Build a Grant Program Anyone on Your Team Can Run, and Defend

A 30-minute session for grantmakers on getting eligibility rules, scoring criteria and grant records out of one person's inbox and into a process your whole team can pick up.

Grantmaking teams are small, and they change. In the Council on Foundations' 2025 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits Report, 57% of grantmakers reported at least one staff departure that year. Among the small foundations in Exponent Philanthropy's 2024 operations survey that have paid staff, the median team is two people.

On a team that size, the grant cycle often runs through one person. Proposals arrive by email, by mail and in person, and the eligibility checks, board packets, reviewer follow-up and grantee reports all run through that person's inbox and spreadsheets.

This session is built around two of the five dimensions of Review Integrity, a framework for judging whether an application and review process is fair, consistent and defensible.

The first is Decision Traceability: can any funding decision be reconstructed and defended? If the person who ran your last cycle left tomorrow, could anyone explain why each grant was made?

The second is Rubric Clarity: are your criteria written, weighted and visible before anyone applies, or do they live in someone's judgment?

When the process lives in one inbox, a vacation, a leave or a resignation can stall a whole cycle. Eligibility checks stop, reviewers stop getting reminders, and grantee reports go uncollected.

The bigger cost comes later. When a board member, an auditor or a declined applicant asks why a grant was made, "the person who decided isn't here anymore" doesn't hold up. And when the board asks what the grants accomplished, the answer is scattered across someone else's email.

Grant programs run on fiscal years and letter-of-inquiry cycles. The guidelines, rubric and forms you set before your next round opens are what the next person will inherit, so the best time to document the program is before you need to.

In this 30-minute session, you'll learn how to:

• Turn eligibility rules into screening questions, so ineligible applications never reach your reviewers
• Score each stage, from letter of inquiry to full proposal, with its own weighted rubric beside the application
• Assign reviewers and send automatic reminders, instead of chasing them from one inbox
• Keep every proposal, file, score and comment in one record, with results your board can follow
• Collect signed agreements, grantee reports and receipts after the award, with every task tracked
• See each grantee's history across past cycles
• Give everyone on your team access, so the program doesn't stop when someone is out
• Clone this year's program for next year, or bring in a cycle that's already underway

Who should attend

Program officers, grants managers, executive directors and grants committee chairs at private, family, community and corporate foundations, and at municipal, economic development and other public funders. It's especially useful for small teams where one or two people run the whole grant cycle, and for anyone who has inherited a program or is about to hand one off.

Can't make it live? Register anyway and we'll send you the recording.

Common questions

Does Reviewr pay grantees?No. Reviewr tracks acceptance, signed agreements, receipts and grantee reports. It doesn't disburse funds or track fund balances. You can export a recipient report for your finance team or CRM.

How long does setup take?About 30 days. Reviewr builds the program from your existing forms, so you don't have to start from scratch.

About Reviewr

Founded in 2011, Reviewr is SOC 2 Type II certified and has processed more than 1 million applications for thousands of organizations.

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