Exercises — Chapter 26: Managing the Grant After You Win

Work these imagining your project is funded. The aim is to see grant management as the most consequential grant-seeking you do — and to plan delivery, reporting, and compliance before you ever need them.

How to use these: Part A checks recall; Part B applies the chapter to concrete management decisions; Part C asks you to create at a real grantee's level (a management plan, a reporting calendar); Part M interleaves earlier chapters. Answers to selected exercises (★) are in the back matter.

Part A — Recall and Understand

A1. ★ State the chapter's threshold concept in your own words. Why is managing a grant a form of grant-seeking?

A2. What is the notice of award, and how does it transform your proposal?

A3. Name four setup tasks for the first ninety days and why starting them immediately matters.

A4. ★ Distinguish rebudgeting, prior approval, carryforward, and a no-cost extension.

A5. Name the three main types of reports and what each covers.

A6. What is closeout, and why is it a consequential last impression?

A7. Define: RPPR, single audit, period of performance.

Part B — Apply

B1. ★ Does this need prior approval? For each change, say whether it likely requires the funder's advance approval and what you'd do: - (a) Moving 2% of the budget from supplies to travel (within the funder's threshold). - (b) The PI leaving the institution mid-project. - (c) A significant change in the project's scope or aims. - (d) Reaching the end of the period with work left and unspent funds, needing more time but not money.

B2. The honest report. Midway through, recruitment is well behind plan. Draft the spirit of how you'd report this — what you'd say and what you'd avoid — and explain why honesty serves you.

B3. ★ Setup triage. Your award just arrived. List, in order, the first-90-days setup tasks for your project, noting which are time-critical (e.g., approvals that gate the work) and why.

B4. Over-promise consequences. An applicant inflated outcomes to win. Now funded, they must deliver those outcomes. Describe the post-award consequences and what they should have done differently when writing.

B5. The closeout temptation. At the end of a long grant, the team is depleted and tempted to let the final report and reconciliation slide. Why is that costly, and what's the right approach?

Part C — Analyze and Create

C1. ★ Write a first-90-days management plan. Using the Section 26.4 checkpoint, draft one for your project: setup tasks and timeline (with owners), a reporting calendar, your promise list, and a budget-management plan. This goes in your "My Proposal" document.

C2. Build a reporting calendar. Map every report your funded project would owe (programmatic, financial, final) across the period of performance — format, deadline, owner, and what evidence each needs.

C3. ★ Promise audit. List every specific promise in your proposal (aims, outcomes, populations, budget, equity/community commitments) that becomes an obligation after the award. Flag any you're not confident you can deliver, and revise the proposal accordingly.

C4. Change-management plan. For your project, anticipate two likely mid-project changes and, for each, determine whether it needs prior approval, who you'd consult, and how you'd document it.

C5. Next-proposal evidence plan. Describe how you'd run this grant so that, at its end, you have the results, track record, relationships, and clean record to anchor your next proposal. Be specific about what evidence each activity generates.

Part M — Mixed and Interleaved Review

M1. ★ (Ch 25 + 26) How do your proposal's equity and community commitments become real obligations after the award, and why does that reinforce the honesty discipline of Chapter 25?

M2. (Ch 18 + 26) How does foundation stewardship (Chapter 18) exemplify this chapter's threshold concept and lead to renewal?

M3. ★ (Ch 19 + 26) How do the Uniform Guidance, records, and Single Audit of government grants operate post-award, and why do they shape future funding?

M4. (Ch 12 + 26) How does the budget-narrative coherence of Chapter 12 reappear in financial reporting, where spending must reconcile with programmatic progress?

M5. (Ch 23 + 26) How do subawards (Chapter 23) complicate post-award setup and management, and what's the prime's responsibility?

M6. (Ch 1 + 26) Connect this chapter's "deliver the progress you promised" to Chapter 1's idea of a grant as a mission transaction. How does post-award delivery complete the transaction?

🪞 Metacognitive check-in. Did this chapter shift how you think about the award — from a finish line to a starting line, from a clerical afterthought to the most consequential evidence-building you do? If you'd been mentally "done" once a grant was won, notice that the funder's experience of you as a grantee shapes your future more than any single proposal. The grant writers who sustain funding are the ones who deliver — and who know that winning and delivering are inseparable.