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Uniform Grant Guidance (UGG)“Aims to reduce the administrative burden on award recipients and, at the same time, guard against the risk of waste and misuse of Federal funds.” (grants.gov)
Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act“The nation’s first open data law. It requires the U.S. federal government to transform its spending information into open data.” (datacoalition.org)
Treasury “Do Not Pay” Initiative“The purpose of this order was to reduce improper payments by intensifying efforts to eliminate payment error, waste, fraud, and abuse in the major programs administered by the Federal Government, while continuing to ensure that Federal programs serve and provide access to their intended beneficiaries.” (fiscal.treasury.gov)
Grant Reporting Efficiency and Assistance Transparency (GREAT) Act“The proposed law will transform federal grant reporting from disconnected documents into open data by directing the executive branch to adopt a standardized data structure for the information grantees must report to agencies.” (datacoalition.org)
Many times, there are a number of people and departments involved in the grant lifecycle, and this often includes sub-recipients as well. The more people included in the process, the more difficult it is to maintain internal controls, and GAO audits have identified that there are already clear deficiencies in internal controls of grant management. A lack of internal controls negatively impacts grant awarding, eligibility, proper fund allocation, and proper financial statements.
Regular and detailed trainings are important to maintain effective internal controls. Everyone involved in grants management in your state needs to be fully aware of your processes and comfortable with any technology deployed.
Another solution to improving internal controls is having a centralized hub for your grants. This is especially helpful when sub-recipients are involved. Instead of using disparate systems, consolidate your information on one system to keep everyone, your team and sub-recipients, on the same page.
When states don’t distinguish a clear allocation of duties, parts of the process may fall to the wayside. If there is not a system or structure noting who handles what task and when, it’s more likely that your state will forget or ignore grant dollars.
To ensure proper allocation of duties, your state must have clearly defined user roles and set goals for each of these roles. Setting these distinctions right away will streamline your grant management and improve communication.
Specifically, there are four primary user role types you should consider assigning: a team lead, impacted employees (employees who are actively involved in the grants process), a middleman between your organization and outside vendors, and an executive-level employee who can assist with internal roadblocks.
And if you are employing a workflow tool, be sure to assign user roles in the system upfront.
In recent years, more pieces of legislation have emerged regarding data and grants management. With nearly $1 billion in funding remaining in grant accounts in 2016 alone, the federal government is becoming more aware of the dollars it is allocating and is becoming more stringent on ensuring that states manage these dollars appropriately. If states aren’t complying with legislation, it could result in fees and loss of future funding.
States Should Always:
Associate costs with activities for performance progress
Identify potential changes in timeframes
Identify when performance goals were met and identify associated costs
Identify new strategies being used
Ensuring transparency of grant spending is of the utmost importance for tracking performance. With no solid approach to verifying data, states will produce erroneous performance metrics.
Transparency leads to accuracy. When the grant management process is more transparent, there is more oversight and, in turn, less mismanagement.
As Michael Wood, former Executive Director of the Recovery Accountability and Transparency Board, stated, most of maintaining accurate reports is making sure your books and accounts are in order. Therefore, maintaining proper progress reports is all about having a strong understanding of your reporting standards and building your record-keeping processes around those.
Auditors aren’t the ones responsible for managing grant deadlines, states are. So when organizations lack the proper systems to help them manage deadlines, it often results in missed due dates, which can lead to even further consequences.
Closing out grants in a timely fashion not only allows states to redistribute unused funds, but if grants are not closed out within the deadline, states will owe the federal government money. In 2015, the federal government had $173,000 per month in fees, both from that year and from a few years prior, according to the GAO.
While closeout is the final piece to your grant lifecycle, that doesn’t mean it should be an afterthought. In fact, your state needs to be cognizant of closeout and preparing for it every step of the lifecycle. Your state’s best defense against missing grant closeout is a robust notification system throughout your grant’s lifecycle.
By setting up automatic notifications through software, employees will receive alerts on approaching deadlines and reviews. Some software, like AmpliFund, will even provide notifications on spending thresholds.
Because of GATA, GATU intensely reviewed Illinois’ grant management processes. It was determined the state should procure a grant management software. GATU determined in fiscal year 2018 that since deploying grant management software, Illinois saw an estimated overall $258,075,000 in cost savings.
When it comes to transparency of grants management, New York state is leading the way. At the current time, New York has developed over 1,600 resources on the state’s data information. The state also produces an annual report on open data so it’s citizens can be aware of how valuable grant dollars are to their quality of life.
Maryland works very hard to make sure proper grants management is a priority for the state. Not only does the state make sure all employees are trained in grant management processes, Maryland also hosts an annual grants conference. The state provides resources, training, research, and guidance on all aspects of federal grants and federal funds to ensure the state takes an informed, team-approach to grants. Maryland is also focusing on efficient sub-recipient management.
California is paving the way for other states to be more open-minded when it comes to grant management improvement. While many state agencies host their own open data portals, California’s data portal hosts data from multiple agencies. Many of the state’s agencies even host competitions to discover the best way to manage data and maintain transparency.
Mindfulness of spending; Tracking grant parameters and not allocating money to items not outlined.
Pay out funds for grant activities in a timely fashion after drawdown.
Maintain reports on both time and effort.
Provide all necessary team members access to data and have a system to monitor fiscal activity.
Track all grant activities (expenses and deadlines) in one location.
Use a specialized solution to maintain grant records.
Ability to track activities against goals.
