The Complete Guide to Grant Management

Grant management refers to the end-to-end process of overseeing grants from application through to impact, and AI-powered solutions like Plinth are transforming how funders manage this full cycle. Everything you need to know about Grant Management is covered in this comprehensive guide.

What you'll learn: What grant management is and why full-cycle grant management is crucial for effective philanthropy.

Key challenges: The biggest hurdles grantmakers face (compliance, resource constraints, measuring impact) and how AI for funders can help solve them.

AI in action: How Plinth's end-to-end grant software works step-by-step – from automated due diligence to drafting feedback and impact reports.

What is Grant Management?

Grant management is the comprehensive process of overseeing all stages of a grant's lifecycle, from identifying potential recipients and awarding funds to tracking progress and reporting outcomes, while ensuring compliance with requirements.

Pre-Award Phase: Setting grant objectives and eligibility criteria, publishing guidelines, collecting applications via online portals, and screening or evaluating proposals.

Award Phase: Selecting grantees, communicating results to all applicants, issuing formal grant agreements, and disbursing funds according to agreed terms and conditions.

Post-Award Phase: Monitoring each grantee's progress, ensuring all grant terms are met, and evaluating and reporting on the project's impact before closing out the grant.

Ongoing Oversight: Maintaining proper documentation and oversight at every stage to ensure accountability and regulatory compliance.

Grantmakers must coordinate all these phases while keeping stakeholders informed and making adjustments as needed to achieve the grant's objectives.

The Challenges Grantmakers Face

Grantmakers commonly encounter significant challenges like extensive compliance paperwork, limited staff capacity, and difficulty measuring long-term impact across their funding programmes.

Complex Compliance & Reporting: Each grant comes with unique rules, deadlines, and documentation requirements that demand significant administrative effort across dozens or hundreds of grantees.

Limited Resources: Many foundations operate with small teams and tight budgets for grant administration, making it hard to efficiently manage every application, review, and report.

Measuring Impact: It's challenging to quantify a grant's true societal impact, as important outcomes may only become apparent long after the grant period ends, even with available data.

Manual Processes: Relying on spreadsheets and email to manage grants becomes unsustainable as programmes grow, leading to errors, version-control issues, and lack of real-time visibility.

These challenges create bottlenecks that prevent grantmakers from focusing on strategic decision-making and maximising their philanthropic impact.

Why We Built Plinth

We built Plinth as an AI-driven grant management platform to tackle these challenges – cutting tedious paperwork, improving transparency into impact, and making the grantmaking process more accessible for all organisations. Plinth is the best AI powered Grant Management System on the market, designed specifically to address the unique needs of modern funders.

Reduce Administrative Work: Automate labor-intensive steps like initial application triage, financial checks, and due diligence to dramatically cut the time staff spend on paperwork and data entry.

Highlight True Impact: Use data analysis and AI to shine a light on the outcomes charities achieve by summarizing reports to extract results, so funders can clearly see and communicate the impact of each grant.

Increase Accessibility: Streamline the end-to-end workflow so that organisations of all sizes and backgrounds can manage grants effectively, levelling the playing field for smaller funders.

This results in a faster, more transparent grantmaking cycle, freeing up staff to focus on strategic initiatives and relationship-building instead of paperwork.

Key Features and Benefits

Automated Due Diligence

Plinth's AI performs automated due diligence on grant applicants, quickly vetting each application for compliance issues or risks that used to require onerous manual checks.

Document Scanning: Scans submitted policies, financial statements, and governing documents to spot any red flags or missing information that could indicate compliance issues.

Credential Verification: Verifies the applicant's credentials against official registers, confirming charity status via the Charity Commission or checking company registration via Companies House.

Risk Assessment: Crawls news sources and public records to identify potential reputational risks associated with the applicant that might affect grant decisions.

Time Savings: Completes these due diligence reviews in a fraction of the time a manual process would take – often reducing a 2–3 hour review to about 20–30 minutes with AI. Plinth has cut assessment due diligence time by over 50% for clients, dramatically improving efficiency across their grant programmes.

By automating the vetting process, Plinth ensures that no critical compliance issue is overlooked without your team having to spend hours on paperwork.

Feedback Drafting

Plinth streamlines the application assessment process and automatically drafts personalised feedback for each applicant, ensuring thorough reviews and communication with minimal extra effort.

Evidence Highlighting: Highlights key evidence from each proposal based on your evaluation criteria, making it easier for reviewers to assess alignment with strategic priorities.

Eligibility Filtering: Checks eligibility filters such as project theme, location, organization type, or budget limits to flag applications that don't meet the funding criteria.

Personalized Feedback: Drafts an individualized feedback summary for every application – so even declined applicants receive specific, constructive feedback without adding work for your team.

Efficiency Gains: A small grants team can handle a large volume of applications with AI assistance – one staff member can now manage what might previously have required a committee of 3–5 reviewers.

This feature ensures that every applicant receives thoughtful, specific feedback while dramatically reducing the administrative burden on your team.

AI-Powered Impact Reports

Plinth's platform helps funders analyse and report on the outcomes of their grants, automatically turning raw data into meaningful impact insights that enable deeper understanding of your grantmaking.

Case Study Generation: Generates narrative case studies directly from grantee progress reports, so you can easily showcase success stories and lessons learned from funded projects.

Trend Analysis: Compares final reports to original applications to identify trends, highlighting which projects met or exceeded their goals and what factors influenced outcomes.

Portfolio Reporting: Produces tailored impact reports for entire programmes or funding portfolios on demand, giving your stakeholders a clear, up-to-date view of overall results across all your grants.

Strategic Insights: Helps grantmakers quickly spot what's working and what's not across their portfolio, easily demonstrating the value of their grants without manually crunching numbers.

This feature transforms raw data into actionable insights that help funders maximize their impact and communicate value to stakeholders.

How Plinth Works

Plinth's AI platform removes the painful work from every stage of the grantmaking process through a streamlined, intelligent workflow that maximises efficiency and accuracy.

Application Intake: Collect applications through Plinth's online portal or import them from your existing system, with all submissions stored in one centralised dashboard for easy tracking and collaboration.

Automated Due Diligence: As applications come in, Plinth automatically conducts due diligence checks including document verification and compliance screening, flagging any issues for your review.

Intelligent Assessment: Plinth organises and analyses each proposal, highlighting key information and scoring criteria alignment while providing AI-driven insights such as risk alerts or application strengths.

Feedback Generation: For each decision, Plinth's AI drafts a customised feedback message – approved grants get summary notes for grant agreements, while declined proposals receive thoughtful, specific feedback.

Impact Reporting: As grantees carry out their projects, Plinth helps aggregate their reports and data, automatically generating impact summaries or full reports for your programme.

This end-to-end workflow ensures that no step is missed while dramatically reducing the time and effort required to manage grants effectively.

Who Should Use Grant Management Software

Grant management software is valuable for any organization that awards or tracks grants, especially for charitable foundations, nonprofits, and other grantmaking entities that need to streamline their processes.

Foundations: Private or family foundations can manage formal grant programmes efficiently while ensuring due diligence and transparency across all their funding activities.

Charities and Nonprofits: Organisations that re-grant funds can organise incoming grants or sub-grants, track compliance requirements, and report back to funders with greater efficiency.

Corporate Giving Programmes: CSR teams can run company-sponsored grant initiatives or community awards with fewer resources and better alignment to business goals.

Community Foundations & Public Agencies: These organisations can handle local grant distributions or government funding programmes with proper oversight and record-keeping.

Philanthropists: Individual donors or donor-advised fund managers can streamline the process of evaluating funding requests and monitoring the impact of their donations.

Regardless of size or focus, any organization managing grants can benefit from the efficiency, transparency, and compliance features that modern grant management software provides.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is grant management software?

Grant management software is a digital platform designed to organise and streamline all the tasks involved in managing grants from application through impact reporting.

Centralised Management: These systems centralise your grant data and workflows including tracking applications, budgets, deadlines, and reports in one accessible location.

Automation Benefits: By automating manual work and reducing errors, a grant management system helps funders and nonprofits manage the entire grant lifecycle more efficiently.

Workflow Optimisation: The software streamlines processes like application review, due diligence, payment tracking, and impact measurement that would otherwise require multiple disconnected tools.

Grant management software transforms scattered, manual processes into an organised, efficient system that saves time and improves outcomes.

How can AI improve the grantmaking process?

Artificial intelligence can significantly enhance grantmaking by automating routine tasks, analyzing large volumes of information, and providing decision-support insights that improve efficiency.

Task Automation: AI streamlines grant processes by handling repetitive tasks like document review, eligibility checking, and report generation that traditionally consume significant staff time.

Data Analysis: AI tools can quickly summarize lengthy applications, flag potential risks or non-compliance issues, and identify patterns across large numbers of applications.

Decision Support: By providing insights and recommendations, AI helps funders make better decisions while maintaining human oversight for critical funding choices.

AI transforms grantmaking from a paperwork-heavy process into a strategic, data-driven activity that maximizes impact while minimizing administrative burden.

Is an AI-based grant platform like Plinth secure and ethical?

Yes – a reputable AI grant platform prioritizes data security and ethical use through multiple layers of protection and responsible AI practices.

Data Security: Plinth stores all information securely with encryption in the EU and does not use your data to train its AI models, ensuring complete privacy and confidentiality.

Human Oversight: The system follows a strict "human-in-the-loop" approach where AI outputs are treated as suggestions, and a human grants officer always makes the final decision on approvals.

Ethical AI Use: AI is used responsibly as a tool to assist human judgment rather than replace it, ensuring that sensitive grant data remains protected and decisions remain human-centered.

This approach ensures that AI enhances human capabilities while maintaining the highest standards of security, privacy, and ethical decision-making.

Will AI replace human decision-making in grantmaking?

No. AI in grantmaking is designed to augment human decision-making, not replace it, by handling data-heavy tasks while preserving human judgment for critical funding decisions.

Task Automation: AI can handle data-heavy tasks like due diligence checks, document analysis, and generating draft reports that would otherwise consume significant human time.

Human Decision-Making: Critical funding decisions remain with humans, as AI provides recommendations and insights that human grantmakers review and evaluate.

Collaborative Approach: Platforms like Plinth are built so that AI provides assistance while human experts maintain oversight and ensure each grant aligns with the organisation's mission and values.

This collaborative approach increases efficiency and consistency while maintaining the human expertise and judgment that are essential to effective philanthropy.

Can small organisations benefit from grant management software?

Absolutely. Grant management software isn't just for large foundations – even small charities or community foundations can gain significant benefits from implementing these tools.

Resource Optimization: When staff and resources are limited, using a centralized system can save time and prevent important tasks from slipping through the cracks.

Automation Benefits: Automation of reminders, document tracking, and reporting means a one- or two-person team can successfully handle responsibilities that would be overwhelming manually.

Scalability: The right software helps smaller organisations punch above their weight in managing grants, allowing them to be as diligent and efficient as larger grantmakers.

Small organisations can achieve the same level of grant management sophistication as larger foundations, maximising their impact regardless of team size.

Conclusion & Call to Action

Effective grant management is essential for maximising the impact of philanthropic funding, and modern AI-powered tools are making it easier than ever to achieve this goal.

Proven Results: Plinth's AI-driven approach has already helped community foundations and over 1,500 charities and private foundations drastically improve their grantmaking efficiency.

Comprehensive Benefits: By leveraging a full-cycle grant management solution like Plinth, grantmakers can save time on administration, improve compliance, and gain deeper insights into their outcomes.

Strategic Advantage: These tools represent an investment that pays off in saved time, better decisions, and ultimately greater impact across all grant programmes.

For organisations looking to modernise their grantmaking, adopting AI-powered grant management tools is no longer optional – it's essential for staying competitive and maximising philanthropic impact.

Ready to transform your grantmaking process? Book a demo of Plinth to see how our AI-driven platform can streamline your end-to-end grant management and help you fund more effectively.

Recommended Next Pages

• Best Free Grant Management Tools – A roundup of free or open-source grant management software options for organisations on a tight budget.

• How to Automate Due Diligence in Grantmaking – Tips and tools for streamlining grantee due diligence checks using technology and pitfalls to avoid.

• AI for Funders: The Future of Grantmaking – An in-depth look at how artificial intelligence is changing the way foundations and philanthropists allocate funds.

• Full-Cycle Grant Management Explained – A detailed guide to managing grants from pre-award to post-award, with best practices at each stage.

• End-to-End Grant Software: Key Features to Look For – What to consider when evaluating comprehensive grant management systems that cover the entire process.

• Grant Management Best Practices for Nonprofits and Foundations – Expert recommendations to improve efficiency and compliance in your grant programmes.

• Measuring Grant Impact: Strategies for Funders – How to track outcomes and report the impact of grants, including tools for data collection and analysis.

• Top Grant Management Software in 2025 (Comparison Guide) – A comparison of leading grant management platforms on the market, to help you choose the right solution.

Last updated: August 2025

For more information about implementing AI grant management in your organization, contact our team or schedule a demo.