Multi-Year Grants

Candace Krell · February 2022

Do any other grantmakers provide multi-year grants? If so can you provide some insight on how you process those in BBGM and how you track them to eliminate confusion during data pulls. For example, if a grant was approved in 2022, do you split the request into two payments (one in 2022 and one in 2023) or do you renew the original request for the second year and process the payment in the renewal request? We are trying to find the most efficient way to process these but they are proving tricky.

Thanks!

Justin Finighan · February 2022

Most of the foundations we work with manage multi-year grants as a single grant, with multiple payments scheduled throughout the life of the grant.

Managing this when analysing data can be tricky. It comes down to the question you are asking of the data. What do you really need to know?

When multi-year grants are present in your data, the question “How much did we grant in 2021” can be interpreted in different ways. A precise framing of the question may be “How much did we commit to in 2021”, whereas you may want to know “How much did we pay grantees in 2021”. The first will use the Granted Amount from the Request data, and the second will use the Payment Amount from the payment data.

It would be possible for you to make a number of large, three-year grants in 2021 that because of the forward commitments leave you no money to grant in 2022 and 2023. Using Grant Amount, the analysis of the data would show you made a very large commitment in 2021, but no commitment at all in 2022 and 2023. But in fact, you are still “granting” in those years, but only paying out existing commitments.

Many foundations managing multi-year data will present both the payments and amount granted analysis together, because that is the only way to give the full picture.

Hope that helps.

Paula Lentoni · February 2022

We too typically manage it as a single grant with multiple payments. As Justin said, you just have to know what you are really looking for when you run a search.

Candace Krell · February 2022

Justin,

Thank you for breaking it down for us. Much appreciated!

Candace Krell · February 2022

Thank you, Paula!

Nancy Carroll · March 2022

Multi Year Grants

I believe you schedule your payments at the time the grant is approved. That will stay in the system until your payment is made and recorded. Reports can be run to track and reminders set for payments.

Multi-Year Grants

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