Grants are substantial portfolios of work. And when they are managed within an organisation they involve huge amounts of time, energy and resources.
This time goes into finding grants, checking eligibility criteria, submitting applications, tracking, acquitting and ensuring funds have been spent.
Every Council applies for grant funding and yet 86%of Councils have no integrated SaaS technology for full compliance tracking of grant funding and delivery of projects and contract asset realisation.
Many Councils are in the position where they rely heavily on grants to deliver projects and initiatives that support and grow the community, and as such they need to make the most of every dollar raised.
“Regardless of the size of the grants and funded programs, the introduction of SurePact’s Grant Management System within Councils can support Local Government processes and allow for them to receive timely information,” SurePact Founder and CEO Megan Avard says.
The SurePact system manages the application process to ensure time efficiencies and transparent support for governance and compliance.
“Without integrating SurePact into their businesses, Councils rely on managing grants in silos, with different departments managing their own grants. There is a missed opportunity here to see the bigger picture in more than just a financial report,” Megan says.
“This can also hinder grant reporting, meaning no information goes back to Council about where and when grants are coming in and at what stage they are in the submission status.
“The SurePact Grant Management System ensures Councils gain a better picture of their grant programs helping them to report back to Leadership Teams and the Council more generally. This provides a demonstration of current and future grants the Councils are applying for as well as ensuring eligibility and approval processes strengthen governance steps.”
Using SurePact with ease
Part of the beauty of SurePact is its ease of integration with Councils, such as The Shire of Morawa, which gained full visibility of all its grant applications in less than three months.
“SurePact allows grants to be really quickly loaded onto the system, and in many cases are done so much faster than anticipated by Council workers,” Megan says.
“We’ve put a lot of energy into ensuring that SurePact’s Grant Management System is very intuitive, is really easy to use and very user-friendly.”
The benefits to Councils are many when using SurePact to track and manage grants.
“SurePact allows for the tracking of grants and managing them in terms of compliance and analysing through the software. It is easy to see why grant applications were successful or not and where the gaps are in projects,” she says.
“By using SurePact, Councils can identify any gaps in their grant strategies and adjust their paths accordingly.”
One of the main benefits that Councils acknowledge from utilising SurePact is the reporting abilities.
“Grants can be tracked before, during and after the project, and acquittal processes are quite seamlessly performed through SurePact,” Megan says.
“Reports are created on SurePact and can be presented to the Council to communicate the status of the grant, how much money has been applied for and how much money was successfully acquired.
“Prior to using SurePact many Councils relied on spreadsheets resulting in limits to tracking, reporting, readability and accessibility that is not on par with what SurePact can offer.
“We pride ourselves on making Council jobs more efficient and grant processes easier through the SurePact Grant Management software.”
