Grant management basics: restricted funds, budgets, reports
Winning a grant is the easy part. The hard part starts the day the money arrives: restricted funds, several donors paying for the same programme with different rules, shared costs, and a report due every quarter.
Five rules that keep grants clean
- One grant, one budget, one cost centre. Every expense carries the grant it belongs to at the moment it is spent, not at the end of the quarter.
- Restricted means restricted. Money given for a shelter in Maliana cannot patch the office rent in Dili. Track eligible cost categories per donor.
- Allocate shared costs with a written key. Rent, the director's salary and the generator are split across grants by an agreed percentage, recorded once, applied every month.
- Watch burn rate against time. At month six of twelve you should have spent about half. Under-spend loses funding; over-spend loses trust.
- Report from the books, not from memory. If the report and the ledger disagree, the audit will find it. Generate reports from the same data the transparency page shows.
The Society of Timor organisation platform does exactly this: grant budget lines, live budget-versus-actual, allocation keys and donor reports from one set of numbers.
This guide is general information, not legal advice. Laws and donor rules change — for registration or a grant agreement, check with FONGTIL, the Ministry of Justice or your funder.