AmpliFund’s 2021 Content Roundup

This year, people who work with grants in a variety of sectors turned to AmpliFund for guidance on driving best practices, maintaining compliance, and building their ability to see funding impact clearly. These were not only organizations looking to improve upon their overall funding outcomes, but also organizations needing to adapt their processes to effectively and quickly manage several different streams of recovery funds.

While AmpliFund works with a wide range of clients, your reading habits suggest that you all have some similar concerns. Due to that, we wanted to provide you with a roundup of our most popular resources of 2021 in case you missed them previously.

It is no surprise that the most popular pieces of the year revolved around compliance requirements for COVID-19 relief funding programs. Readers also gravitated toward resources about creating processes to help you win and retain funding.

The stats are in, and these were the top 10 AmpliFund resources of 2021.

#10 – Performance Reporting is Paramount – OMB 2021 Compliance Supplement Update

In this piece, AmpliFund’s President and Founder, Adam Roth, provides an overview of the Office of Management and Budget’s 2021 Compliance Supplement, and the increase in performance reporting requirements it contains while suggesting best practices for making sure you have this data when you need it.

#9 – The Local Government Guide to Managing Subrecipients

This guide provides tips for local governments to reduce the administrative burden associated with monitoring subrecipient progress and offers advice for ways to set clear expectations, create standard processes for data collection, and ensure transparent communication so you can get the data you need for reporting.

#8 – Setting Standards to Achieve Compliance

The Uniform Grant Guidance requires standard reporting to ensure good controls are in place during an audit; however, what those standard reporting processes must entail is not very prescriptive. This piece provides some best practices for grant makers and grant seekers to help create processes that will help you perform well in the single audit.

#7 – How to Manage Nonprofit Grants

This guide provides best practices to address common challenges that nonprofits typically face when it comes to managing their awards. While this guide is aimed at nonprofits, the advice contained in it is helpful for organizations of all sizes.

#6 – How to Write an Effective Grant Proposal

This “how to” guide was the first installment in the Grant Seeker Best Practices eBook Series and is designed to help you get prepared to write an effective grant proposal with step-by-step advice so your organization can increase your win rates.

#5 – The American Rescue Plan: Preparing for Recovery Success

This piece by Adam Roth provides an overview of the American Recovery and Reinvestments Act of 2009 (ARRA), of which President Biden was also instrumental in in driving the strategy for.  Roth uses the reporting structure of the ARRA to forecast what could be coming down the road for ARPA funding guidance as it evolves.

#4 – New Grant Opportunities - Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA)

This blog post provides a high-level overview of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) and the new grant programs that have already been created to disburse the funds. Because of the multiple ways these funding streams will be allocated, awarded, and managed, significant coordination between funders, recipients, and subrecipients will be required, and this piece was written so you can start planning to apply for and manage this funding today.

Despite only being published two weeks ago, the IIJA piece has broken into the top 5 pieces of the year. We’re listening, and we plan to bring you more updates on these programs and their compliance requirements as information becomes available.

#3 – The Treasury’s Guidance for State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds (SLFRF)

When the Treasury originally released the compliance reporting guidance for SLFRF funds, there were a lot of unknowns concerning reporting, subrecipient monitoring, and single audit requirements, and this blog was published to help you know what you needed to know to move forward. There is a companion Guide to the Treasury’s SLFRF Reporting Requirements that helps you understand each report on a deeper level as well.

The Treasury has since released updates to the guidance, and you can find out more about those here.

#2 – The Grant Management Centralization Guide

The # 2 resource of the year was designed to help you create a grant management strategy that works. This guide provides tips for you to effectively centralize your grant processes as well as advice to build a central grants office, create structured policies, and define data reporting standards.

#1 – Building Your Organization’s Grant Guidelines Checklist

The most popular resource of 2021 is a checklist to help you make sure you are creating processes for managing your funding effectively. This checklist provides a way to help you ensure your organization is covering all of the standard elements needed in a thorough set of grant guidelines to keep your team informed and on track.

The entire AmpliFund Team wishes you a happy, healthy, and restful new year! We look forward to helping you drive best practices, maintain compliance, and make an impact in 2022. As usual, don’t hesitate to reach out. We love hearing from you.