Grants can be allocated by percentage or dollar amount across any dimension

Description

Non-profit and education organizations often need to spread grant funds across the organization, usually into projects. These projects can also be flagged as restricted and non-restricted. All these components are considered dimensions. Consider the need to tag these grants allocations by departments, programs, projects, or geographical areas. In some cases, this level of granularity is mandated by the grantor.

Example Use Case

Scenario: An non-profit organization engages in various charitable activities in multiple countries. They receive grants from the federal government, which they need to allocate to various projects based on priorities, budget requirements, and the grants stipulations. Using Excel, they must maintain an enormous number of independent worksheets to track the distribution of these funds.

Solution: The organization upgrades to a CPM software system that allows grant allocation across any dimension. They can now assign grants by percentage or absolute dollar amount to several projects in various geographic regions. This allocation is done based on factors like current needs, grant restrictions, size of population affected, chances of the project's success, and potential impact. This capability allows the non-profit to effectively report the distribution of grant funds to the grantor, fulfilling their obligation under the grant stipulations.

Considerations

This requirement is more challenging than it appears, in large part because grant funds can be too granular - consider restricted, non-restricted, then the programs, and labor allocations, then G&A costs. Most vendors who have a multi-dimensional system will tell you they can accomplish this, but their solution may be less than elegant when it is implemented. It is very important for non-profits to see a working model that shows the vendor has accomplished this - or at minimum that the implementation team has done it before with success. Many implementations have failed due to this requirement.

Also consider how your non-profit manages these grants today. Are different finance staff managing this in different ways? This happens more often than not, and can be detrimental to an implementation process. A single process needs to be agreed upon before engaging the implementation team.

Questions to Ask a Vendor

• Allocation Features: How flexible is your system in grant allocation? Does it allow the allocation of grants by both dollar amount and percentages across any dimension?
• Monitoring and Compliance: How does your system monitor and track the use of grants? Can it provide alerts if there is deviation from the allocated plan? Does it ensure compliance with grant requirements?
• Reporting capability: How do we produce a report for a specific grantor to meet our compliance obligations?