Is your grant management up to speed with the new regulations?

Would it surprise you to know that even more changes have been slipped into 2CFR Part 200 than previously shown?

It’s true!

The grant management trends that we’ve talked about over the last year have accelerated dramatically and show no signs of slowing down.

Here are our top grant management trends for 2016!

Trend #1: More Accountability

The new regulations add additional accountability for grant recipients.

You could even argue that the monumental shift of responsibility onto Federal grant recipients is the most pivotal change in grant management in decades.

The new risk assessment provisions were expanded in July 2015 to raise the bar even higher with the additional requirements for risk and integrity.

These provisions affect grant recipients in both pre-award and post-award activities.

And not meeting the new risk and integrity requirements can have lasting effects.

A grant applicant who does not receive a Federal award for reasons of risk or integrity will be deemed to be ineligible for Federal awards. (§200.212)

What’s more that listing will be in the electronic Federal Awardee Performance and and Integrity Information System (FAPIIS) database for five years!

Trend #2: More Electronic Review

The DATA Act is changing the ways grant recipients collect and report results from their grants in the near future.

Increasingly, grant recipients will hear about required data elements that will come about through the implementation of the DATA Act.

This means considerable thought needs to go into how your information will be collected in the future to ensure you are able to comply with the new requirements that will be coming soon.

But the DATA Act is not just for grant recipients.

Additionally, Federal agencies will increase their review of grant recipients through OMB-designated repositories of government-wide data.

And if that is not enough, new analytical tools are coming online that will be at the disposal of Federal agencies to detect waste, fraud and abuse.

These tools will be looking for false claims in the application and and waste, fraud and abuse of Federal funds during the management of the award.

What does this have to do with data collection?

The more data collected, the more ways Federal agencies will have to look for waste, fraud and abuse in grant spending.

It’s the Transparency Act on steriods!

Trend #3: Less Understanding

The complexity of grant management is dramatically increasing with the new grant regulations.

Here are just a couple of examples:

• New risk assessment for both funding agencies and pass-through entities
• Expanded certification of costs requirements for officials able to legally bind the organization

The net results are that the penalties for messing up are more punitive and Federal agencies will have less understanding of grant mismanagement than ever before.

It starts with reviewing risk before awarding funding.

• In the past, often you didn’t get any serious review of your grant until much of the funding was already spent.

It continues by making it increasingly difficult for new applicants without a proven track record to get that first grant, and harder for applicants with audit findings and other issues to keep getting funding.

• Our research showed that over 1/3 of grant recipients has some form of audit findings, and often over multiple years.

And it covers the grant from start to finish with certifications that make senior officials at the organization potentially face harsh penalties included jail time for misstatements, and omissions of material facts.

• No more days of saying you aren’t involved in the day-to-day grant management of the program so you didn’t know things were going south…

Federal agencies are also being held accountable for recovering mismanaged funds from grant recipients.

Are you ready for the new world of grant management in 2016?

Ready to Improve Your Grant Management?

How about you?

Would you like to be a better grant manager?

We have another grant management training seminar coming soon.

Click here to get all the details!

Hope to see you there!

Author:

Lucy Morgan CPA, MBA

CEO, Compliance Warrior

Author of “Decoding Grant Management-The Ultimate Success Guide to the Federal Grant Regulations in 2 CFR Part 200” The 2nd Edition is now available on Amazon in Paperback and Kindle versions.