Making Grant Management Practical

The Nonprofit Exchange: Leadership Tools & Strategies

Making Grant Management Practical with Grant and Contract Management Expert Ansley Fender

Grant management costs an average of 20% of grant funding, which means that a pretty significant amount of funding is going to overhead rather than programs and services. A lot of nonprofits end up having to hire more people just to manage their grants, which further cuts into the funding. This is crazy considering how much of a public good nonprofits provide to society. COVID, for example, highlighted the fact that when the private sector is shutting down and the public sector can't move fast enough, the nonprofit sector steps it up. Because grant management software like Blackbaud is so expensive, a lot of grant managers have tried to force accounting software like Quickbooks to do grant management, which it was never intended to do. The result is messy books that are moderately ok for grant management but terrible for internal and Board management. The other option is spreadsheets, which require so much additional work and are shockingly easy to break. Atlas' mission is to support the mission of grant-funded and grant-seeking nonprofits by streamlining and automating their grant management so they can recapture the 20% lost to traditional grant management. We exist because they do.

Ansley Fender's entrepreneurial journey began when she was pregnant with her second child. Despite being at a critical juncture in her life, she took a leap of faith and quit her job to start her own business. The concept for Atlas was born while Ansley was doing bookkeeping for nonprofits. She saw that as much as 30% of grant funding was going into administrative costs. Not only that, but the assistants handling those duties were being overworked. Atlas’ software helps lighten the load by scouring databases to match funders with funding recipients. On the days that being a startup founder is especially difficult, Ansley gets inspiration from her two fearless little girls.

More about Ansley's work at https://www.getatlassolutions.com/

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