.

3 - Delayed Attempt to Find the Expertise Needed

Assigning management of the federal grant to a program or project director because “it’s their project” may not be the right approach for several reasons. As the fiscal consultant during site monitoring visits of federal grantees, our company quickly learned that this is often the approach used and we observed some of the pitfalls of that approach.

If your organization received its first federal grant(s) and no one on the team has federal grant management experience, consider hiring a consulting firm such as Grants Works. Our team is comprised of specialists who managed federal grants or grant management teams for nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities, and for profit commercial organizations.

4 - Delayed Implementation of the Systemic Changes Required

Your organization will have to adhere to the terms and conditions of the federal grant. If your organization’s systems and processes currently are not set up to effectively manage a federal grant, systemic changes will be necessary.

5 - Deprioritizing Federal Grant Training

You should ensure that the person or people charged with managing federal grants at your organization receives the training needed to, first, understand the fundamentals and then, increase their knowledge over time.

We created Grants Works Academy to be a federal grant training resource.

We develop “recipient-centered” federal grant training and one of the training programs we developed is currently rated 4.7 out of 5 stars by over 900 participants.

I recommend our Federal Grants Simplified Bootcamp® as a start. We also create customized training. Contact us to learn more about our services and on demand training.