Reporting on an award

Winning the grant is not the end of the paperwork. Most funders want a progress report partway through and a final report at the end, and those reports are where organizations lose whole afternoons. Reporting keeps the schedule, holds what happened during the award, and writes a first draft of each report for you to check and finish.

Setting it up when you win

When you mark a submission Won in the Submission Library and enter the award date, a box appears: Track reporting for this award. It starts ticked, with two reports scheduled:

• a 6-month progress report, and
• a 12-month final report.

Leave it ticked and save, and both reports appear on the Reporting tab. Untick it if this funder needs no reports.

Not every funder works on six and twelve months. Click Change dates under the box to change a due date, remove a report, or add more (a report at the end of each year of a three-year grant, for example) before you save. Later, open the award from the Reporting tab and use Edit schedule.

The Reporting tab

The Reporting tab lists every report you are tracking, with its funder, when the award was made, when it is due and where it stands. Search by award, funder or project, organize the list by funder, award year or project, and sort it by due date, award date or funder; by due date, the reports still to send come first. Won awards from the past year that you are not reporting on yet are listed below, and a search finds older ones. Open report takes you to the report itself; the award behind it holds its schedule and its data folder. When a report has gone to the funder, Mark submitted records it.

Stop tracking takes an award’s reports off the tab without losing anything. Resume reporting brings them back as they were.

Gathering what happened

Each award has a Data folder for this report (for these reports when the award has more than one): what actually happened during the grant period. This is what the report is written from, so it is worth filling as you go rather than the week the report is due.

You can add:

• Notes, for anything someone can say in a few sentences (“the spring cohort started three weeks late because the venue fell through”).
• Files: Word documents, PDFs and spreadsheets. Spreadsheets are read as tables, so a budget-to-actuals sheet works well.
• Photos and screenshots, with a caption. PowerGrant copies out the text and tables in an image as you add it, so a screenshot of a spreadsheet or an email works. It never describes a picture, so say in the caption what a photo shows.

Tag each one Program, Finance, Funder requirements or Other, so the right material reaches the right part of the report.

The report itself

A report opens as a list of items, the questions funders usually ask: the activities you completed, progress toward each goal, outputs and the people served, the budget and what you spent, stories, challenges, and what you learned. Items marked If applicable can be set to Not applicable when they do not apply. Remove takes off any item your funder does not ask for; Show removed, at the bottom, lists it with Restore to bring it back. If your funder asks for something extra, Add an item and give it a title, or click Suggest items from the funder’s requirements: PowerGrant reads the reporting requirements saved with the submission and lists what the funder asks for that the report does not cover yet. Tick the ones you want and add them.

Every report opens with the fundraising contact for the award. Click Find it in the proposal and PowerGrant reads the submission for the person it names and fills in their name, title, email and phone; check them, then Save. Or Type it in. An admin can also set one contact in Settings for every award that has none of its own.

Seeing what your data can answer

When you open a report, PowerGrant reads everything in the data folder once and marks each item. While it reads, the report is greyed out with a note in the middle of the screen. This takes from a few seconds to about two minutes, longer when the folder holds long documents, and the report opens as soon as the marks are in. The arrow at the top left, back to the award, works the whole time.

When you add items with the report open, PowerGrant waits until you have stopped for about half a minute, then reads the folder again once.

• Ready: the data answers it, and an empty item says there is enough to write its first draft.
• Partly: the data answers some of it. The item says what to add.
• Needs data: nothing yet. The item says what would answer it.

A line at the top sums it up, for example “7 of 11 items ready. 3 need data from Programming, 1 from Finance.” That is your list of who to ask.

An item marked Partly or Needs data shows a yellow box saying what to add, for example “Please add figures on the number of households served to this report’s data folder or directly into this text box.” Add it to the folder, or type it straight into the item. Click Dismiss once you have read it. The item cannot be marked Complete until you do.

If you add to the data folder later, the report checks again the next time you open it, or click Check again.

Asking someone for what is missing

Each award lists its People on this award: Principal investigator, Development, Program, Project manager and Finance. One person can hold several roles. An admin, or whoever set up the reporting, sets them on the award’s page. A role says whom to ask. It does not limit who can see or edit the report.

When an item needs data, its yellow box offers Request data, addressed to whoever holds that item’s role. The line at the top offers the same for each person, covering all of their items in one request. Choose who to ask, edit the note, add a date if you need it by one, and send. They get one email and a notification in PowerGrant, and the item shows who you asked and when.

The person you asked opens the award with your request pinned at the top of its data folder. Whatever they add from there answers it, and you are notified. If they do not have it, they can Reply instead. Once every item the request covers is ready, it closes itself. You can also close it yourself. Removing a report, or changing its kind, closes a request whose items went with it; whatever was already added stays in the data folder.

With nobody else on the award there is no Request data: add someone under People on this award first. Only members of your organization can be asked, so invite anyone else first.

Comments on an item

Every item has a Comment button. A comment starts a thread on that item, and anyone in your organization can Reply to it. A comment reaches the person who holds the item’s role (Program for the activities, Finance for the budget) and everyone already in the thread.

Resolve puts a thread away once it is dealt with; Show resolved brings it back, and Reopen opens it again. You can edit your own comments.

Comments are for the people working on the report. PowerGrant does not read them when it writes or refines an item.

Notifications

The bell at the top of the page shows requests waiting on you, which stay at the top until you answer them, answers to the requests you sent, and comments that reach you. Opening it marks them read, and opening a comment takes you to its thread.

Writing the first draft

Write the first draft writes every empty item from three things: this award’s data folder, your organization’s verified facts, and the application you submitted. Each item is written only from the parts of the data that answer it, and an item marked Needs data is left empty with its note, except the activities, outputs and goals, which start from your application. It does not use your knowledge base documents, which describe your organization in general rather than what happened during this award.

What to expect:

• Activities and outputs start from your application. Each one lists what you planned. Anything in your data folder that confirms it is written from the data. Anything it does not mention yet is written as done and highlighted, so you confirm it happened or change it.
• Progress toward goals is one line per goal from the application: the goal in a few words, then the figure that shows how far you have come against its target, or that nothing has been reported yet.
• What went as planned, lessons learned, the challenges, stories and any request for further funding are written only from what someone on your team wrote in the data folder. PowerGrant will not work them out from figures. If no one has written them yet, the item stays empty.
• An empty item says what is missing, so you know what to add or whom to ask.
• Highlights mark anything to check: a figure PowerGrant calculated, a figure that differs from one of your verified facts, or a claim it could not find in anything you gave it.

Checking and finishing each item

Type into any item to change it. Undo puts back the text it had before the last change.

• Refine rewrites one item the way you ask (“shorter”, “lead with the reading gains”). It cannot add facts that are not in your data.
• Write again writes the item afresh. If there is still nothing to write from, your existing text stays.
• This is correct clears a highlight once you have checked it.
• Complete marks an item done. It is available once the item has text, no highlights left, and no undismissed note about missing data. A completed item cannot be edited until you untick it.

When the report reads right, the copy button at the top of the report (Copy report) puts the whole thing on your clipboard to paste into Word, Google Docs or the funder’s portal.

Frequently asked

Does writing a report use grant credits? No. Report drafts and the check of your data folder count toward the daily AI limit like everything else, but they do not use credits.

Can PowerGrant read a screenshot of a table? Yes. When you add an image, PowerGrant copies out its text and tables, and the report uses them as it would a document’s. Open the image to check what was read, and click Edit to correct it. For an image added earlier, open it and click Read the text in it.

Who can work on a report? Anyone in your organization can add to the data folder and edit any item. The roles under People on this award decide whom a request goes to, not who can see or change the report.

What happens to the reporting if I delete the submission? It goes with it: every report, everything written in them, and all reporting data and files. The delete confirmation names the reports before anything is removed. If you only want the reports off the Reporting tab, use Stop tracking instead.