Sneak Preview: Funding Instability Easily Tops List of Grant Manager Challenges

(The following was excerpted from a recent Thompson Grants Compliance Expert article.) Following a year of numerous grant terminations and funding cuts nationwide, grant managers overwhelmingly cited funding uncertainty and susceptibility to politics as the most dominant challenge they face, according to findings in a recently released survey.

The annual survey, which is designed to “provide the grants community with insight into emerging themes and shared challenges, strengthen collective understanding of what is working and equip leaders and practitioners with information to advance effective grants management practices,” was conducted by the George Washington University Trachtenberg School of Public Policy and Public Administration, REI Systems and the National Grants Management Association (NGMA). This is the 10th consecutive year that they have conducted the study.

Last year, the survey authors invited more than 15,000 governmental and nongovernmental professionals in grants management and related fields to take the survey. The 2025 survey garnered 773 responses. Federal, state, local and tribal government officials responded, as well as nongovernmental officials and those from other organizations that either receive federal grants or are in charge of managing recipients or subrecipients. Just under half of the respondents had at least three years of grants management experience.

In response to a question that asked respondents whether their organization’s or their recipients’ outcomes improved over the past 12 months, 30% of federal government respondents said performance improved — a 15 percentage point decrease from the 2024 survey — while 50% (up from 47% in 2024) of state and local government and 54% (same as 2024) of nongovernmental managers said it improved. First among the various reasons suggested by the survey authors for the lack of improved outcomes was a deficit of staff and/or capacity, as well as the lack of tools, to collect and analyze outcomes data.

Still, entities that responded to the survey continued to be positive in 2025 about their ability to meet their mission objectives and analyze and improve performance, as well as their knowledge of their recipients’ performance.

(The full version of this story has now been made available to all for a limited time here.)

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