Grant reporting 101 for grantors and grantees
Grant reporting is standard for grantees—it’s (generally) obligatory to provide grantors ongoing updates and retrospective breakdowns regarding efforts and outcomes.
For example, under the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act (FFATA), federal financial award recipients must issue reports on the allocations and uses of the awarded funds.
Note that these progress reports were previously filed via the FFATA Subaward Reporting System (FSRS) but will be filed via the System for Award Management beginning in Spring 2025.
Grant reporting is crucial for demonstrating accountability in grant funding, showcasing the impact of the funds, and building trust to secure future funding opportunities.
Via reports, grantees highlight the key achievements and lessons learned throughout the project lifecycle, providing invaluable insights into their performance and capabilities. Grantors rely on the reports for formal impact measurements of the funds achieved and justify their investment via donor impact reports.
In this guide, learn more about grant reporting, its key components, and the best practices.
What is grant reporting?
Grant reporting provides detailed information to grantmakers, outlining the use of the awarded funds, the project’s progress, and the overall impact of the funds. It’s one of the most important aspects of post-award grant management, and the reports must adhere to specific timelines, formats, and reporting requirements, as stipulated in the grant agreement.
Reporting benefits both grantseekers and grantmakers to ensure effective grant administration:
- Grantseekers: Reporting allows grantees to clearly understand the project’s activities, challenges, and outcomes. It will enable them to demonstrate their ability to manage funds and execute projects in line with the grant’s objectives and requirements.
- Grantmakers: Reporting allows grantors to monitor the use of the awarded funds and measure the impact of their investments. It also helps them gauge the project's effectiveness and inform future allocation modifications.
Grant agreements offer guidelines on what reports to file and when to file them. The reports broadly fall into three categories:
- Financial reports: These cover relevant financial information and data like expenses, allocations, and budgeting.
- Performance reports: These reports cover project data, highlighting the project’s progress or impact.
- Compliance reports: Reports for demonstrating grant compliance with federal regulations or fund-specific requirements.
A well-prepared report can influence future funding opportunities and secure a lasting relationship with grantmakers. It highlights how funds were used to achieve measurable results, increasing the likelihood of obtaining repeat funding or being considered for larger grants in the future.
Key components of grant reports
Grant reports can follow a specific format with different key components, often including the following sections.
Executive summary
An executive summary concisely summarizes the report’s key points, outcomes, challenges, and recommendations. It provides a quick snapshot of a project without reading the entire grant report, covering the most important details related to its goals, methods, and impact. Additional information should be kept in the relevant sections to maintain a focused and brief executive summary.
Program/project description
Like with grant writing, the project description section provides detailed information about the project or program, including the scope, objectives, timelines, and deliverables. It shares a high-level overview of the project’s goals and explores the methodology a grantee will use to achieve them.
Financial overview
A financial overview summarizes how the grant funds were used throughout the project lifecycle or since the last report was submitted. Financial reporting for grants details the total amount received, its allocations across different categories, and a comparison to the original budget (if there were significant variances). It covers expenses and shows how the project is tracking the budget.
Outcomes and impact
In this section, the report covers the measurable changes or results of the project, such as demonstrating the impact of the program or project on the target population. The outcomes reported in this section must directly relate to the stated project’s goals and objectives and should always align with the grantor’s purposes for disbursing funds.
Challenges and lessons learned
This section details the obstacles during the project and how the grantee overcame them. These obstacles can include community resistance, funding constraints, or logistical issues. It also highlights the lessons learned from those experiences and their impact on the project’s timeline, deliverables, and outcomes.
Grant reporting best practices for grantees
A well-prepared report is essential to demonstrating accountability and capability. Here are the best practices for grant reporting.
Prepare for grant reporting
It’s essential to gather the necessary information for the report, including:
- Financial reports
- Project outcomes
- Stakeholder feedback
Grantees can use software to simplify data collection and ensure accurate outcome-based reporting. Create a timeline for creating the reports while considering the reporting deadlines.
Additionally, circumstances may require stakeholders to produce and submit different program evaluation reports for specific grants. For example, when the US Department of Justice provides funds, the assigned Financial Manager submits Federal Financial Reports (FFRs), and the assigned Grant Award Administrator submits Performance Reports (PRs).
Write a comprehensive, compelling report
Start with a clear outline to align the report’s structure with the grant requirements, taking into account key sections like executive summary, description, and financial overview. Use precise language and be concise to deliver easy-to-read reports. Engage stakeholders to include their quotes, testimonials, or stories and highlight key outcomes.
Measure impact and present data effectively
The report must detail the project’s goals and objectives—ensure they’re specific and measurable. Use software, surveys, or questionnaires to gather accurate data for the report. Visuals like charts, graphs, and infographics should also be incorporated to present data clearly and make the report engaging.
Understand budget requirements
Grantseekers must understand the grantmaker’s budget requirements and financial reporting guidelines, which should be detailed in the contract documentation. Recipients must also provide detailed fund utilization reporting, breaking down every expense and demonstrating its impact on the project’s goals.
Conduct a thorough review before submitting
Before submitting the report, thoroughly review the data and calculations to ensure no errors or inconsistencies. Confirm that the report adheres to the recommended reporting format, length, and any other content requirements.
Grant reporting best practices for grantors
Grantors can support their grantees and make it easy for them to file accurate grant reports with a few donor stewardship best practices.
Set clear expectations
Establishing clear grantor expectations and goals for reporting—including formats, length, deadlines, and sections—goes a long way. These should be established even before any grant proposal evaluation. If possible, provide templated forms for the reports to ensure standardization and simplify the process for grantees.
Request KPIs you want to track
Highlight and define the key performance indicators (KPIs) that grantees must consider during project execution.
Some nonprofit metrics can include:
- Beneficiary reach
- Project outcomes
- Cost efficiency
- Skills developed
- Cost per participant
To ensure effective tracking and reporting, categorize nonprofit KPIs based on outcome, impact, and input.
Establish open communication
Grantees will always have questions and need clarification, so it’s vital to maintain regular communication to address their questions and provide technical assistance. Create a dedicated channel to ensure ample support and provide constructive feedback on submitted reports to support improvements.
Analyze program success
Review the reports thoroughly to assess the grant's impact and identify areas for improvement. Use the report’s findings, outcomes, and lessons to refine funding strategies and improve future grant allocations.
Common challenges in grant reporting
Grant reporting poses several challenges that grantors and grantees must avoid to ensure timely and accurate reports. Make sure to prepare in advance for the following challenges.
Managing deadlines
Organizations experience difficulty coordinating submission timelines, dealing with delays, and ensuring timely reviews. To avoid such challenges, grantors can set realistic deadlines, provide reminders, and offer extensions if needed. Recipients should create timelines and use automated reminders to stay ahead of deadlines.
Ensuring data accuracy
Collecting project data and verifying its accuracy is usually challenging for organizations, especially in siloed, outdated, or manual systems.
In this case, grantors must watch for incomplete or inconsistent data during report submission reviews. They should provide training on data collection and reporting standards to guide and support grantees.
On the other hand, grantees must use validated tools and methods for data collection and ensure all team members are familiar with them. The software can also automate data entry and manual tasks to prevent human errors.
Overcoming communication barriers
Communication barriers are a significant challenge, commonly due to siloed systems and a lack of standardization. These barriers lead to a lack of clarity, miscommunication, and infrequent updates.
Funders must establish open communication with grantees to encourage dialogue and feedback. They must use clear and consistent language in all communications. Grantees must seek clarification and ask questions to understand key guidelines and requirements.
Need grant reporting support?
Grant reporting is essential to ensuring accountability, maintaining recipient and donor transparency, and assessing the effectiveness of the funded project. Grantors can structure their processes to ease the burden of impact reporting on grantees while ensuring clarity before funding is provided.
Foundant's grant monitoring and management software for funders enhances this process by offering collaboration tools and robust features for measuring and reporting impact and outcomes. This ensures a seamless experience for both funders and grantees, improving the quality and accuracy of reports while fostering stronger relationships and clearer accountability.
Learn how Foundant can help your grantmaking organization with grant management.