Time-saving automation tips for grant managers

For grantmakers, who juggle many moving parts, it’s about reducing those time-consuming and repetitive manual tasks and embracing grants automation to work smarter across the full grant lifecycle. 

It is, of course, about automation—using the right tools and technology to work smarter, not harder. Let’s consider four automation techniques that grant managers can apply to save time and make their work easier.

In this article:

1. Implement automation software
2. Set up automated communications
3. Harness an automated grants management workflow
4. Automate and schedule grant reports
5. Frequently asked questions, answered

1. Implement automation software

The good news these days is that you don’t have to possess coding or engineering skills to automate your work processes. 

By using process automation tools like Zapier and Make, you can effortlessly make the most of the data you have. These tools facilitate data exchange between your grant management software and other systems that meet your business needs. By putting regular tasks on autopilot, they free up much time for you to attend to other grant management concerns. 

Good Grants offers integration with Zapier and Make – popular and easy-to-use automation tools that do all the heavy lifting for you. Through these integrations, automated grants management becomes straightforward: automate the registration of applicants, create new contacts in your CRM, store submitted applications, generate invoices for allocations and much more. Your mission-critical tools work together seamlessly, saving hours of manual effort every week.

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2. Set up automated communications 

To successfully run a grantmaking program, all participants need to be kept in the loop. This includes the grantseekers, reviewers and other relevant parties. But it would be nearly impossible to send all these emails and notifications manually. 

This is where automated communications come in. For example, in Good Grants, you can send personalised emails, notifications and even SMS messages directly from the platform. No moving back and forth between your marketing system and your grants management system. 

Good Grants enables you to send a batch of emails directly from the platform to inform applicants of approaching deadlines or the approval status of their applications. Similarly, reviewers can be notified of awaiting applications or other program updates. The scheduling element helps you plan more effectively. You can draft any specific emails in advance and set up triggers that will inform you when automated notifications go out. This is a good way to ensure that all participants receive vital information at the right time, in your time zone.

Programmed notifications ease the communication process. When an action is completed on the platform, an email-based or SMS-based notification will be sent to relevant parties. No one’s left in the dark. And you haven’t spent hours getting it all done.

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3. Harness an automated grants management workflow

Every grant application goes through a series of steps as it moves through the lifecycle. This repetitive sequence, though time-consuming, is crucial for the success of grantmaking efforts. Automating these workflows – a core feature of grant lifecycle management platforms – can drastically reduce man-hours and ensure all grants go through a fair and equitable process. 

One such automation technique is setting up automated review stages, an effective way to automate grant review across your team. Usually, grant applications need to be reviewed by multiple persons in the grant manager’s team.

By creating triggers that set off a chain of actions in the review process, each person in the review team can be notified and instructed to take the next steps as necessary. This hack efficiently moves the grant applications to the necessary nominees or managers for approval, disapproval or referral. 

In Good Grants, you can set up as many workflows as you need to suit your unique grant program and lifecycle.  This makes it well suited to organisations of all sizes, from education grant automation programs to government agencies looking to automate grant management workflows at scale. 

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4. Automate and schedule grant reports 

The monitoring and tracking of grants once they’ve been awarded is often the most labour-intensive phase of the grant management lifecycle. It’s important to track the funding that has been awarded and ensure the goals and mission are being met. 

This is where it’s important to not let anything fall through the cracks—and automated grant reporting can help. As grants are awarded, you can begin scheduling and assigning project reports as they fit into your program timeline. 

In Good Grants, grantmakers can create an unlimited number of grant report forms to solicit programmatic, financial, KPI or other pertinent information. This can be done at any time and as often as required. 

Grantmakers can automate the process by creating pre-configure automatic notifications to grantees or members of the grantmaking team to help everyone comply with reporting schedules and save time doing it. A key grant reporting automation best practice is building this reporting schedule into your program from the outset, rather than managing it reactively once grants have been awarded.

Beyond text and numerical-based reporting, Good Grants supports rich content like videos, images and audio to help grantmakers confidently review the project in action and better define the impact of the grant at closeout. 

Grant management, a pillar of philanthropy, comes with its fair share of responsibilities. While some tasks require grantmakers’ meticulous attention to detail, others are repetitive and can be self-directed. These automation techniques will help you handle those repetitive tasks, thereby making the process more efficient.

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