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Why is it important to track your grants, as an artist or as an organization?
October 2, 2024
Tracking grants is crucial for artists and organizations to ensure accountability, maximize funding opportunities, and maintain accurate financial records, which are essential for future applications and compliance with donor requirements.
There is a lot more to a grant than writing a narrative and getting a check. There are a lot of moving parts to monitor, even for small grants!
Key elements you’ll need to know (and track) for most grants are:
Grant program open date - Most grants will open around the same time each year. Even if the granting body (EX: private foundation or local government office) hasn’t announced this year’s grant cycle, look at the past 1-3 years of the same grant and see if it is announced around the same time each year. Use this time or year or month as a placeholder in your grant tracker.
Grant program close date (including time and time zone!) - Keep a close eye on the grant close date along with the time the grant closes and the time zone. Ideally you won’t be submitting your grant at the last minute, but it's still good to know the final deadline.
Grant contract due date - This is the date you need to return your signed grant contract. This will happen after an award is determined and will be a dependency on you receiving that grant money!
Award period - Typically, grants have a very specific time period they will fund. Make sure your project falls within these dates to avoid your award being revoked.
Final report date - Almost all grants will require you to submit some form of final report. This lets the granting body know how your project went and how you ultimately ended up using the funds. Not submitting this on time will hurt your chances of being awarded future grants.
Active Grant Tracking
The free way to track grants is with Google Sheets. It's not the best way, but when maintained can be very effective and can be an easy way to communicate due dates with your staff. There will probably be many moving parts to your grant (budget, project overview, etc.) so keeping your fellow staff members in the loop of upcoming grant cycles is important!
Take a look at our sample grant tracker. It will give you a better idea of what you will need to track regarding grants.
Grant Programs - Typically annual, these are recurring grants. Grant programs can be tracked on Tab 1 of the sample grant tracker. Keeping tabs on what grant cycles might be open is different than keeping tabs on what grants you are actively writing or have submitted.
Submissions - Use the second tab to keep track of what grants you are writing, have submitted, AND their outcome (accepted or declined). This can help you see your progress year over year.
Awarded Grants - This tab will help you track your follow-up grant activities after you’ve won.
It’s a lot to keep track of!! We also highly recommend keeping key dates in your online calendar of choice.
Happy tracking!
