What every state and local CIO should know about grant management

 

Connecting state and local government leaders

The right grant management solution can alleviate short-term administrative burden for workforces, promote long-term economic recovery for governments and future-proof digital transformation efforts.

It’s clear that elected officials and senior leadership across the board are recognizing that the CIO is not just a technology guru, but also an individual essential to enabling the very business of government itself.

Because grant funding has become imperative as a source of revenue for government services, the research, application and management process for grants has become a much higher priority for many CIOs.

Grant management, however, is highly complex, tedious and carries high administrative burden, which is exacerbated by the incoming waves of federal funding in addition to CARES Act grants that governments already have to manage. Thus, more CIOs are becoming laser-focused on finding the right grant management solutions to help automate these processes and alleviate administrative burden.

At the same time, CIOs must find the right GMS to fit within their existing IT infrastructure and enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems -- without getting locked-in to a model that will prevent future digital transformation. To achieve this important balance, CIOs must be aware of the implementation approaches for a GMS.

According to Gartner’s “Market Guide for State and Local Grant Management Solutions,” grant management solutions are primarily being implemented by three ways: stand-alone, built-to-purpose commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) applications, ERP modules or application platforms.

Each approach offers a way to automate the grant management process and produce efficiencies for workforces as well as cost savings in terms of ROI.

Stand-alone, built-to-purpose COTS applications: A purpose-built COTS GMS has one purpose only: grant management. These are typically marketed as software-as-a-service or hosted solutions with the possibility of on-premise implementation if necessary. Gartner notes that these applications are the dominant delivery method for modern grant management solutions as they are highly scalable for both small organizations (two to five users in a local department) to large-scale enterprise implementations, such as a state government with hundreds of users.

ERP modules: In this case, these grant management modules are deployed as part of ERP solutions and contain strong financial costing and budgeting data for compliance reporting and financial management. However, these modules don’t always support the full breadth of programmatic-oriented grant activities without supplemental modules.

Application platforms: Application platforms are highly configurable alternatives to COTS solutions and can be customized to grant management process workflows. While these are more popular in non-profit and higher education circles, they can require significant upfront investments to meet unique workflows.

Modernizing the full grant management lifecycle

The grants process has grown more complex over time, primarily because of the increasing number of data integration points required to properly meet the tracking and reporting requirements of each grant. Grants management used to be putting all of an agency’s grant funds into one account in the financial system, tracking the transactional data against that one fund and using spreadsheets to associate those transactions with the appropriate grant. Systems have evolved, but rarely do they capture the full picture or manage all the program and financial requirements for all grants in one place.

This is especially true when considering pass-through grants (when an entity receives federal funds which it “passes on” to recipients). Recipients that receive funds from a pass-through entity then become subrecipients. Consequently, grantors have to worry not only about their own management of grants but also the grant performance of the subrecipients.

That’s why for state and local governments in particular, the availability of full lifecycle GMS is critical for incorporating appropriate data and workflows for both grantors who need subrecipient management capabilities and grantees (receiving entities) that need to find and acquire grant funding and/or manage grant awards.

A full lifecycle GMS has the ability to address separately or altogether each phase of the grant lifecycle including:

  • Pre-award: The steps from project conception to submission of a grant application.
  • Post-award: The steps from being awarded a grant to closeout.
  • Subrecipient management: The workflows needed for grantors to ensure subrecipients are meeting targets and objectives of grant projects.

Key considerations when selecting a GMS

As the GMS market continues to expand and evolve, state and local CIOs will have more options when it comes to choosing which best serves their department or agency’s needs. Knowing that a purpose-built COTS application will be the dominant implementation approach for grant management solutions, CIOs should look for the following capabilities when making a selection:

  • Efficient tracking and reporting of budget, expenditure and performance data by grant.
  • Ability to integrate with any ERP module.
  • Ability to streamline and automate the needs and processes of both grantors and grantees (recipients of grant awards) into enterprise workflows.
  • User-centered design driven by public-sector practitioners and certified grant management specialists.
  • Experience implementing all of the capabilities above.

For CIOs who are now more essential to the business of government than ever, choosing the right GMS can make every bit of difference in alleviating short-term administrative burden for workforces, promoting long-term economic recovery for governments hurting on revenue and future-proofing digital transformation efforts.

X
This website uses cookies to enhance user experience and to analyze performance and traffic on our website. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. Learn More / Do Not Sell My Personal Information
Accept Cookies
X
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Do Not Sell My Personal Information

When you visit our website, we store cookies on your browser to collect information. The information collected might relate to you, your preferences or your device, and is mostly used to make the site work as you expect it to and to provide a more personalized web experience. However, you can choose not to allow certain types of cookies, which may impact your experience of the site and the services we are able to offer. Click on the different category headings to find out more and change our default settings according to your preference. You cannot opt-out of our First Party Strictly Necessary Cookies as they are deployed in order to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting the cookie banner and remembering your settings, to log into your account, to redirect you when you log out, etc.). For more information about the First and Third Party Cookies used please follow this link.

Allow All Cookies

Manage Consent Preferences

Strictly Necessary Cookies - Always Active

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data, Targeting & Social Media Cookies

Under the California Consumer Privacy Act, you have the right to opt-out of the sale of your personal information to third parties. These cookies collect information for analytics and to personalize your experience with targeted ads. You may exercise your right to opt out of the sale of personal information by using this toggle switch. If you opt out we will not be able to offer you personalised ads and will not hand over your personal information to any third parties. Additionally, you may contact our legal department for further clarification about your rights as a California consumer by using this Exercise My Rights link

If you have enabled privacy controls on your browser (such as a plugin), we have to take that as a valid request to opt-out. Therefore we would not be able to track your activity through the web. This may affect our ability to personalize ads according to your preferences.

Targeting cookies may be set through our site by our advertising partners. They may be used by those companies to build a profile of your interests and show you relevant adverts on other sites. They do not store directly personal information, but are based on uniquely identifying your browser and internet device. If you do not allow these cookies, you will experience less targeted advertising.

Social media cookies are set by a range of social media services that we have added to the site to enable you to share our content with your friends and networks. They are capable of tracking your browser across other sites and building up a profile of your interests. This may impact the content and messages you see on other websites you visit. If you do not allow these cookies you may not be able to use or see these sharing tools.

If you want to opt out of all of our lead reports and lists, please submit a privacy request at our Do Not Sell page.

Save Settings
Cookie Preferences Cookie List

Cookie List

A cookie is a small piece of data (text file) that a website – when visited by a user – asks your browser to store on your device in order to remember information about you, such as your language preference or login information. Those cookies are set by us and called first-party cookies. We also use third-party cookies – which are cookies from a domain different than the domain of the website you are visiting – for our advertising and marketing efforts. More specifically, we use cookies and other tracking technologies for the following purposes:

Strictly Necessary Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Functional Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Performance Cookies

We do not allow you to opt-out of our certain cookies, as they are necessary to ensure the proper functioning of our website (such as prompting our cookie banner and remembering your privacy choices) and/or to monitor site performance. These cookies are not used in a way that constitutes a “sale” of your data under the CCPA. You can set your browser to block or alert you about these cookies, but some parts of the site will not work as intended if you do so. You can usually find these settings in the Options or Preferences menu of your browser. Visit www.allaboutcookies.org to learn more.

Sale of Personal Data

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Social Media Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.

Targeting Cookies

We also use cookies to personalize your experience on our websites, including by determining the most relevant content and advertisements to show you, and to monitor site traffic and performance, so that we may improve our websites and your experience. You may opt out of our use of such cookies (and the associated “sale” of your Personal Information) by using this toggle switch. You will still see some advertising, regardless of your selection. Because we do not track you across different devices, browsers and GEMG properties, your selection will take effect only on this browser, this device and this website.