Grant Silos Stand in the Way of Your Financial Success

Grant management is complicated.

For colleges and universities, multiple departments are often involved—further complicating grant related tasks. Each department will have a unique way of managing grant activities, resources and performance. Additionally, outdated organizational practices such as whiteboards, sticky notes and spreadsheets don’t provide congruent platforms.

With such variation throughout the grant management process, problems in data transparency, compliance and efficiency can arise quickly.

Grant Management, Simplified

Grant management software alleviates these challenges, as grant data is centrally housed and managed, consistently formatted and available to all users. For example, Florida Gateway College eliminated silos by implementing AmpliFund across all departments. This made grant data available online to all stakeholders. The result was greater transparency into how funds were being spent across the organization.

“Relative to what the college wanted top down, in terms of having a system in which we could use for more detailed reporting, and understanding of where we were receiving money, the benefit was more toward organizational knowledge and management,” said Daniel Cronrath, director of grants and grants management for Florida Gateway College.

If built on an open platform, grant management software can also be integrated with financial and accounting systems, external calendaring systems (i.e. Outlook), grant research databases and HR/payroll systems, among other techs.

Grant Management Software is Easy-to-Use

Colleges may fear the learning curve that will accompany a new technology. However, there are proactive steps they can take to ensure technology is adopted and optimized.

As an example, Florida Gateway College hosted in-house training for its employees to teach them how to use AmpliFund. Once early adopters began to use the software and reap the benefits, the rest of the staff quickly followed in their footsteps.

When training your staff on grant management software, we recommend:

• An internal communication strategy that outlines software benefits, use cases and key implementation deadlines.
• Set training dates, in which users are given hands-on experience with the software and product documentation.
• Clearly defined roles and responsibilities, including an internal point person for troubleshooting questions and an executive sponsor.
• A positive attitude. As with any change to process, there may be some naysayers whose support you’ll have to win.

Internal support and buy-in is important. Motivate your team to work together and rise to the occasion.

Is your organization grant management stuck in silos? Let's chat.