Understand the Grantmaking Lifecycle

Learning Objectives

After completing this unit, you’ll be able to:

Describe the steps of the grantmaking lifecycle.
Explain how Grantmaking can help you manage and track the lifecycle in Salesforce.

Salesforce offers integrated platform solutions and managed packages. This module covers Grantmaking, an integrated solution in Salesforce.

For more information about Grants Management, a managed package product that’s different from Grantmaking, complete the Manage Funding Programs with Grants Management trail.

If you’re unsure which solution your organization uses, check with your Salesforce administrator.

Take Your Grants from Budget to Results and Back Again

Whether you work for a private foundation, a government agency, or another organization that funds projects to improve the world, you likely follow the grantmaking lifecycle.

The grantmaking lifecycle generally consists of four steps.

The administrative phase, when you work internally to determine program budgets and create funding opportunities for potential grantees
The pre-award phase, when you collect grantseeker applications
The award phase, when you select grantees and disburse grants
The post-award phase, when you collaborate with grantees, collect progress reports, and analyze results

The grantmaking lifecycle maps neatly to the tools and objects in Grantmaking for Public Sector Solutions and Nonprofit Cloud, an integrated Salesforce solution for grantmakers. Grantmaking is designed to help grantmakers drive efficiency, create positive experiences for grantees, and invest in better outcomes.

The grantmaking lifecycle begins with the administrative phase and moves to the pre-award, award, and post-award phases.

This module gives you an overview of how Grantmaking works in the grantmaking lifecycle—especially the administrative, pre-award, and award phases.

To start, let’s review how teams use Grantmaking throughout the lifecycle.

Manage the Administrative Phase

The administrative phase is about preparing your organization to accept applications. It starts with creating programs in Salesforce using the Program object, then setting your budgets.

Grantmaking uses the Budget object to describe and track how much you give in monetary or nonmonetary quantities. Budgets also track spending categories (such as for materials, staffing, and more) for a particular time period (such as an annual or quarterly budget). You can even use budgets at the program, funding opportunity, or application level. You start by creating a high-level budget for a program. Later, you allocate spending back to the budget, categories, and child budgets for grants or particular initiatives. Plus, you can create budget records for use as templates, so users can submit their own structured budget data.

After budgets are ready, set up the individual grants you offer, and track each grant using the Funding Opportunity object. Funding opportunity records can include a description of the grant, application instructions, application deadlines, and when the grant starts and ends. Also, create budget templates for grant seekers who are applying for opportunities.

On an Experience Cloud site, you can publish funding opportunities for applicants to review and apply. Using Omnistudio, Flexcard, Flow Builder, and other provided tools you can build complex grant application forms with multiple sections.

Manage the Pre-Award Phase

The pre-award phase is when you accept applications. In Grantmaking, applications are tracked from start to finish using the Individual Application object.

The Individual Application object is used by several different Salesforce solutions. See Grantmaking Setup in Salesforce Help to make sure your individual applications are configured for Grantmaking.

On your Experience Cloud site, applicants can work on an application form over days or weeks to save applicants—and your staff—time and effort. You can make your forms multi-phase and guide applicants through the process. Plus, applicants can share specific sections of their applications with colleagues to collaborate. Both your staff and your applicants can save time with the complex forms.

We don’t cover Experience Cloud or the Grantmaking site template much in this module—instead, you learn about your work in Salesforce. Check out the Grantmaking Site Template for Experience Cloud module for more details.

Manage the Award Phase

In the award phase, it’s time to decide what project, program, or organization to fund.

The award phase starts with grant reviews and scoring. Use the Application Review object in Grantmaking to collect and track feedback from reviewers. Add fields and customize the object to fit your process and the information you collect. To ensure compliance at this step, standardize your processes using automation and tools like Action Plans, Document Checklists, and Approval Processes.

After reviewing and scoring is complete, use the Application Decision object to track whether an application is denied or awarded.

For applications that are awarded, use the Funding Award object to track the award, its amount, and its related budget. Funding awards become your single source of truth for the life of a grant. Track payments made as part of the award through Funding Disbursements, which can depend on Funding Award Requirements. For example, if your grant is paid in two installments, create two funding disbursements. The second disbursement can be dependent on a funding award requirement for a grantee to provide an interim report about their progress and spending at the project’s midpoint.

Manage the Post-Award Phase

Finally, money is with your grantees, who are busy working toward their goals.

But your work isn’t over. You have progress reports to review, budgets to update and reconcile, outcomes to monitor, and more. Grantmaking connects with Outcome Management objects, so grant recipients can outline and report on the impact of the grant they received through your Experience Cloud site. See Accelerate Impact with Outcome Management to learn more about tracking outcomes.

Funding award requirements and funding disbursements remain important during this phase. Use award requirements to track work on interim and final reports, site inspections, audits, and relate those activities to grant disbursements.

If the amount, scope, timeline, or something else changes for a grant, track the change using the Funding Award Amendment object.

Back to Budgets

Now that you learned more about Grantmaking and the entire grantmaking lifecycle, you can dive in deeper. In the next unit you learn about budgets in Grantmaking, with step-by-step details on how to create them.

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