Grant Report Template for Nonprofits

Your reporting obligations live in the signed agreement, its attachments and any reporting guidance sent separately. Reread them before copying last year's report, since terms can change at renewal. For each grant, note:

• Each report due, including the final one, with its period and due date
• The format: the funder's form or portal, and any length limits
• Each objective and target, in the agreement's own words
• Each indicator, with the funder's definition copied word for word
• Which changes need the funder's approval first

For US federal grants, the Uniform Guidance (the federal grant rules) sets the latest due dates. Financial reports are due within 30 days after a quarterly or semiannual period ends, 90 days after an annual one and 120 days after the award ends¹. Performance reports run on the same clock².

Your award can set earlier dates, and foundations and state-funded contracts set their own. If your federal money passes through a state agency or another nonprofit, final reports are due to them within 90 days of the award's end. Keep every due date in one calendar.

Funders rarely define people served the same way. One counts anyone you had contact with, another only people with a billable visit, a third households, a fourth only those who finished a course. For the same quarter, every one of those figures can be correct.

Some federal programs set their counting rules in regulation. In federal workforce programs, someone who only uses a job center's self-service resources counts as a reportable individual but not a participant³. An adult education student becomes a participant only after 12 contact hours.

In a 2013 Urban Institute survey of nonprofits with government grants and contracts, 71% named funders' different reporting formats as a problem⁴. The researchers also noted that differing interpretations of terms can affect the accuracy of the data nonprofits report.

So copy each definition word for word. Beside it, write the exact rule in your records that produces it, such as "distinct client IDs with a billable visit dated in the period." Close the period's data, then run every rule at once. Each figure comes out the same way every quarter, whoever runs it.

Use the funder's form and headings when it supplies them. When it doesn't, follow the objectives in the agreement, in the same order and words. A program officer reads for what they funded, and an objective under a different heading can read as missing.

Under each objective, lead with the numbers: target, actual and last period. Then say what happened and, if you fell short, why. Federal rules ask for much the same: performance reports should compare accomplishments with the award's objectives, explain goals not met and analyze cost overruns or higher-than-expected unit costs².

Close each objective with what the figure leaves out, such as people who benefited without finishing. If a funder asks for something your records can't produce, say so and offer what you can measure instead. A logic model that lists the data behind each indicator shows those gaps early.

Pick a threshold for what needs explaining, such as a 20% move or a figure under 90% of target, and apply it every period. Then name the cause. Four causes look alike in a table and mean very different things:

• A changed definition: the measure moved, not the program. Give the figure under both definitions.
• Data timing: late entries or an earlier data close.
• A real change: staffing, demand or delivery. Explain this one most fully.
• A wrong target: say what a realistic one is, and whether to formally revise it.

Explain results well above target too, since they can be counting quirks. On federal awards, don't wait for the report. You must notify your funder between reports² about problems or delays that will affect your objectives, along with a plan to correct them.

On federal awards, performance reporting must relate financial data and accomplishments to the award's goals and objectives². Do the same for every funder: show budget, spending and the difference, line by line, from the ledger your finance team closes. A grant budget in the funder's own categories makes this quick.

Quote a cost per person only with the definition that produced it. In the table above, the same $412,000 works out at $412 or $1,925 per person, depending on who is counted.

When several grants fund one program, add up the participants each grant claims as its own. In the template's example, six grants claim 106% of the people served, so 60 people appear in two funders' counts. That may be allowed, so check both agreements and record the answer rather than moving people between grants. Also note the share of cost no grant covers: 15.8% in the example.

Ask someone who didn't write the report to check every figure against its source, especially any number that appears in both the narrative and a table.

Before you rewrite a report for a second funder, ask whether they'll take the first. The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project, a funder-to-funder initiative, urges foundations to accept proposals and reports written for other funders⁶.

Keep the workings, not just the report: the rules you ran, the period's data extract and the file you sent. On federal awards, you must keep records, including statistical records, for three years from submitting the final financial report⁷. Keep them longer if an audit, claim or lawsuit started before then is unresolved.

Your objectives and targets started in the grant proposal, so keep it open as you write. To report to several funders from one set of records, open this template with Edit with AI. River copies each funder's definitions from your agreements, works out the figures from your data and flags any your records can't produce.