How to Manage Your Grant Proposals with Grant Tracker
Grant Tracker is designed to make the grant management process a breeze! It’s like having a personal assistant to help manage your grant-related tasks, deadlines, and documents in one neatly organized place, so you can focus on what really matters—winning those grants!
This article covers:
- What is Grant Tracker?
- How do I install Grant Tracker in my MonkeyPod?
- How do I create a grant proposal in Grant Tracker?
- How does Grant Tracker remind me about upcoming deadlines?
- How does Grant Tracker help manage proposals once they're entered?
- What do I do when a grant is awarded?
- What reports are available in Grant Tracker?
- Frequently Asked Questions
Grant Tracker is for managing the grant writing process. Check out our Overview of Grant Management article for details about working with grants once the funds have been awarded.
What is Grant Tracker?
Grant Tracker is a premium app that serves as the organizational hub for important items related to your grant proposals. It also has a bunch of great features to help with managing grant proposals, monitoring the success of your grant writing efforts, recording awarded grants in your MonkeyPod, and reporting on grant spending. With additional features like automated reminders and a centralized dashboard, MonkeyPod's Grant Tracker ensures you never miss a beat!
How do I install Grant Tracker in my MonkeyPod?
Grant Tracker, is a premium app in MonkeyPod. To install it, choose Apps & Integrations > Fundraising from the main menu. Then select the option there to learn more about Grant Tracker, and click the button to "Install". Once installed, Grant Tracker appears in the Apps & Integrations menu under "My Apps & Integrations".
How do I create a grant proposal in Grant Tracker?
To start tracking a new grant proposal in Grant Tracker, choose "Start a new proposal" from the Grant Tracker proposal dashboard.
Start typing the funder's name in the "Funder" field. Matching relationships from your MonkeyPod appear in the menu as you type, and you can select the funder from that list. If the funder doesn't already exist in your MonkeyPod, just choose the "Create new" option to record the funder's details in a new relationship record in MonkeyPod, and then select it for this grant proposal.
Next, enter the proposal's title in the title field. Make sure the title is unique and informative since the title is used to identify the grant throughout Grant Tracker as well as when an awarded grant is recorded in MonkeyPod. You can always change the title later, if needed.
After you've entered the funder and the proposal title, click the checkmark to save the new proposal.
Entering the Basics
Next enter the basic information about the grant proposal, including the amount requested, any notes to help you with important details, and any tags for your internal tracking. These details can all be edited later if necessary.
When ready, click "Next: Documents" to continue.
Entering documents to track
Next, use the "Documents" section to indicate which documents you want to track for this proposal. These are typically the documents that the funder requires you to submit, but can include any documents you need to pull together when applying for this grant. Choosing to track a document here tells Grant Tracker to setup action items for each of these documents to help you assign the work and meet your deadlines.
To set up the documents needed for a proposal, select any of the default documents listed or enter your own.
If you have an online folder (like Google Drive or Dropbox) where you keep documents related to the proposal, you can copy and paste that link into the field for it here.
When you're ready, click the button "Next: Deadlines" to move on to the final step.
Entering deadlines for your documents
In the "Deadlines" section, first choose who is responsible for a document by selecting from the list of people with access to your MonkeyPod. You also have the option of choosing another person on the team to be the one to doing the work. (If you need to add someone new, see this article about how to add a new user to your MonkeyPod.)
Next, enter when the document is due. You can also create an optional earlier internal deadline so the due date doesn't sneak up on you!
When you've setup the assignments and deadlines for all of the documents, click "All Set!".
All of the related action items then appear in the "Proposal Documents" tab:
How does Grant Tracker remind me about upcoming deadlines?
Your MonkeyPod can send out email reminders about upcoming due dates for any proposal document deadlines you've entered in Grant Tracker. You can also choose to receive notifications in the Notification Center in your MonkeyPod.
Check your notification settings by choosing Notification Preferences from your user menu in the top right of your MonkeyPod. Here you can tell MonkeyPod which types of notifications you want to receive via email or via the Notification Center, and how early and how often to send reminders.
Adding deadlines to your calendar
You can also have MonkeyPod add your action items to your calendar! Choose User Settings from the user menu and click the "Calendar Sync" tab. Click the "Activate Calendar" button and use the generated URL to subscribe to the calendar from Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, or other calendar program that supports syncing.
How does Grant Tracker help manage proposals once they're entered?
The Proposal Dashboard lists all the grant proposals you've entered. Use the filters at the top of the list to choose which proposals are displayed. You can filter for archived or active proposals, as well as any status, deadline, tag, or title.
Click the title (or magnifying glass icon) for any proposal to view details or edit it.
Tracking proposal status
As the status of a grant proposal changes, update the "Proposal Status" field.
To edit the proposal, use the fields in the "Proposal Info" tab at the bottom of the page, and click the "Save Changes" button when done.
Tracking documents
The "Documents" section displays a list of documents needed for the proposal. A green checkmark indicates the work is completed. Any documents that remain to be done display the number of tasks remaining to complete for that document.
To update, add, or delete any proposal documents (and their action items), click the "Proposal Documents" tab.
There are a number of things you can do in this section:
- Comments: to comment on a document, click the "comments" link and enter what you'd like to say. You can "@Mention" someone to notify them of the comment by typing the @ sign and then selecting their name from the list. (MonkeyPod lists all users of your MonkeyPod when using @Mention. If you need to add someone, check out this article about adding new users.
- Details: Click the "Details" link to view the details of the action item or edit it. Use this option to upload any related files, assign tags, turn on/off notifications, add dependencies, and more. See this article on action items for more information.
- Mark as Complete: When the document or task is complete, click the "Mark complete" link.
- Delete: click the 3-dot menu to the right of the document title and choose Delete Document to delete the action item for the document and all related information.
What do I do when a grant is awarded?
You celebrate!! After that, come back to the proposal in grant tracker and change the "Proposal Status" to "Awarded".
Once you update the status, a new "Post Award" tab appears for the grant proposal.
Record a grant transaction
If you want to record this grant as a financial transaction in your MonkeyPod, click the "Record now" link. MonkeyPod sets up all the necessary accounts for you and records the grant transaction, and displays the link to it in the Post Award section.
Record any post-award documents
Very often, after receiving an award, there is still additional documentation required, like interim or final reports. Click the button to "Add a Post-Award Document" to record any documents that are needed. Follow the instructions for "Tracking Documents" above to manage your action items for any post-award documents.
What reports are available in Grant Tracker?
Choose the "Funding Insights" tab on the Grant Tracker dashboard to access reports for success rate and tracking deadlines.
Funding Insights - Success Rate
The Success Rate reports display the breakdown of proposals that were awarded, rejected, or are pending both as number of proposals or as the amount of the proposals. These charts can be filters using the same options available on the proposal dashboard. This can be helpful, for example, to view success rates for different years (using deadlines) or projects (using tags).
Funding Insights - Deadlines Roadmap
The Deadlines Roadmap displays the status of action items related to your proposals, giving you a sense of the workload, or grant writing activity, over time. The Deadlines Roadmap includes all proposals and awards. Hover over any column to see the breakdown of how many items are complete, in progress, or not started. You can also export the chart as an image (SVG or PNG) or export its data as a CSV using the menu at the top right of the chart.
Spending Insights
Click the "Spending Insights" tab to access charts that break down your annual grant spending.
The "Spending by Month" chart breaks down grant spending by proposal or by class. Use the menu above the chart to select the fiscal year you want to view. Hover over any column to see the details of the spending it represents.
If you're looking for spending details on a particular grant, you'll find that on the grant transaction in your MonkeyPod. Check out our Overview of Grant Management article for details.
Frequently Asked Questions
What if we have grants entered in our MonkeyPod, but they aren't yet tracked in Grant Tracker?
No problem! In Grant Tracker, click the Untracked Grants tab to view all the grants recorded in your MonkeyPod that don't have a corresponding record in Grant Tracker.
Click the corresponding "+" icon to add a proposal for that grant in Grant Tracker. Grant Tracker creates a new proposal (available in the "Proposals" tab), and removes the entry from the "Untracked Grants" tab. Click the title of the grant in the "Proposals" tab to edit it, upload documents, or fill in any other details. That proposal will now be included in all Grant Tracker reporting for funding and spending insights.
We contract with a grant writer who is not part of our organization. How much information can they see in our MonkeyPod if we give them access to Grant Tracker?
It's up to you! MonkeyPod offers lots of flexibility with how you define your user roles and permissions. You can create a new role for "Grant Writer" and then choosing which specific permissions you want to grant anyone in that role. Then be sure to edit that user account to give assign them the new role with the relevant permissions. Check out our article on user roles and permissions for more detail.
Our list of proposals is so long. Can we hide old or declined proposals from our dashboard?
Absolutely! Once a proposal has received a final decision (awarded or rejected), you can choose to archive it. Just click the archive icon that corresponds to the proposal in your Proposal Dashboard.
Archiving a proposal removes it from the dashboard, but it's still available to you should you want to refer to it later. You can choose to view archived proposals using the filter on the dashboard.
You can also un-archive an archived proposal using the restore icon.
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