Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) is increasingly playing a role in all facets of the grantmaking process, with the pre-award phase receiving most of the heightened focus. But promoting DEIA isn’t the only concern grantors face. In a survey, grantmaking professionals cited training and retaining well-qualified staff and overcoming challenges presented by cumbersome grants management systems, elliptical legislation, regulations and guidance and standardizing, streamlining and automating processes and reporting as major concerns.
The survey did more than catalog woes facing the grantmaking community. It found that during the five years encompassing 2019-2023, respondents have trimmed administrative spending as a percentage of grant value from a high of around 12% in 2021 to around 9% in 2023 – the second-lowest percentage seen during that five-year period.
The pullback from administrative expenditures was most significant among non-government organizations, which saw a high of 24% of grants going toward administrative costs in 2021 (during the height of the coronavirus pandemic) to 9%, according to Navigating the Nexus: Tech Challenges, DEIA Impacts, and the Future of Grants, a report generated from an annual grants management survey from REI Systems, the National Grants Management Association and the Trachtenberg School of Public Policy & Public Administration.
Grant managers spend a plurality of their time on administrative functions, according to the survey. During 2023, they allocated more than 35% of their time to financial and non-financial administrative requirements, around 18% to application submission/reviews and other pre-award activities, roughly 13% to policy program and design and 7% to evaluating overall grant program outcomes and impact.
That last figure is reflected in another finding: across the board, organizations expressed difficulty in evaluating recipients’ outcomes during the past 12 months. Here, non-government organizations fared better than their state and local or federal brethren. More than four in 10 (42%) of respondents from non-government organizations said they either did not know the impact of their actions, or that performance actually fell, with the majority of those respondents falling into the “don’t know” category.
That nebulous quality might be alarming, but it was actually the lowest among the three grouping for this attribute. Among federal organizations, 67% indicated that they either didn’t know the effect of their actions on recipients’ outcomes, or that performance actually dropped, with the overwhelming majority indicating they did not know the impact. And within the state and local category, 46% said they either did not know the impact of their actions, or that their recipients’ outcomes had actually fallen — again with the majority of those responses coming in the “don’t know” category.
Respondents cited a variety of reasons for their inability to effectively measure outcomes, including a lack of staff or capacity to collect and analyze outcome data, lack of tools to collect outcome data, lack of defined performance measures, a lack of stills to collect and analyze outcome data and a lack of leadership or executive support.
Results are on responses from 659 federal, state, local, tribal and nonprofit grant managers. A slideshow detailing the survey’s findings is available here: https://www.reisystems.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/03/2024_Annual-Grants-Management-Survey_Results.pdf
