Sneak Preview: Centralization Efforts Can Promote Efficiencies
(The following was exerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) Although grantees may face challenges when attempting to centralize internal processes and technology, a panel of grants officials told attendees at the National Grants Management Association’s recent Annual Grants Training that such efforts — with leadership support — can offer certain benefits for their entity or organization.
Centralizing grants can take on many forms, ranging from creating a central grants office with the authority to control the coordination of grant functions for the entire entity or organization, to dedicating an internal group to promote collaboration and provide grant resources to assist with compliance, to developing standard policies, procedures and systems for use by the entire grantee organization.
Andrea Sampanis, solutions and services lead for the Grants Quality Service Management Office (QSMO), explained that she has seen a “spectrum” of centralization models across federal government agencies. At one end of the spectrum, some agencies are highly centralized with common internal processes and policies coming from one main office. “The customer experience is very consistent,” she said, although noting that “this can be hard to do because everyone has to adapt to one standard.” On the other side of the spectrum, some agencies are leaning more to a “center of excellence” model, whereby the agency creates a community of practice, sharing lessons learned and providing training, but actual grants administration is decentralized.
On the state level, Stacey Massey, deputy director for grants and financial reporting for the Ohio Office of Budget and Management, said that there are many centers of excellence models at the state level, whereby the state seeks to provide grant recipients tools, resources and training, particularly in instances where there is a lot of staff turnover. Other states are looking at certain processes in the grants lifecycle to find ways to centralize them, Massey said, particularly citing a single audit requirement in Illinois whereby auditees must submit a Consolidated Year-End Financial Report to one central audit unit. “You have to look at some of your processes to see what makes sense to streamline or centralize,” she said. Centralization “is not about control; it’s about assistance. It’s not a one-size-fits all” process for all states.
Patrick Ballinger, grants coordinator for Pasco County (Fla.) Office of Management and Budget, explained that he’s seen instances where local governments have centralized processes and tools that have worked well, but over time, county leadership “loses sight of the purpose [for the centralized process] and deconstructs it down, only to realize later that they made a mistake,” requiring the county to reestablish the process. “We want to prevent that type of cycling because anyone who has been in government long enough will see that circle,” he said. “It’s a vicious cycle, so we want to try to prevent that and mitigate any problems.” Grant managers on the local level need to educate others about the importance of streamlined processes. “Grants are important; we have to defend [how we use] this money,” he added.
(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)
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