The Middle East is the home of numerous non-profit and NGOs. And giving the current crisis the world is going through, many of these organizations rely on grants to provide their services and help their communities.
Grants are the financial lifeblood of many non-profits and research organizations, and as a result, grants become extremely important. Many of these organizations can never achieve their goals without the funding that they receive from grants, adding a lot of stress to the grant management process. If you want to be a successful organization, then you’re going to need to learn how to secure grants and properly use them. So how can you ensure that you’re managing your grants effectively? Here’s everything you need to know about grant management,
Writing the Grant
The first part of grant management is the process of writing your grant proposal. Effectively writing a grant proposal is absolutely critical to your organization’s success, as any mistakes could cause you to miss out on the grant. If you don’t follow all directions, frequently make errors, or simply can’t outline a persuasive pitch then your application won’t be chosen. Not being chosen for a grant is absolutely devastating to your organization, as then you won’t receive the necessary cash needed to fund your organization’s process. As a result, writing grant applications becomes extremely important and your applications should be checked multiple times to ensure that they are perfect.
Accepting the Grant
In many cases of grant management, drafting an acceptance letter and the activities that follow might actually be just as important as drafting the application. Many places give out various grants, so writing a compelling acceptance letter that displays your gratitude could be a great way to establish relationships and connections that could help you with applying in future grants. After accepting the grant, you’ll also have to successfully implement the funds and create various reports to illustrate your progress. You might think that grant management is a cake walk after you secure the funds, but that is definitely not the case.
Reporting on the Grant
Nearly all grants will require you to create reports that are due within a certain time period. These reports are intended to illustrate where the grant’s funds are going, what the money is being used on, and how successfully the money is being implemented. In order to have the highest quality reports possible, you need to have several metrics in place to track progress. These metrics that are installed should be constantly measured and tracked, allowing your organization to paint an accurate picture in the creation of reports. You may even want to implement something like a grants management information system to help you store and track the data that is used in your reports. Reports are vital in the grant management process, as they are not only necessary in providing insight into what your organization is doing, but they also help ensure that you’re properly using the grant.
Using the Grant
You might think that using the funds to your grant is the easiest part of the grant management process, but that isn’t always the case. Yes, you likely already have a plan outlined on how you’re going to use the grant’s funds, but things rarely go to plan. It’s very likely that you’ll experience setbacks that derail or alter your plans, forcing you to change course and utilize the funds in a different manner. How your organization tackles and deals with these changes are key to successfully using the grant. Although you should try and stick to your plans as closely as possible, adapting to various conditions is a necessity if you want to succeed in grant management.
