Multi-Year Grants

PennyHalstead

How do other funders handle reporting for multi-year grants? Do you ask for a final report only when the project is finished? We have a multi-year grant commitment from 2019 that, due to COVID, had delays in the project implementation and it has not even been started yet. The project deadline is 2026, but the final report deadline was set for June 2023 because the assumption was the project would have made significant progress by that time and our funds would have been spent. Has anyone else run into a similar situation?

DeborahMueller

Hi @PennyHalstead,

We started making multi-year grants in 2021. Currently, we only do them for a maximum 2-year stretch, so all of our grants are either one-time or 2-yr. I assign a Final Report follow up form for all one-time grants (due 13 months after we send the grant funds) when processing them, and an Interim Report follow up form for the 2-yr grants (due 11 months after we send the grant funds). When the 2-yr grants submit their interim report, a program manager reviews it and (usually) approves the 2nd payment. At that point, I assign the Final Report form (due 13 months from when the 2nd payment is sent). This has generally worked well for us, but it's the exceptions that really gum up the works and I'm still trying to figure out the best way to handle those. Usually the issue is that a grantee submits their final report but haven't expended all the grant funds, so in effect it's an interim report and I need to have them submit a final final report once they've expended all funds. But GLM only allows a follow up to be assigned once per Request record. I've solved it various ways, but none are very satisfactory. I'm considering adding a question at the top of the Final Report follow up form "Have all grant funds been expended?" with branching logic that only allows the body of the form to be displayed if the answer is Yes; if No, display a message to contact me. When they contact me, I will have them email me a brief update on the project that I attach to the Documents tab for the grant, and negotiate a new due date for the final report based on when they think they'll have expended the funds. We recently had an issue with an interim report - the grantee had only just begun the work by the time the Interim Report was due, but submitted the form anyway (rather than reaching out and asking for an extension). I think I might add a similar question to the Interim Report follow up form as well.