Public sector

Grant management for local governments where grants are half of somebody’s job

Counties and large cities have a titled Grants Manager. Boroughs, townships and small districts have a borough manager who handles grants between council meetings. The enterprise vendors are built for the first group. GrantCue is affordable enough for the second.

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Who this is for

  • Boroughs, townships, villages, small cities and rural counties
  • Authorities, special districts, transit and housing agencies
  • School districts and intermediate units
  • Councils of government and regional planning commissions

What usually goes wrong

The grants function is unstaffed

In smaller jurisdictions nobody owns grants full time. It is the manager, the clerk or the finance director doing it on top of everything else, which means opportunities are found late and applications are rushed.

Federal expenditure totals are invisible until the auditor asks

Crossing the federal expenditure threshold triggers a Single Audit obligation. The rule is not the hard part; knowing where you stand across every award before your fiscal year closes is.

Award records are scattered across departments

Public works holds one award, the police department another, and the finance office is reconciling both from email attachments. No one has the portfolio view that council actually asks for.

Match requirements decide what you can even apply for

Most federal infrastructure funding requires a local match set as a flat percentage of project cost regardless of community wealth, which systematically screens out the jurisdictions with the least capacity.

How GrantCue helps

GrantCue My grants board with example grants by stage, each card showing the funder, a priority and the days left

Priced for a jurisdiction without a grants budget

A permanently free plan and paid tiers that a small borough can approve without an RFP, against enterprise platforms priced for counties.

One portfolio view across departments

Every award on one board with the stages your jurisdiction actually uses, so the finance office and the department holding the award are looking at the same record.

Reports you can take to council

Portfolio metrics, agency and program funding breakdowns, and PDF, CSV and Excel exports for the meeting packet. These are internal reports for your own team and council.

Deadline tracking with assigned owners

Tasks with owners and due dates, reminder emails, and an ICS calendar feed, so a reporting date does not depend on one person remembering it.

A record that survives an election

Documents with version history, threaded comments and an activity log, so a change in administration does not erase the history of an award.

Tracking 2 CFR 200 requirements

GrantCue does not apply the Uniform Guidance for you. It keeps the dates, records and owners the rules ask you to manage in one place.

  • Reporting dates and closeout steps as tasks with an owner, a due date and a reminder.
  • Award documents, such as the agreement and correspondence, with version history, so the file is whole when staff change.
  • Spend and match figures entered by your finance office, next to the award they belong to.
  • An activity log of who changed what, for the record you hand to an auditor. GrantCue is not audit software; the SEFA in the limited-access federal module is a draft for your finance office and auditor to check.

Uniform Guidance (2 CFR 200) in plain English

What GrantCue does not do

So you can rule us out in two minutes instead of two weeks.

  • A federal post-award module is in limited access on Team plans and up, switched on for selected organizations. It keeps a subrecipient register with risk assessments, a monitoring log and payments, builds a SEFA from the amounts you record, and fills SF-425 worksheets for you to check and file yourself.
  • It does not track audit findings or decide whether you need a Single Audit, and it is not audit software. Without the module there is no subrecipient model at all.
  • There is no FFATA or subaward reporting.
  • Spend, match and disbursement figures are entered by hand, except on the Organization plan, which can import expense lines from QuickBooks Online (read-only) and map them to a grant budget. There is no bank or payroll feed and no ERP integration.
  • Reporting means internal reports for your team and council, not reports filed with a funder.
  • Catalog coverage is federal Grants.gov plus 748 state and state-agency sources across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. County, regional and COG funding is not systematically ingested.

Questions

Is this an alternative to eCivis, AmpliFund or Euna Grants?

For a small jurisdiction, often yes — those platforms are priced and scoped for counties and states. But be clear about the trade: their subrecipient monitoring and audit-support modules are mature and open to every customer, while GrantCue’s federal post-award module is in limited access and is not audit software. If you depend on those modules today, GrantCue is not a substitute.

Can we buy it without going through a formal procurement?

That depends on your own purchasing law more than on federal law. GrantCue’s self-serve plans are priced well below most micro-purchase thresholds, but check your jurisdiction’s own rules.

Will it tell us when we are approaching the Single Audit threshold?

No. The federal post-award module, in limited access, totals the federal expenditures you record into a SEFA, but GrantCue does not decide whether you need a Single Audit and should not be relied on for that determination. Speak to your auditor.

Does it cover our state’s grant portal?

748 state and state-agency sources across all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are ingested today, so it depends on your state. Federal coverage via Grants.gov applies everywhere.

Can GrantCue track our grant reporting deadlines?

Yes. Add each award’s reporting dates, such as financial reports, performance reports and closeout, as tasks with an owner, a due date and an email reminder, and subscribe to them in Outlook, Google Calendar or Apple Calendar through the ICS feed. GrantCue does not file the reports. The federal post-award module, in limited access, fills SF-425 worksheets from your records for you to check and file yourself.

Guides for this segment

Longer-form reading on the parts of this workflow that come up most.

Official references

GrantCue also serves

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