Selecting a grantee is the easy part. What comes after, agreements, documentation, vendor setup, payments, reporting, and closeout, is where most grant management processes start to fall apart, because every one of those steps depends on the one before it.
Here’s how OrangeDot helped a national preservation nonprofit turn that entire post-award process into a standardized, automated monday.com workflow, and then scaled it across multiple grant programs.
What We’ll Cover
About the Client
This client is a leading national preservation nonprofit that manages multiple grant programs supporting organizations and projects across the country. Each program comes with its own award requirements, documentation, payment schedules, reporting expectations, and administrative steps.
As part of a broader move to monday.com, the organization wanted to create more consistent ways for teams to manage their work. Different departments had historically relied on different project management tools and processes, making it difficult to establish repeatable workflows across the organization. For one of its major grantmaking teams, the goal was to create a structured system for everything that happened after a grantee was selected, using monday.com as the operational layer for managing agreements, documentation, payments, reporting, and grant completion, without replacing the organization’s existing grant application platform.
Two Problems Compounding Each Other
Awarding a grant was only the beginning, and the organization’s broader goal of consistent, reportable grant programs was running into the same lack of structure.
Once an organization was selected, the grantmaking team needed to manage a long series of administrative and programmatic requirements. Agreements had to be generated and signed, tax and payment documentation collected, vendor information confirmed, payments processed, reports tracked, and program-specific requirements completed before a grant could officially close.
Many of those steps depended on one another. A payment could not move forward until required documentation was received. Final payment could not happen before earlier stages were complete. Different project types could also require different sets of tasks.
Without structure, team members had to remember which steps applied to each grant, determine what came next, create and manage individual tasks, and keep track of anything that had become delayed or stuck. The team needed more than a place to store grant information. They needed a system that could actively guide staff through the correct process.
A grant workflow with this many dependencies can’t run on memory. Every step someone has to remember to check is a step that eventually gets missed.
Different departments had historically relied on different project management tools and processes, which made it difficult to establish repeatable workflows across the organization. Each grantmaking team had effectively built its own version of “what happens after an award,” with no shared structure to build on.
There was also a larger organizational goal at stake. The nonprofit wanted its grant programs to follow a more consistent structure so information could eventually be reported and understood across programs, rather than managed through entirely separate processes.
Without a shared framework, every grant program was solving the same post-award problem from scratch, and none of the resulting data could be compared across programs.
The Solution
OrangeDot designed a standardized grant management workflow in monday.com that could guide each grant from agreement through final payment while adapting to the requirements of individual programs and project types.
A single record with everything the team needs to manage an award
Each grant is represented by a central record containing the organization, program, award year, project type, grant status, agreement dates, vendor ID, amount awarded, amount paid, funding source, project details, and cancellation information.
Tasks generated automatically at every stage
When a grant enters a new stage, monday.com generates the appropriate tasks for that portion of the workflow. During the agreement stage, for example, the system prompts the team to confirm required documentation such as a W-9, EFT information, and a signed agreement.
Automatic progression once a stage is complete
Once all required tasks are completed, the parent grant automatically updates and advances into its next stage. That progression continues through vendor setup, first payment, interim reporting, final payment, and completion, with no one manually moving records forward.
Steps that respond to the information already on file
If a vendor ID hasn’t yet been entered, the workflow introduces a vendor setup step before payment can proceed. If the vendor information already exists, the system bypasses that unnecessary step and keeps the grant moving forward.
Different project types, different task sets
Different project types can trigger different task sets, allowing each grant to follow the requirements that actually apply to it without forcing staff through irrelevant steps.
Stuck and delayed grants surfaced automatically
If an individual task becomes stuck or delayed, the overall grant automatically moves into a dedicated delayed or stuck section, giving the team immediate visibility into potential bottlenecks. Once the issue is resolved, the grant returns to active work. Canceled grants follow similar logic, automatically moving out of the active workflow while remaining visible for reference.
Building for Scale
OrangeDot didn’t design the system as a one-off board. The underlying structure was standardized so it could be replicated across grant programs while still supporting different project types, funding requirements, and tasks. The framework was implemented across three grant programs, giving the nonprofit a common approach to managing post-award work while preserving the flexibility each program required. OrangeDot also documented the process and created a visual workflow showing what happens from the moment a grant enters the system through final completion, giving the internal team a reference for training new users, understanding the automation logic, and maintaining the system after implementation.
The Impact
By project closeout, approximately 85% of the grant management process had been automated.
Less Manual Coordination, More Structured Progress
Instead of manually determining the next step for every grant, recreating task lists, moving records between stages, and continuously checking whether prerequisites had been completed, the team now works through a structured process while monday.com handles much of the progression automatically.
A Clear Picture of the Active Grant Portfolio
The system gives staff a clearer picture of the entire active grant portfolio. Teams can quickly identify which grants are progressing normally, which are delayed or stuck, which have been canceled, and which are complete.
Dependencies Enforced by the System, Not Memory
Required tasks are surfaced at the appropriate stage, and the next phase doesn’t begin until the necessary work has been completed, creating a more reliable process for managing dependencies.
A Repeatable Framework, Not a One-Off Workflow
Most importantly, the nonprofit now has a repeatable grant management framework rather than a workflow tied to a single program. That foundation makes it easier to scale the same operational structure across additional grant programs while maintaining greater consistency in how awards, payments, reporting, and exceptions are managed.
85% of the grant management process automated · standardized framework rolled out across 3 grant programs · 6-stage workflow from agreement to completion · conditional logic that adapts to project type, vendor status, and exceptions
FAQs
How do you automate a workflow where every step depends on the one before it?
Model the dependency directly in the system. Generate the next stage’s tasks only once every task in the current stage is marked complete, so the workflow itself enforces the order instead of relying on staff to remember it.
Can the same workflow handle grants that need different sets of tasks?
Yes. Conditional logic can generate different task sets, or skip a step entirely, like vendor setup, when a vendor ID already exists, based on the information already in a grant’s record.
How do you build a workflow that can scale to more programs later without starting over?
Standardize the underlying board structure and automation logic once, document the process with a visual workflow, and treat each new program as a variation on that structure rather than a new build.
What happens to grants that stall or get canceled?
Automations move stuck or delayed grants into a dedicated section for visibility, and canceled grants move out of the active workflow automatically while remaining visible for reference.
Final Thoughts
Awarding the grant was never the hard part. Managing everything that happens after, on time, in the right order, across multiple programs, is what actually determines whether a grant program scales. By building the dependencies into the system itself, this nonprofit turned an 85% automated process into a framework it can keep reusing.
If your organization is managing grants, or any multi-stage award process, across spreadsheets and inboxes, we can help you build a workflow that runs itself. Talk to an OrangeDot expert →