Tools and tactics to scale your grant program smoothly

Scaling your grant program—and making a greater impact than ever—should be exciting. However, for many foundations that lack the right tools and processes, growth can cause stress and headaches.

In this article, we’ll cover how you can scale your grant program simply and effectively. From automating busy work to creating a scalable process with the right tools, this guide will help your team get excited about growth, rather than feel overwhelmed by it.

Top signs your grant program is growing — and needs new systems

When your foundation is experiencing growth, there are usually a few common signs that indicate it’s time to revamp your tools and processes. These include:

Application overflow: Your foundation is receiving double or triple the number of applications that it used to.

Review bottlenecks: Due to the influx of applications, your team often misses deadlines because evaluation takes too long.

Staff overwhelm: Your team is working overtime trying to keep up with applications, leading to burnout.

Multiple funding streams: Your foundation is managing different programs with varying criteria and timelines.

Geographic expansion: While you may have once served only one region, you’ve now expanded into new regions with different needs and languages.

Stakeholder multiplication: You’re coordinating between more reviewers, board members and community partners.

Top tools for scaling a program

If all of the above signs resonate, it’s most likely time for your team to upgrade its tools and processes to keep up with high demand and expansion.

Some of the top time-saving processes and tools include:

A complete management dashboard: Take advantage of an at-a-glance overview of how everything in your program is tracking, including reviewing what’s been submitted, what’s in progress and more. This helps your team—no matter how large—stay on track and organised, together.

Automated workflows: Configure a multi-stage workflow to automatically move applications through the grant lifecycle. Perfect for application approval, nomination acceptance, in-depth review rounds and more, an action flow can help eliminate hours of manual work for your staff — and reduce manual errors.

Seamless grant tracking: Stop using manual spreadsheets and easily track the progress of grant projects after funding has been awarded. View metrics like the number of active grant projects, how much funding each has received and whether they’re on track.

Comprehensive funding management: Configure multiple fund budgets, create funding allocations and schedule and track payments all in one place.

Submission collaboration: Provide a secure method for individual applicants and grantees to work together in real-time on a single application or grant report, without sharing login details.

Eligibility screener: Save your staff hours of time by automatically diverting ineligible applicants from the application or the rest of the form.

Scale your grant program simply and seamlessly with Good Grants

Scaling up a program should be a major achievement that everyone looks forward to. With more applications, a larger team, and additional funding streams, your foundation has the incredible opportunity to create a greater impact.

To make the growth process easy for everyone—and avoid errors and mistakes—foundations should partner with a grants management platform. With tools like Good Grants, foundations can automate busywork, collaborate more efficiently and get back time to focus on what’s important—connecting with grantees and supporting them in their missions.