Effective ways to manage grant funding

In 2025, grant funding is more important than ever for charities. The cost-of-living crisis has led to donations from the public falling to its lowest point since 2016, meaning that charities are increasingly turning to other sources to fund their vital services and operations. In 2024, grant applications reportedly surged by 30-50%, with some foundations seeing their number double.

 

When charities and grant funders align on their mission, goals, and values, magic can happen. Many charities are constantly on the look-out for such opportunities, both to help them survive and to help them deliver projects that make a difference to their service users.

 

The funds provided through grants can be massively impactful to charities and their service users, but managing grants, from the application process to overseeing expenses, can be an arduous and time-consuming process, taking precious time away from the service-based work they exist to deliver.

 

In this article, we explore how charities and nonprofits can strengthen their processes for managing grants, including how to save time and how to boost success throughout the process.

 

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Be purposeful

 

Grant funding organisations often require nonprofits to provide lots of paperwork and spend time on admin-heavy processes to demonstrate they will use grant money in the best way possible.

 

The process often begins before funding has been secured, so charities need to be decisive about which opportunities are most worth spending the time on upfront, without the guarantee of future funding. Charities also need to avoid wasting time with grant funding in the long-term by avoiding funding that is misaligned.

 

Start by reflecting on the charity’s mission, strategy, and long-term funding goals. This will help you to separate the best opportunities from those that may look promising, but in actual fact are not aligned with your work and future plans.

 

From this starting point, you can explore grant funding opportunities with discernment and confidence, well-positioned to secure the best funding for your charity and its services.

 

 

Streamline the process

 

Before and after a grant is awarded, the process can be complex for charities. And this complexity is multiplied by the number of grants that a charity has ongoing, at various stages, at any one time.

 

The complexity can make it time-consuming and stressful to keep on top of it all: knowing key dates for submitting proposals, keeping track of what stage of an application you’re at, verifying spending from each grant received, and so on.

 

Grant management systems can automate the laborious administrative work of digging through emails and documents to find out the most important facts in relation to a particular grant, instead keeping all the top-level information needed in one place.

 

When managing this key information becomes simple and clear, you can in turn communicate to funders and other stakeholders with greater clarity. And as monday.com highlights, it means you can keep track of expected deadlines and reporting requirements, and better plan for future opportunities.

 

 

Keep the team on the same page

 

Confusion can arise when team members don’t have the information they need to contribute, collaborate, and make decisions effectively. The busy charity world can cause lapses of communication and mean that information and resources are missed when dealing with other urgent priorities.

 

But when it comes to grant funding, it’s important to stay organised. By doing so, you can make the most of grant funding opportunities by fostering a positive relationship with funders and delivering grant-funded services with confidence.

 

To stay organised and aligned with your team, create a grant calendar. This should include application deadlines, internal task timelines, and recurring dates for staff to remember.

 

Another way to keep the team on the same page is by creating and maintaining an up-to-date resource library. This should include eligibility documentation outlining revenue, current funding, the number of volunteers, the size of the charity’s full-time team, and other information funders request.

 

By creating these shared knowledge bases, the team has one source of truth to work from, helping everyone to work more seamlessly throughout the whole grant funding process.