The award is not the finish line. It is the start of a four-year obligation.
Winning the grant is the part everyone celebrates. Administering it is where the money is actually kept or lost: in cost eligibility, time and effort documentation, subrecipient oversight, procurement files, and the reporting calendar that begins the day the notice of award arrives.
We manage federal and foundation awards after the check clears, for organizations that would rather not discover a problem during their single audit.
Start a Conversation Explore ServicesWhy awards go wrong after they are won
Almost none of it is fraud. It is documentation that was never built, obligations nobody was assigned, and a budget written to win rather than to administer.
Costs that were charged but cannot be defended
Federal cost principles require every charge to be allowable, allocable, reasonable, and adequately documented. Most disallowances are not improper purchases. They are legitimate expenses with a documentation trail that was assembled after the fact, allocations that no written methodology supports, or salary charged to an award without time and effort records that tie to it.
Money left on the table inside a funded award
Unspent funds returned at closeout, reimbursement requests never filed, program income unaccounted for, indirect cost recovered at a rate lower than the organization was entitled to claim, and cost share documented too loosely to count. An award can be fully compliant and still return real dollars that were available the entire time.
The gap between the proposal and the ledger
Budgets are built to be competitive and then handed to a finance team that had no part in writing them. Cost categories do not map to the chart of accounts. The subaward structure assumed in the narrative was never papered. Effort commitments made in the proposal exceed what key personnel can certify. That gap surfaces at the first report, not at award.
Award setup and compliance architecture
The first ninety days determine how the next four years go. This is the work that has to happen before the first expenditure, not after the first finding.
Terms interpretation and the compliance matrix
We read the notice of award against the agency general terms, program-specific supplementary terms, and the applicable federal cost and administrative requirements, then reduce it to a single compliance matrix: every obligation, its authority, its owner, its frequency, and its evidence. Requirements that conflict or are silent get flagged for a written agency clarification rather than an assumption.
Award calendar and submission workflow
Financial reports, performance reports, drawdown windows, prior approval lead times, registration renewals, and closeout milestones, placed on a calendar with internal review dates that sit far enough ahead of the deadline to matter. Each submission gets a checklist, a preparer, a reviewer, and an approver, so the review is a control rather than a courtesy.
Internal controls, policies, and segregation of duties
Written policies and procedures covering allowable costs, procurement, cash management, subrecipient monitoring, conflict of interest, and records retention, matched to an approval structure with real segregation between the person who incurs a cost, the person who approves it, and the person who reports it. Auditors test the control, not the intention.
Accounting structure and system alignment
Award funds have to be separately identifiable in the general ledger, at the level the budget was approved. We work with finance to align the chart of accounts, project and task coding, labor distribution, and reporting structure so that the financial report can be produced from the accounting system rather than reconstructed in a spreadsheet each period.
Registration and entity compliance
SAM.gov registration is not a one-time event and lapses are disqualifying mid-award. We track renewal windows, entity data accuracy, representations and certifications, and the supporting registrations a given program requires, along with the documentation that proves continuous compliance across the period of performance.
Readiness assessment and remediation roadmap
For organizations taking on their first large federal award, or their first as a prime rather than a subrecipient, we assess current systems, policies, staffing, and documentation practices against what the award actually requires, and deliver a prioritized roadmap rather than a list of deficiencies.
Financial administration and cost eligibility
The continuous work. Most of it is unglamorous, and all of it is what an audit examines.
Expenditure monitoring and cost review
Ongoing review of charges against the approved budget and the applicable cost principles, testing whether each is allowable under the program, allocable to the award, reasonable in amount, consistently treated, and supported by documentation that a reviewer who was not there can follow. Sampling where volume is high, full review where it is not.
Personnel costs, timekeeping, and effort
Salary is usually the largest line and the most frequently questioned. We review labor distribution, support timesheet and certification practice, reconcile charged effort to committed effort, and resolve discrepancies before they reach a financial report rather than after an auditor has found them.
Indirect costs and cost allocation
Selection and documentation of the indirect cost methodology, application of the correct base, treatment of program-specific caps and excluded costs, and a written allocation methodology for shared costs that holds up when tested. Where an organization has never negotiated a rate, we work through the options and what each one costs it.
Cost share, matching, and program income
Match commitments have to be tracked, valued, and documented to the same standard as federal dollars, and in-kind contributions have to be substantiated rather than asserted. Program income has to be identified, accounted for under the method the award specifies, and reported. Both are common findings and both are avoidable.
Drawdowns and reimbursement requests
Preparation and support of funding disbursement and reimbursement requests, including eligible cost calculation, reconciliation to the accounting records, documentation checklists, internal approval, and responses to agency questions. On reimbursable awards this is also a cash flow function, and timing it badly is expensive.
Budget revisions and prior approvals
Rebudgeting thresholds, changes in scope, changes in key personnel, no-cost extensions, and equipment purchases frequently require agency approval before the cost is incurred. We identify what requires prior approval, prepare the request, and track it to a written agency response, because verbal approval is not a record.
Reporting, subrecipients, and procurement
Three areas where the organization is answerable for work it does not directly perform.
Federal financial and performance reporting
Preparation, internal review, and submission of financial reports and technical or performance reports, in the agency systems the program requires, reconciled to the accounting records and to the prior period. We manage the data calls, the consolidation, the review cycle, and the agency follow-up questions that arrive afterward.
Agency coordination and the written record
Routine and ad hoc interaction with the program office and the grants management specialist, briefing materials, status updates, information requests, clarifications, and a documented record of every agency interpretation. An answer that changes how a requirement applies is worth nothing unless it exists in writing in the award file.
Subrecipient risk assessment and monitoring
Pass-through entities are accountable for their subrecipients. We handle the risk assessment, the required subaward terms and flow-down provisions, the monitoring plan scaled to assessed risk, data call schedules and templates, invoice and documentation review, single audit report follow-up, and resolution of subrecipient findings.
Procurement documentation and vendor files
Federally funded purchases carry their own competition, documentation, and vendor screening requirements, and the procurement file has to show the basis for the selection and the reasonableness of the price. We review procurement actions, invoices, payment documentation, and suspension and debarment screening, and build the file as the purchase happens rather than reconstructing it later.
Property, equipment, and inventory
Equipment purchased with award funds carries title conditions, use restrictions, inventory and physical count requirements, and disposition obligations that survive the period of performance. These are straightforward to maintain from the start and painful to reconstruct at closeout.
Data collection and reporting automation
Where reporting draws on multiple internal systems and several subrecipients, the bottleneck is usually assembly rather than analysis. We build the templates, the collection schedule, and as much of the pipeline as the existing systems support, so each reporting period is a repeatable process rather than a fire drill.
Audit readiness, closeout, and capacity
What the engagement is ultimately judged on, and what it leaves behind.
Single audit and audit readiness
Organizations expending above the federal threshold in a year require a single audit, and the schedule of expenditures of federal awards has to tie to the financial records. We organize the award files, test documentation readiness against what the auditor will request, prepare the schedules and supporting analysis, and make sure the answer to a sampling request is a file rather than a search.
Audit participation and corrective action
Participation in audit and agency monitoring meetings, coordination of responses, drafting of management responses to findings, and design and implementation of corrective action plans. A finding that is answered well and remediated visibly is a materially different outcome from one that is contested badly.
Closeout and final reporting
Final financial and performance reports, final drawdown, liquidation of obligations within the allowed window, resolution of unspent funds, equipment disposition, records retention setup, and the closeout package itself. Closeout is also the moment to capture what the next application should say, while the performance data is still in front of you.
Training and internal capability
Most organizations want to run their own awards and lack the reference points to do it confidently. We train finance, program, and executive staff on the requirements that actually apply to their awards, in their own systems and their own documents, so the capability stays after the engagement ends.
Fractional and transitional grant staffing
Where an award justifies dedicated administration but not a permanent hire, or where a position is vacant mid-award, we function as the grant management office: the named administrator, on a defined scope, with the reporting calendar and the agency relationship held by someone accountable for it.
Portfolio-level oversight
For organizations running several awards at once, the risk is rarely a single grant. It is inconsistent treatment across grants, an approval structure that works for one funder and not another, and no single view of what is due when. We build and maintain that view, and the policy layer underneath it that applies across the whole portfolio.
How post-award engagements are structured
Three models, used independently or together, scoped to the award rather than to a standard package.
1. Compliance readiness assessment
A defined, fixed-scope review of systems, policies, staffing, documentation, and reporting capability against what a specific award or portfolio requires. Delivered as a written assessment with prioritized, actionable findings rather than a checklist. Most useful immediately after a notice of award, or before one, when there is still time to fix the structure.
2. Ongoing award administration
Continuing management of the award on a defined monthly scope: the reporting calendar, expenditure and personnel cost review, drawdowns, subrecipient data collection, agency coordination, and governance support. Priced as a retainer rather than hourly, because compliance work that is metered by the hour is the first thing an organization stops asking for.
3. Event-driven support
Discrete, scoped engagements for the things that do not happen monthly: an audit or agency monitoring review, a corrective action plan, a material award modification, a subrecipient problem, a procurement action that needs a defensible file, or a closeout. Available to organizations we administer awards for and to those running their own.
What makes this different from buying it in pieces
The market splits this work across a proposal firm, an accounting firm, a software platform, and a staffing vendor. The seams between them are where awards get into trouble.
The budget is written by the people who will administer it
When the same team builds the proposal budget and then manages the award, cost categories map to the accounting structure from the start, effort commitments are ones the organization can actually certify, the subaward structure is papered the way the narrative described it, and the indirect treatment is decided before it is locked in. Continuity across that handoff is not a convenience. It is where most post-award problems are created or avoided.
Compliance advice from people who write the applications
Reviewing an award for compliance risk is a different skill from knowing what the agency was asking for and why a requirement is written the way it is. We read notices of funding opportunity for a living, which is what makes the difference between flagging a requirement and knowing which ones the program office actually enforces.
Scaled to the award, not to a practice model
A four-year federal award with university subrecipients and a two-year foundation grant require different structures, and neither is well served by a fixed service tier. We scope to the obligations the award creates. Organizations engage us for the assessment, the ongoing administration, or a single audit response independently.
Have an award you are not certain you are administering correctly?
Send the notice of award, the program terms, and a description of how the work is currently being tracked. We will come back with what the award actually obligates you to do, where the documentation gaps are, and what has to be in place before the next reporting deadline. Every inquiry gets a direct response.
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