How to reduce administrative burden in grantmaking: 5 strategies for efficiency

Grantmaking foundations are busy. Often, staff members are expected to wear many hats, helping to screen applications, manage post-award follow-up and more. That’s why finding time-saving tools and following automation tips are some of the best ways to streamline manual tasks and save time so staff can focus on what’s really important: connecting with grantees and making an impact.

In this blog, we’ll cover what an administrative burden is in grantmaking and the five ways you can create a more efficient grantmaking process for everyone.

What is an administrative burden in grantmaking?

Administrative burden refers to the time, effort and resources staff spend on manual paperwork, processes and procedures.

While there are plenty of administrative burden examples in grantmaking, here’s one that might resonate: Grantmaking foundation staff manually review 500 paper grant applications, individually scanning and filing each document and routing physical documents between multiple departments, delaying grant decisions by several months.

To reduce administrative burden, lots of nonprofits opt for grant management software, simplified applications, dedicated communication channels and standardised reporting requirements.

5 Ways to make your grantmaking process more efficient

1. Leverage grant management software

One of the best ways to reduce the administrative burden is by modernising your grantmaking processes using grants management software. With the right platform, like Good Grants, grantmaking foundations can streamline every part of the grantmaking process:

Pre-award phase: Staff can accept, manage and review applications in one interface.

Award: Foundations can centralise the process of awarding opportunities, formalise the grant agreement, manage funding and more.

Post-award: Organisations can solicit grant reports, securely track and manage disbursements and keep everyone up to speed and on track.

2. Standardise and simplify grant application forms

Clunky, complex grant application forms aren’t just a burden for potential grantees, but they can be frustrating and unnecessarily complex for grantmakers to review, too.

Instead, simplify and standardise your applications by eliminating unnecessary questions, using clear and concise language and employing conditional logic to tailor applications to specific groups.

3. Establish clear communication channels

Grantmakers are often in constant communication with grantees who have questions and need support. Without dedicated communication channels, foundations often spend unnecessary time feeling overwhelmed and disorganised, ultimately slowing the entire grant lifecycle down.

With clear communication channels and materials — like a dedicated platform for talking to grantees and accessible guidelines for understanding your application and grant — you’ll be able to create a crystal clear process while saving time and effort on back-and-forth dialouge.

The communication channels might also include use of:

Notifications: By using automated status update notifications, applicants can automatically be alerted to changes in their applications (application submission, pending review and more), without grantmaker staff effort.

Bulk emails: Send bulk email communications targeted to specific program participants based on roles, activities and more instead of sending one-off messages.

Personalised invitations: Send targeted invitations to applicants or grantees directly (ideal for closed opportunity grants or requesting supplementary information from participants).

4. Standardise grant reporting

Grant reporting can not only take up a lot of grantee’s time, but it can also do the same for funders, too. One-off grant applications that don’t have some kind of uniformity can lead to unnecessary time and effort during review periods, and more questions and confusion for everyone.

Instead, grantmaking foundations should:

Use templates: Create documents from a template you build and share them with both applicants and grantees alongside their application or awarded grant.

Set clear timeframes: Establish a predictable rhythm for reporting that everyone understands upfront. Instead of random check-ins or unclear deadlines, a simple schedule ensures that everyone is on the same page.

Simplify data collection: Focus on collecting only what truly matters rather than everything that might be interesting.

Leverage technology: Instead of having grantees email PDFs or mail paper reports, have them submit everything through grants management software that automatically organises and stores them.

5. Make decisions transparent

Grantmaking foundations are often communicating internally about the grant decisions being made. To reduce back-and-forth time, use specific application review tools that keep everyone on the same page like:

Crowd voting: Invite your entire organisation, the public or a select group of reviewers to vote on their favorite grant applications.

Qualifying review mode: Make pass/fail decisions effortlessly or shortlist applications before moving to more comprehensive review rounds.

Decision results leaderboard: Use a dashboard of live, real-time calculated and tabulated results that everyone on your team can see and access.

Reduce administrative burden with Good Grants

More time spent on manual and repetitive tasks means less time away from the important stuff: connecting with grantees, making intentional funding choices and figuring out how to make the most impact possible.

With all-in-one grants management software like Good Grants, grantmaking foundations can handle every part of the grantmaking process — from pre-award to post-award —  in one central place.

With automations, user-friendly applications and tools for opportunity promotion, Good Grants handles all of your nitty gritty tasks so you don’t have to.