Track Grants from Prospect to Award
Goal: Keep every grant your affiliate is chasing or spending in one place — where it stands, what it is worth, and what is due next — so nothing slips between the spreadsheet and the funder's portal.
:::info Grants is rolling out in increments The Grants module was released one piece at a time, and every piece is now live: the grant record, the pipeline, the award history, the deadline queue, linking grants to projects and budget lines, documents with the funder's checklist, the funder's reporting calendar with its reminders, the payments that arrive against an award, the costs charged to it, the reimbursement claims that get the money back, the evidence behind every cost, the spend plan that says whether a grant will spend out, and a task list for the deliverables, to-dos and reminders your team owes on each grant. Everything you see on a grant is your data. :::
Where to find it
Grants sits in the sidebar directly below Projects, and on the Fundraising hub as a card. It is available to staff with the View Grants permission; writing applications needs Create Grants and Update Grants, and putting an award on the books needs Record Grant Awards.
The Grants page
The landing page opens on the thing that matters most today: the deadline queue. Every letter-of-intent date, application deadline, funder report due date, dated task, period-of-performance end and close-out date on every live grant appears there, across all your grants, sorted by urgency — overdue first, then due within two weeks, then the rest. Urgency is worked out from today's date every time you look, so a deadline that has passed always reads as overdue.
Below the queue, four portfolio tiles answer "how are we doing": lifetime awarded, active awards, funds remaining and the value in the pipeline. Funds remaining shows a dash until spend tracking ships — it will never show a zero it cannot stand behind.
Then the pipeline: one column per stage with the number of grants and the dollars sitting there. Click a stage to filter the board to it. Grants are grouped by stage below; each card shows the funder, the ask or award, and its next date. The All Grants tab shows the same grants as a table.
Create a grant
Choose New Grant Application. The wizard asks for:
- Basics — the grant name, the funder, a category (Federal, State & Local Government, Corporate Foundation, and so on — your administrator can add more), the funder's reference number, and how the funder pays. Choose Reimbursement when you spend first and claim it back (most government awards), Advance when the funder pays up front, or Mixed. This decides what the money figures mean later, so it is worth getting right now.
- Amounts & Dates — the amount requested, the application deadline, the period of performance and the close-out date, and whether a match is required.
- Scope & Terms — a summary of what the grant funds, its restrictions, and the funder contact.
A new grant starts in Prospect. You can also record a grant you already hold: choose the status directly, and the wizard asks for the award as well.
Move a grant through the pipeline
Open a grant and use Move to in the header. Only the moves that are legal from the current stage are offered:
| From | To |
|---|---|
| Prospect | Writing, Withdrawn |
| Writing | In Progress, Submitted, Withdrawn |
| In Progress | Writing, Submitted, Withdrawn |
| Submitted | Awarded, Declined, Withdrawn |
| Awarded | Closed Out |
Every move takes a note and is recorded in the Status history on the Overview tab — who moved it, when, and why. Nothing in that history is edited afterwards; it is the audit trail funders ask for.
Two moves ask for more:
- Submitted → Awarded asks for the award: the amount, the effective date, and the funder's award-letter reference. The award is recorded as the grant's first award event (see below). Only staff with Record Grant Awards can make this move.
- Awarded → Closed Out before the period of performance has ended asks you to confirm that you mean to close early.
Declined and Withdrawn are final. To reapply next cycle, create a new grant.
The award history
On an awarded grant the Overview tab shows Award history: the award itself and every amendment, reduction or return since. The Awarded figure at the top of the page is always the sum of these events — it is never typed in directly, which is what keeps it defensible in an audit.
To record a change, choose Record event, pick the type, and enter the figure exactly as it appears on the funder's letter along with that letter's reference. Recording the same reference twice is refused, so a retried entry can never double the award.
An event is never edited. If one is wrong, choose Void, give the reason, and enter it again. The voided row stays on the record, struck through, and the awarded figure is recomputed from what remains.
Edit and archive
More actions → Edit details changes the descriptive fields: names, dates, terms, contacts and the ask. Status and award amounts are never changed there.
More actions → Archive grant hides a grant from the pipeline and the queue. Nothing is deleted; the record stays readable. An active award must be closed out first, and a closed-out grant stays live until its records-retention date has passed.
What the money figures mean
Above the tabs, an awarded grant shows six figures, each with its own definition. Awarded is the funder's commitment (shown with the requested amount). Budgeted and Committed come from the Projects & Budget tab: what you plan to charge to the grant, and how much of that is committed. Received is the total of recorded payments. Spent is the total of posted costs charged to the grant, and Remaining is Awarded less Spent. None of them substitutes for another: a grant can be fully budgeted and nothing spent, or spent ahead of what has been received.
Categories
Administrators manage grant categories under the same permission as other affiliate settings (Manage Grant Categories). Every affiliate starts with six. A category that any grant uses cannot be removed, only deactivated, so old grants keep their label.