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Municipalities and local government agencies are unique in that they both receive grants from state and federal sources and award grant funding to individuals or local organizations. This dual role means they face a complex set of challenges for grant management.
If you work for your local government, you might be looking for a reliable grant management partner for your organization. This guide explains all you need to know about how to find a grant management partner for municipalities.
A grant management partner is an entity that helps municipalities and other local organizations improve their grant management processes. Grant partners for municipalities provide support, resources and expertise to assist grantors and grantees in maximizing their funding.
There are several different types of grant management partners agencies can work with, including software providers and independent consultants. Ultimately, implementing a cloud-based grant management software solution is the best choice for most municipalities.
Understanding the problems your organization is facing is key to choosing a partner that can help you achieve your goals. Some of the most common challenges local government agencies experience in grant management include the following.
Compliance requires your organization to follow a strict list of standards and regulations from the grantor. When your organization is the grantor, you have to ensure your recipient complies with your requirements.
While specific requirements regarding state grants may vary, the regulations for municipalities receiving federal funding are universal. All recipients must provide the federal grant-making organization with three categories of data:
Without the proper resources, tracking project and financial data can be challenging for local government agencies. That lack of visibility can lead to compliance issues that could potentially prevent the organization from being eligible for funding in the future.
Grant-making municipalities must also impose these regulations on their grantees to ensure proper funding use, which takes significant time and energy.
Outdated legacy systems and poor record-keeping processes can cause data to become siloed in separate departments. Data silos can easily lead to missing data and inaccuracies, which can then impact your organization’s ability to produce accurate compliance and progress reports.
Modern solutions solve this issue by consolidating all your grant information into one user-friendly platform. You can logically organize that data so anyone with the required authorizations can enter the platform and access what they need right away.
Grantmakers must maintain consistent communication with grantees, which can be challenging for organizations using disparate channels or communication protocols. It can also be difficult for organization employees to contact members of other departments for assistance with time-sensitive tasks, which can cause roadblocks due to miscommunication.
A unified platform with messaging and grant management capabilities can make communication easier for both grantmakers and grantees by reducing the chances of missed messages. Because they’re only using one platform, each party can easily stay up to date on the other’s activity without having to hunt that information down. Internally, employees can keep up with co-workers to confirm everyone is on the same page.
Resource limitations such as the following are common among municipalities:
While working with other levels of government can help municipalities gain access to valuable resources and assistance, it’s not a permanent solution. Grant managers in local agencies must identify quality partners that can provide consistent support instead of relying on seasonal resources.
Because municipalities are often working with limited resources, it can be difficult to make sure everyone stays organized, especially when it comes to complex processes like grant management.
For example, employees on the grant management team may take on multiple roles to compensate for staffing shortages. While combining roles can help you ensure important operations are covered, it can cause confusion and overwhelm. Important tasks may be duplicated or forgotten altogether, potentially leading to compliance issues.
A grant management partner can help relieve some of this administrative burden by automating tedious and time-consuming tasks, saving your employees time and improving accuracy.
Investing in a unified grant management software solution can help your organization improve your processes in the following ways:
Due to the dual nature of local governments in the grant management sphere, you need to make sure a potential partner will help you approach the process as both a grantor and a grantee. Some specific capabilities to look out for include:
To ensure seamless connections across your entire system, the grant management software you choose should be compatible with every other relevant software tool in your tech stack. This capability ensures your new software can communicate with the other tools you use to manage your organization, which can eliminate data silos and reveal insights that may have been previously hidden.
If your agency is looking for a solution to enhance your next grant cycle, an advanced technology platform is an excellent option. Partnering with IGX Solutions can help your municipality address many of the common issues local governments face in grant management.
Our holistic grant management software allows organizations to simplify every step of the grant management process, whether they’re the grantmaker or the grantee. Book your free demo today to see IntelliGrants IGX in action.