What you get
- An award setup file: terms and conditions, approved budget, special conditions and a compliance calendar.
- Written procedures for the 2 CFR 200 areas auditors test: procurement, time and effort, equipment and subrecipients.
- Drawdown and budget tracking that ties every request to documented, allowable spending.
- Prior approval and budget revision requests prepared before changes are made, not after.
- Closeout within the 120-day window, and records organized for a single audit.
Grant management services handle the compliance side of a funded award: setting it up correctly, spending and drawing down funds under the rules, getting approvals for changes, managing purchases and subawards, and closing it out with records that survive an audit. We do this work for organizations that won federal or state funding and do not have a grants office large enough to run it, acting as that office or alongside your finance team.
Reporting is one part of this; if reports are your only need, see our dedicated grant reporting service.
Where federal awards go wrong after the award
Most trouble on a federal award comes from a handful of predictable places, and nearly all of them are set in the first month:
- The terms were never read in full. Special conditions, prior approval requirements and reporting dates sit in the notice of award and its attachments.
- Spending runs ahead of documentation. Drawdowns are requested for costs that are not yet supported, or charged to the wrong budget line.
- Changes are made, then approved. Rebudgeting, scope changes and key personnel changes that need agency approval under 2 CFR 200.308 are made first and asked about later, or never.
- Purchases skip the procurement rules. The Uniform Guidance requires written procurement procedures and competition thresholds, and auditors test them.
- Subrecipients are paid but not monitored. An organization passing funds to partners inherits responsibility for checking how those partners spend them.
What we manage
Award setup. We read the notice of award, terms and conditions and approved budget, and build a setup file and compliance calendar covering every report, approval and deadline across the period of performance.
Policies and procedures. Written procedures for procurement, time and effort documentation, equipment and property records, travel, and subrecipient monitoring, matched to 2 CFR 200 and to how your organization actually works. Many organizations discover at their first single audit that they never had them in writing.
Budget tracking and drawdowns. Spending tracked against the approved budget by line, with drawdowns through the agency's payment system (for example the Payment Management System for Department of Health and Human Services awards, or the Treasury's Automated Standard Application for Payments for many others) supported by documented, allowable costs.
Prior approvals and revisions. Budget revision, no-cost extension and key personnel requests prepared with the justification the agency expects.
Subrecipient monitoring. Risk assessments, subaward agreements with the required terms, review of subrecipient invoices and reports, and follow-up on their audit findings.
Closeout. Final financial and performance reports, final drawdown and equipment inventory, typically due within 120 days after the period of performance ends.
Single audit readiness
An organization that spends $1,000,000 or more in federal awards in a fiscal year beginning on or after October 1, 2024 must have a single audit under 2 CFR 200 Subpart F (the threshold was $750,000 before that). The audit tests both the financial statements and compliance with program requirements. Readiness is built during the year, not assembled when the auditor arrives: supported transactions, written procedures that were followed, and a schedule of federal expenditures that reconciles. Our guide to the single audit explains what auditors test.
Who this is for
- Nonprofits that have won their first federal award, or one much larger than usual.
- Small local governments, tribes and special districts without a dedicated grants staff.
- Organizations passing federal funds to subrecipients for the first time.
- Any recipient with prior audit findings that need a corrective plan carried out.
What you provide
The notice of award and its attachments, the approved budget, access to your accounting reports for the award, and a contact in finance and in the program. We do not keep your books; your finance team owns the ledger and we work from it. Engagements can cover a single award or a portfolio, for a set period or the life of the award, and start when the engagement begins, after payment.
For an overview of the work, see our guide to post-award grant management; for choosing tools to track it, grant management software. When the next application comes round, a clean management record is evidence of capacity, which our federal proposal writers put to work.
