City Governments: Tips to Secure and Better Managing Grant Funding

In March of this year, United States President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA), a sweeping stimulus package that offered aid not just to individuals and corporations, but also $360 billion to state and local governments. While this money has come at a much needed time, it’s also highlighted the complexities associated with federal grants and stimulus programs for local governments. In particular, many municipal governments and small communities have little experience with federally-funded aid, and lack the systems to handle them. 

Outside of the most recent stimulus, government grants and other financial aid options are available to local governments on an ongoing basis, but few take full advantage. Federal grant funding is often not easy to get or to manage, due to strict requirements placed on the funding. Moreover, the grant applications themselves can be time-consuming and difficult to manage and once grant money is received, another challenge presents itself – carefully accounting for every dollar spent to ensure compliance with the federal government and the potential to qualify for future funding. 

To successfully lobby for – and manage – grant dollars requires thoughtful and purposeful strategic planning. 

Consider your organization’s specific needs

A good place to start is to review the goals that your organization has planned for the year ahead along with current budgets and all anticipated sources of funding and revenue. This helps to better see if there are gaps between projected operating experiences and income, and will help see how and where grant money can help fill those gaps. 

Another important thing to consider is timing. Both the application process and federal funding can take longer than expected. It is important to consider your resources when considering grant applications and ensure you have the proper personnel to help manage the application process and necessary follow up. 

Worth noting as well is the kind of reputation your organization has within the community and among your donors. Have you been able to demonstrate fiscal responsibility? Are your accounts in good standing? These factors can also weigh into a grant proposal, and can especially be helpful as supporting resources when seeking to make a claim for available grants. 

Understand how funding is allocated

One of the biggest challenges for municipalities taking advantage of grant funding is to keep track of how allotted monies are to be allocated. Oftentimes they are allowed for only very specific projects, and cannot be more than a certain percentage of the city’s overall budget.

If money is earmarked for the wrong purposes, if there is not a clear accounting for the funds and what they were spent on, or if they are not used in the specified time required, the federal government can demand repayment. To avoid that, create a clearly defined strategy that accounts for all specific requirements. 

Tap into the your state’s strategy to maximize benefit

Many cities focus only on their own priorities and overlook what is happening at the state and federal levels. The last thing you want is to compete unnecessarily with your state government for federal money, or seek to have a project funded that is already in progress through another agency. 

Take the time to coordinate with your counterparts in neighboring cities and towns, as well as at the state level. It could end up saving you a great deal of costs and unnecessary work.

Use technology to make the process easier

There are a myriad of ways in which you need to improve organization, communication, budgeting and other efforts when refining your grant strategy program and seeking to take advantage of new funding opportunities. It is vital that you utilize tools that can not only help you to better track and define your goals, but that can also collect important data to use when filling out forms, answering questions and providing transparent insights into your organization.

An ERP solution allows you to maximize any funds received and offers a pragmatic way to more efficiently track, monitor and report business activities to necessary stakeholders. The right ERP system not only tracks money spent, a critical feature for grant-related expenditures, but it also can help identify opportunities to cut costs or improve spending. 

StrategyBlocks works in tandem with existing ERP solutions to help map financial or operational activities to goals, helping you to more easily create a strategy for securing grant funding and map those efforts back to the department or your government’s broader vision and long term mission. Contact us today and let us show you how we can help bring your grant funding projects into focus.