Finding your peer group.
I recently returned from my first National Grants Managment Association conference, called AGT, the Annual Grants Training offers continuing education on all things grants. Less about research and writing proposals, as the associations name reflects, this conference content is more about “managing” grants. And…. I found ”my people!”, across many disciplines, higher education, non-profit, local, state and federal government, disaster relief, conservation and on and on. All sizes of staffing, from a one-person shop, like myself, to departments that included teams of grant professionals focused on writing, administering and financial management of awards. It was awesome, it was Grant Nerd Shangri-La!
Compliance is Key
A large part of the conference centered around over-all compliance. The opening keynote sessions were entitled “Grants Compliance: It Takes a (Very Large and Very Complicated) Village” offered by the Deputy Assistant Inspector General for Investigations at the US Department of Energy, and an update from the Deputy Controller for the Office of Mangement and Budget (OMB) on federal policy directives for grants, and a teaser on the upcoming 2 CFR 200 revisions that should be coming out in the next several months. I know you just can’t hardly contain your excitement as well, right?!!
Individual sessions ranged from indirect costs, data analysis, grant closeout, subaward management, ethics, internal controls, time and effort, exploring Uniform Guidance (UG) revisions, fraud prevention, emerging and potential uses for AI in grant development and award monitoring, risk assessment, and purpose driven grant administration. There were many more options than you could possibly attend, and I wished that I had been able to clone myself!
Global Take Aways
- There is so much to learn, and to continue to stay cognizant of, and NGMA is a great forum for doing just that. Grant Mangement is the nitty gritty of making sure that the creative ideas and opportunities we develop are executed properly, not just programmatically, but according to the specifications of the funder. It’s a two-way street, grantees want the funds to achieve, and funders provide the parameters within which that work can be accomplished.
- Guidelines can be complex and difficult to fully understand, yet this is critical to meeting compliance requirements. One of the funny and frequent responses when a question was asked regarding guidance was “It Depends.” The fact that there is universal understanding of this response indicates the level of complexity to both the guidelines themselves and the situations and questions that arise. Further, this understanding has reached the federal level and is driving a portion of the 2 CFR 200 revisions (Uniform Guidance) that were mentioned earlier. When I say complex, I’m not joking, the Uniform Guidance is currently 473 pages. The proposed revisions which hopefully will be available in a few months, are focused on attempts to reduce agency and recipient burden, as well as to be more inclusive of plain language to offer greater clarity and comprehension of compliance requirements.
- There continues to be room for growth and opportunity. One of the sessions that I attended that I enjoyed, and I felt hit home most with where my brain wants to go, was called “Purpose Driven Grant Administration”. Led by Rob Hogan, CFE, Director of Integrated Solutions, who works with governments and non-profits in the disaster recovery space, this session discussed implementing a purpose driven process and the progression that can offer organizations. His Grant Administration Maturity Model illustrates the progression from where many organizations begin (Initial – grant process is opportunistic and reactive, chasing dollars) along maturity milestones to where they can grow (Optimized – high-functioning grants administration tied to strategic initiatives). As my knowledge continues to grow, with study and intention, I look forward to working with grant champions in our academic, workforce and student services areas as well as finance and human resources, to grow along the maturity model and allow VWCC to continue to design and implement successful initiatives for our students and the college.
More to come…..
Stay tuned for further exploration of the ever-evolving important facets of grant management and how continued focus and attention to these developments can assist us in securing and creating powerful opportunities at Virgina Western!
Thank you for all that you do!
Shelley
Shelley Lyons
Administrative Officer for Grants Administration
Fishburn Hall, F204
540-857-6084
slyons@virigniawestern.edu
Shelley Lyons is glad to be back on campus as she is a Virginia Western alum, and has served as the Administrative Officer for Grants Administration at Virginia Western since early 2022. Prior to VWCC, her career focus was within the Human Services and Arts fields. She wrote her first grant in 1996 on a whim and has continued to plan and learn since that time. She most enjoys seeing a well-planned project come to fruition, where funder, project manager and beneficiaries can all feel success and see impact.