Grants Overview

You can keep track of both incoming and outgoing grants in ExceedFurther. Incoming grants are the ones your organization applies for from foundations and other grant making institutions. Outgoing grants are ones that your organization makes to other organizations.

A grant begins with a proposal which can be tracked through its various stages, from when it was sent or received, to making sure it is complete, to its review for approval as a grant, to its being paid. The journey from proposal to fully funded grant is managed by tracking each proposal through its stages, by adding notes and activities for follow up, and by recording an expected payment schedule, including any conditions imposed.

Grant proposals are attached to the associated grant-making foundation or other organization (for incoming grants) and to the associated grant-seeking non-profit organization (for outgoing grants). You can view the full history of all proposals, including those that have been granted, declined, withdrawn or held, along with those that are still pending, on the Grant tab of the Bio screen of the foundation or non-profit.

ExceedFurther includes six stages, or grant statuses, for each proposal and grant: Pending, Granted, Funded, Declined, Held, and Withdrawn. A successful proposal passes from Pending to Granted, when the grant decision is made, to Funded when the payments have been completed.

Incoming grants and their payments can also be added to the giving history of the grant-making organization so that they are counted in your giving totals.

Getting Started with Grants

To use ExceedFurther to track your grant activities, you need to do the following:

Decide if you want to categorize your grants in any way. For example, if you are making grants, you may put them into various areas of interest. You may track the populations that are served by certain grants or the geographic region impacted. You may have different types of grants, like donor advised or scholarships. You use User Defined Fields for these types of category definitions. You can create these fields using the Customize Page Layout feature in Admin. Select Bio_Grants_Overview as the page to customize.
Decide the types of activities that are likely to be associated with your proposals and grants, like site visits, additional documentation requirements, and types of progress reports expected. These activity types are defined on the Codes tab of the Admin tab, under Grant Activity Type.
If you want to categorize the organizations that seek grants from you in any way, or if you want to mark your various foundation prospects by their areas of grant making, you can define tags for this purpose under the Codes tab in Admin, under Bio, Household and Org. Tags.

For incoming grants (proposals that you write to foundations and other organizations) continue with these steps:

Add all of the foundations and other organizations from whom you seek grants. Add the appropriate tags that you set up in step 3, above.
If you want, add any past history of grant making from those organizations, from the Grants Manager, Grants tab or from the Bio screen of each foundation. Make sure you mark these as incoming grants. Also add the payments that have been received, or are scheduled to be received, from each grant.
For grants that have been funded, add them to the gift history for each foundation by using the Add Grant to Gift button on the Grants tab of the Grants Manager.
Add an activity to each foundation you are likely to ask over the next year, putting the proposal deadline for that foundation into the scheduled date of the activity. The activity will appear in your Task List/Tickler to remind you of the upcoming deadline.
When you submit a proposal, add the proposal to the foundation's record, using the Grant tab of the Bio screen or using the Grants Manager.
As a proposal is being considered, add any requested information, site visits or follow up to the grant activities for that proposal so you can see them in your Task List/Tickler.
Periodically open the Grants tab of the Grants Manager to view pending proposals with an upcoming review date.
As proposals are decided, use the Grants tab of the Grants Manager to mark them as Granted or Declined.
When a proposal is granted, add the expected payment schedule to the Payments tab for the grant, and add any required follow up reports to the Activities tab for the grant.
If you want, you can add the grant to the giving history of the foundation before it is fully funded. Or you can wait until the payments have been received before adding each payment to the giving history. Whether or not you want to add an unfunded grant to the giving history may depend on whether the grant includes significant conditions for payment. Each organization may have different rules for counting a grant in giving totals.
As each payment is received, go to the payment and change the status to indicate that it has been received. Add it to the foundation's giving history.
Periodically open the Payments tab of the Grants Manager to view and follow up on any upcoming or past due payments.

For outgoing grants (proposals that you receive from other organizations), continue with these steps:

Add all of the non-profit organizations who have sought grants from you. Add the appropriate tags that you set up in step 3, above.
If you want, add any past history of grant making to those organizations, from the Grants Manager, Grants tab or from the Bio screen of each non-profit. Make sure you mark these as outgoing grants. Also add the payments that have been paid or are scheduled to be paid for each grant.
If there are outstanding reports associated with any of these past grants, add activities to those grants so you can follow up if needed.
As each proposal is received, add it to the non-profit's record, either from the Grant tab of the organization's Bio screen or from the Grants Manager. Add the expected review date and any follow up activities that are necessary before the proposal can be considered.
Use the Mail icon from the Icon bar to send letters or emails to one or more organizations who have submitted proposals, acknowledging receipt and requesting follow up.
Use the Grants tab of the Grants Manager to work with the proposals that are pending for an upcoming review date. You can look at each one to see if there are outstanding activities or missing information.
Before the review meeting, run a Proposal List report for all proposals with a review date for that meeting.
After the review meeting, use the Grants tab of the Grants Manager to go through the list of proposals reviewed, mark each with its resultant status (Granted, Declined, Held) and add the granted amount.
1. You can select all of the proposals whose status has changed to the same thing and use the Update Selected button to update them all at the same time.
2. When you use Update Selected to change the status to Granted, the grant amount fields is automatically filled in with the requested amount. You can then go down the list of newly granted grants on the Grants tab of the Grants Manager and type the granted amount directly into the list.
For each granted proposal, add a payment schedule and any reporting activities expected.
To add the same activity to a selected group of proposals or grants, use the Add Grant Activities button on the Grants Manager Grants tab.
To add the same payment to a selected group of grants, use the Add Grant Payment button on the Grants Manager Grants tab.
Use the Mail icon to create grant letters informing the grantees of your decisions.
Use the Payments tab of the Grants Manager to determine when payments are due to grantees and to authorize payments that are ready to be made.