Grants: Add New Grant Application (Version 2+)

Grants: Add Grant

This tutorial will cover how to add Grants to the system. Grants are a special type of funding that are made via competitive application to a funder (including private foundations, family trusts, corporate foundations, and city/state/federal government). Grants are different from donations in that they usually involve a formal, written application, have eligibility rules, often have oversight requirements (including formal progress reports and monitoring/site visits), and generally the money cannot be re-programmed/used for things other than what was specified in the grant application.
When you first add a grant to the system, it will be in Pre-Approval status. This indicates that a grant application is either in progress (still be drafting/not yet submitted) or has been submitted to the funder and is pending/no decision has been made yet.
To add a grant to the system, click on Fundraising Module from the left hand main menu, and in the sub-menu under Fundraising, click on Grants.

This will open up the Grant List/grant index screen, where you will see a list of all current grants added to the system.

The Grant List can be filtered by Status by clicking on the filters/counts at the top center of the screen. Clicking one of the status buttons will filter the list to just show grants with that status. Clicking the Reset button at the top of the screen will unfilter/show you the entire list of grants.

You can also Search/Filter the Grant List by application date, Grantor (funder), or Grant Name using the filters at the top of the screen.

You can Sort the Grant List by Status (default), Grant Name, or Grantor (funder) using the drop down menu in the upper right hand corner.

To create a new grant, click on the blue Create Grant button in the lower right of the screen.

This will open the Add/Edit Grant page where you will start by specifying the name of the grant in the Grant Name field. The Grant Name is an internal way of identifying this grant from other grants made by the same funder. You may also want to include other information such as program the funding is for or the fiscal/calendar year the funds are for. For instance, you might come up with a naming scheme for your grant names such as "FY2018 Youth Arts Program Grant." Or you may want to include the funding cycle name if the funder has more than one funding cycle: "CY2018 Youth Arts Program - Spring."

In the Grantor field, indicate the funder name (generally an organization). Start typing the name of the contact. The system will display a list of matching records from within your system. If the contact is on the list, select them. Otherwise, if this is a new contact not already within your system, type the name and hit enter. The system will bring up the quick add contact pop up and you will be able to create the contact record "on the fly."

Next, specify the Anticipated/Budgeted Amount (amount you anticipate receiving; often applicants do not receive the entire amount they ask for from funders; this field is not required and can be left blank if you do not track/use this information in budget planning) and the Requested Amount (also not required) for this grant.

If the grant has been submitted to the funder, indicate the date it was submitted in the Submission Date field (not required). If your grant is still in draft mode and has not yet been submitted, you can leave this field blank until after you submit it.

Enter the grant deadline/due date in the Deadline Date field. This field is required. If the funder accepts grant applications on a rolling deadline/there is no hard deadline, you will still need to enter something in this field. You have two options: enter the date you submitted the application, or come up with a "dummy" deadline date (for instance, for all grants with rolling deadlines that you intend to submit in 2018, you could use "12/31/2018" as the deadline date to indicate that the grant has to be submitted sometime in 2018).

If you have any Documents, such as application forms, that you wish to attach to this grant, do so by dragging them into the Documents section or by clicking the documents area to select a file from your computer.

The Grant Additional Information area is a custom data set that you can configure (Main Menu: Configurations: Custom Data Sets: Grant Additional Information) with additional data fields to capture information that there is not other place to put. Out of the box, this area is empty/there are no fields. The fields you see in the screen shot below are simply ones we added to our demo system. Examples of data fields you might want to create/add here include: program officer name, expected response/hearby date, notes, tracking number (for mailed applications or application number if you receive a data stamped receipt from the funder), etc.

If you wish to record an interaction or task related to this grant (such as the date you put the application in the mail or sent it via email, phone calls or meeting with the funder, etc.), you will need to first Save the grant. Then the blue Add Interaction/Task button in the lower right (next to Save) will appear and you can click it to add a task or interaction.

Please see the tutorial on Adding Interactions and Tasks for more on working with interactions and tasks. Make sure the General/Grant toggle on add/edit task interaction is set to Grant.

When you have finished configuring the grant, click on the Save button in the lower right.

This will change the grant's status to "Pre-Approval" and will open up the Approve, Reject, and Complete status buttons (used to change the status of the grant application).

To change the status of the grant, see our tutorials on Approving, Rejecting, and Marking Complete grants.
You can edit a grant by selecting Edit from the drop down to the right of the grant record on the Grant List.