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Grants Management

Long Term Projects | Grants Management | IQC Management | World Wide Web

Many of DAI’s projects now include some form of grant fund that is used to strengthen local institutions, replicate best practices and experiment with new ideas.

These grant programs can range in disbursement value from a few hundred thousand dollars to several million; and in size from a few large grants per project to several hundred. Regardless of the size, DAI is responsible to our client for these funds and we must meet high standards of financial and administrative accountability.

To meet this need, DAI developed its own grant management tool. First implemented in 1997, it has since been used on 33 projects around the world to manage nearly $400 million dollars to thousands of grantees—and these figures grow daily. With every new implementation the system has evolved to meet new needs and today mirrors the best practices used by our most effective managers in the field.

As a workflow management tool, our system tracks the progress of a potential grant from the time an expression of interest is received, through proposal review, grant award, implementation and eventual close-out. Throughout this process, standard templates have been developed to assist our staff in effectively managing each stage. From this standardized core, we then customize the system to meet the unique needs that every program invariably has.

The Grants Management TAMIS has become an invaluable tool—our grants managers across the board rely on it heavily for management and reporting purposes. In several instances, our clients have come to rely on it as well. Like all of our applications, DAI’s Grant Management TAMIS reflects ideas and solutions that have come from our staff around the world and reflects their commitment to responsibly managing the grant resources that have been entrusted to us.

TAMIS Use

One of our most prolific users of the TAMIS grant system has been the Indonesia Support for Peaceful Democratization project (SPD). The system supports all aspects of grant administration and emphasizes the monitoring of impact indicators related to its reconstruction activities. When the 2004 tsunami hit the coastal regions of Indonesia, TAMIS enabled SPD to quickly step up to the changed project scope and to meet the demands of a significant increase in the volume of grant activity. In early 2005, an impact-monitoring module was set up in TAMIS to gather post-tsunami infrastructure reconstruction data, including the number of direct and indirect beneficiaries of each reconstruction activity, its cash-for-work beneficiaries, community labor and cash contributions, and the total value of grant funds disbursed on each type of activity—such as road, school, or clinic reconstruction. Additionally, as private donors contributed funds to the project for post-tsunami reconstruction, TAMIS allowed the project to immediately report to each donor on how its funds were being used and the impacts that were being achieved—to the last dollar and at any point in time.

The grant impact data gathered in TAMIS is also used for decision support mapping. Geographical coordinates of each grant activity are taken using portable global positioning system units. Combined with grant data from TAMIS, these coordinates are used to generate detailed maps of the project impact in coastal Aceh region. Through a web based mapping application, these data are readily available not only to project managers, but also to USAID and a variety of stakeholders working in the region.

In many instances, TAMIS is accessible via the World Wide Web enabling subcontractor and client staff to access it via the Internet. Such access facilitates rapid response to managerial and contractual issues that otherwise would require time-consuming e-mail communications.

The Grants Management Component of the DAI TAMIS contains three basic types of information:

Proposal Information—contains data on proposals and tracks screening, review, and approval decisions made by the evaluation committee. Through proposal evaluation forms and activity logs, a record of discussions and negotiations with applicants, with corresponding dates, is held in one central location;
Grant Documentation—builds off existing information for approved proposals. The system houses the grant agreement, performance plans, and contract templates. The system also tracks technical assistance and training associated with each grant and monitors the progress of deliverables;
Grant Monitoring and Evaluation— contains data for performance indicators at the grant level. As the project develops its monitoring and evaluation plan, a module can be set up in TAMIS that permits tracking of indicator data for each individual grant. This data can then be aggregated and sorted using parameters that are important to the project, for example, by sector, by location, by type of activity and by Intermediate Result. The monitoring module is highly customized to reflect the unique monitoring and reporting needs of the project;
Financial and Disbursement Information—records and tracks budget commitments, obligations, disbursements, counterpart contributions, and program income, both by individual grantee and for the grant program as a whole.

USAID Iraq Office of Transition InitiativesProject

Through the USAID Office of Conflict Resolution and Mitigation, DAI manages grant disbursement for the Iraq Transition Initiative (ITI). This project disburses grants that help augment and sustain the development of a participatory, stable, and democratic country. ITI works closely with the interim government of Iraq and the U.S. Embassy in Iraq. The focus is on the development of democracy in Iraq and, more specifically, on civic education, civil society, media representation, participation of women and youth, good governance, conflict mitigation, human rights, and transitional justice.

Through the rapid and efficient disbursement of small grants to local Iraqi groups and institutions, DAI and its partners help ITI address many of these crucial national and local issues. Over the last three years, the ITI project has provided approximately 5,000 grants worth a total of almost US$300 million. Because of the managerial efficiency provided by TAMIS, these grants are typically processed and disbursed very rapidly. TAMIS has enabled staff, working in several offices and meeting infrequently, to share information and data critical to ensuring such rapid response.

The rapid disbursement of grants meets critical needs, including providing short-term employment, restoring basic government and community services, helping to coordinate media and civic education initiatives that support elections and the constitutional process, and enhancing access to information and communication for all Iraqis.

Iraq ITI Grant Disbursements

	Iraq OTI I	Iraq OIT II	Total OTI Grant Programs
Dates	1/06/2003-4/15/2004	2/5/2004-12/31/2005	3 years
Grants Funded	474	4,251	~ 5,000 grants
Amount Disbursed	$32.6 million	$270 million	~ $300 million

A View from the Field

TAMIS has been crucial to the success of the Iraq Transition Initiative. The security situation has forced us to manage the program from various remote locations.

It has been necessary to work with our local staff, grantees and other cooperating organizations via the internet with only rare face-to-face meetings. While far from ideal, it has worked. Since inception, we have issued more than 4000 grants worth some $300M. It is difficult to determine what we may have accomplished without TAMIS, but I am certain it would only be a small percentage of this total.

—Steve Connolly, Iraq Transition Initiative II

TAMIS

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