When people want to start a business, they often seek help from non-governmental organizations or government grants for financial assistance. The organization or funders will provide procedures before getting the funds that will help you follow through as you apply for the funds. You need to provide a project plan, a budget, among other things to see whether you qualify for the grant. However, problems come in when the grant seeker is not good at managing the grants. When you control your funds well, your donors get the confidence that their funds are well spent and that their funds have security. To be able to maximally manage below are 4 Tips That Will Help You Manage Your Grant.
- Achieve your project’s goals within the budget
When you get grants from the government, one has to have a pre-plan budget for the business you wish to start. To achieve your project’s goals within your set budget, you have to make sure that the business activities that you had set on the project proposal match the money spent and the activities that you might have already carried out. It is of no logic to get funds for putting up five workshops, and you only end up putting up three and the cost is the same as for the designated five. If it is a business or rather activities involving project officers and beneficiaries, it is good to explain to them who the donor is and their restrictions and conditions. Make your business clear by regularly holding meetings with your staff to discuss restrictions and review the business progress.Why Am I Afraid of Public Speaking?
- Avoid spending fewer funds
It is the same case problem for a donor as spending a lot of the funds. In most cases, donors will give you money following your budget and expect you to create and achieve something explicit with all the given money. So when you spend less money in putting up a business, this is questionable to the donor. It happens so because donors also do have set goals. Therefore, they do not want to get bothered with funds that are taken back to them. The donors often end up losing the allocation money every year if at all you do not use all the funds. To spend your money wisely, many donors will advise you to start with the purchasing of equipment that is if your business activity will be needing any.
- Build trust
In building trust, it will also involve transparency and accountability. When you have regular and open communication with the grant-officers, problems come about as you manage your grants. When you enhance communication with the grant-officers you will be able to build trust between the two of you. To add to your communication skills, ensure you write down everything so that in case you get a hitch you can refer to it. Building trust also helps you to avoid having scandals with the funding organization. While lack of trust may make the donors divert the funds they would offer you to other charities. The presence of trust between you and your donors, in return, encourages the donors to work with you more and not to turn down any of your funding requests.
- Create time to put together the donor reports
A good financial report takes a long time to prepare. Hence, it is good to set aside time for such work. When you take the time to prepare the report, it will have fewer mistakes and will be properly understood by the donor. Preparing the report earlier will enable you to add any question you may need to ask from the project managers and busy programmers. At times if you are facing problems with how you are spending the money on the project, including the problem in the report to seek advice. Sometimes the donors may promise a follow-up but unfortunately, end up not being consistent. This leads to overspending or underspending that you may fail to notice next time. Try not to delay your reports to the head office so that rectification may be done as early as possible. Besides, the written report should be clear and accurate.
