Grantseeking Opportunities Best Practices

Grants that have been awarded and are restricted to a specific program/service or opportunity can be tracked. When a grant is awarded and all tasks have been completed, change the status to Awarded-Closed. When adding the revenue from the grant into Accounting, check the Restricted box and then select the service/program within the accounting details.

To associate awarded grants with grantseeking opportunities, follow the details from the bullet above but include the opportunity within the Add Revenue page when recording the grant. Expenses and revenue associated with grantseeking opportunities can be found on the granseeking opportunity profile, displayed within the respective areas. You can also view expenses and revenue within the Statement of Activities filtered by a specific opportunity.

A list of opportunities that includes fundraising and grantseeking can be viewed on the Opportunity Settings page within Accounting. Additional information associated with the opportunities include Default Revenue Account and Default Service.

Grants that have been submitted and need feedback from a funder can be tracked. Under the Grantseeking tab on the Opportunities page filter the list of opportunities by status. For this example, filter by Application-Submitted status. Once the list is filtered, select a grant opportunity and then reach out to the funder or contact listed on the opportunity.

Utilizing tasks and task notifications within your grant opportunities will help keep track of follow-ups with funders without having to manually filter through a list of opportunities and then individually communicating with grant funders.

NonprofitCore provides the ability to create a variety of task for opportunities. However, there are some common tasks that can be created specificially for grantseeking opportunitites. Grantseeking Opportunity Tasks provides detailed guidance on common opportunity tasks along with instructions on how to set up task notifications.

If Office 365 or Google Docs is used for collaborating on a grant application, there is a way to store that shared document link within NonprofitCore. Create a custom field for the grantseeking opportunity and then paste the document link within the custom field on the opportunity profile.

Although NonprofitCore provides the ability to create a wide variety of custom fields, there are some common custom fields that can be set up specifically for grantseeking opportunities. The following are some ideas of common custom fields:

• Program/Service
• Fiscal Year for grant
• Link to Application
• PI (Principal Investigator) - This is the person in charge of a specific program for which you need the grant.
• Primary Contact
• Match/No Match 
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NonprofitCore offers several grantseeking opportunity statuses. Two examples include Application-Draft and In-Progress. A complete list can be found on the Fundraising Configurations page.

The status field within a grantseeking opportunity can be used to manage the grant process and ensure tasks are being completed on time.

Status options in NonprofitCore are system default, therefore additional statuses cannot be added to the configurations list. To add a status that is not already listed, create a custom field and then add that specific status within the custom field.

When a multi-year grant is awarded it can be tracked to show when a certain amount will be received on a certain date. Use the steps below for guidance on how to record a multi-year grant within NonporfitCore.

1. Create one grantseeking opportunity for the entire multi-year grant that has been awarded.
   • Enter the total amount awarded within the grant opportunity information.
     
     
2. Add three receivable revenue transactions with different due dates within Accounting. These dates will be based on when portions of the grant will be received by the organization.
   • Associate each receivable revenue entry with the multi-year grant opportunity.
     
     
   • When the grant money is received and posted, add it as remittance revenue for the receivable revenue entry initially created.