Your Grants Manager Has Given Notice. The First Thirty Days.

The short answer. In the first thirty days after a grants manager departs, the organization has three obligations in order of urgency: identify every reporting and drawdown deadline in the next 120 days, secure the records and system access that the departing employee controlled, and notify funders where a change in key personnel requires it. Recruiting a replacement is the fourth item, not the first.

Days one through five: the inventory

Before anything else, build a single list of every active award. For each, record the funder, the award number, the period of performance, the total award and remaining balance, the next report due and its type, the next drawdown or invoice date, and the name of the program officer. If the departing employee is still in the building, this is the one task to insist on completing together.

The list will be incomplete. In our experience roughly one award in ten in an inherited portfolio is missing from whatever tracker existed, usually a small foundation grant or a subaward from a partner. Check the general ledger for restricted revenue accounts and the bank records for incoming federal drawdowns; both will surface awards the tracker omitted.

Sort the list by next deadline. Anything due within thirty days is now the responsibility of a named person, in writing.

Days one through ten: access and records

The departing employee likely holds credentials the organization needs. The federal systems are the most consequential: SAM.gov, where the entity registration and the annual renewal live; Grants.gov, where applications are submitted; the agency payment system, whether that is HHS Payment Management System, ASAP, or an agency-specific portal; and JustGrants, eRA Commons, or other agency award-management systems as applicable. Each has its own role structure. The organization’s authorized representative, typically the executive director, should confirm that at least one current employee holds the administrative role in each system before the departing employee’s last day.

State and county portals follow the same rule. So do the foundation portals, which are easily overlooked and which frequently permit only one user per organization.

Records are the second concern. Federal awards require the recipient to retain financial records, supporting documents, and statistical records for three years from the date of submission of the final expenditure report (2 CFR 200.334). If the departing employee kept working files on a personal drive or in a personal email account, they must be transferred to organizational systems. Time-and-effort records in particular must be located and secured; they are the first thing an auditor will request and the hardest to reconstruct.

Days five through fifteen: funder notification

A change in key personnel named in a federal award generally requires the prior approval of the awarding agency, or at minimum written notification (2 CFR 200.308(f)(2) and the terms of the specific award). The grants manager is not always a named key person; the project director usually is. Read each notice of award for its terms. Where notification is required, a brief letter to the program officer identifying the interim point of contact is sufficient, and it is better received before the funder discovers the vacancy on its own.

For foundation and county funders, notification is a courtesy rather than a requirement, and a short email from the executive director serves the purpose. Program officers are generally sympathetic to staff turnover. They are less sympathetic to a missed report followed by an explanation.

Days fifteen through thirty: stabilize before hiring

The interim arrangement needs to cover three functions: report preparation, drawdown and invoicing, and monitoring of subrecipients if the organization has any. These do not need to be performed by the same person, and they rarely need a full-time person during the transition. What they need is a written assignment and a weekly review.

Organizations that begin recruiting on day one, before the inventory exists, tend to write a job description for the person who just left rather than for the portfolio as it now stands. The inventory reveals what the role actually requires. A portfolio that is 70 percent federal needs a different hire from one that is 70 percent foundation, and the compensation range differs accordingly.

The pattern to avoid

The most expensive version of this scenario is the one in which the organization assumes the departing employee’s tracker was complete, assigns the “urgent” items to an overextended finance director, and begins a three-month search. The report that was not on the tracker comes due in week six. It is discovered in week eight. The renewal that depended on it is now in question.

The inventory takes two days. It is the only step on this list that cannot be recovered if skipped.

Regulatory references: 2 CFR 200.308 (revision of budget and program plans, including changes in key personnel); 2 CFR 200.334 (record retention); 2 CFR 200.337 (access to records).

This article is general information about federal grant administration. It is not legal or accounting advice.