What Is a Grant Manager? (Part 1) Federal Agencies

To make sure grants are awarded and implemented effectively, grant managers perform a wide range of duties. As a result, the job title “grant manager” can refer to many different job responsibilities depending on the size and type of an organization as well as the size and type of a grant.

Before distinguishing between specific types of organizations or grants, there is a higher-level distinction to make when answering the question, “What is a grant manager?” These grant professionals, after all, can be found at both grant-making organizations and at grant recipient organizations.

On the Grants.gov Community Blog, we focus on federal grants, but other types of organizations can award grants (e.g., state governments, corporations, or nonprofit organizations). So, in this post, we will look at federal agencies that award grants.

What would you say…you do here?

For each federal grant program, there are staff who lead and oversee these programs to make sure the individual grants are accomplishing their legislatively authorized purposes. These are federal grant managers.

Federal grant managers have a wide variety of responsibilities as they work with grant recipients. Fortunately, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management has established the Position Classification Flysheet for Grants Management Series, 1109. This provides a thorough list of both general and specific duties for grant managers at different levels of the agencies.

Overall, federal grant managers, “manage, supervise, lead, or perform administrative business, policy, and analytical work” across the pre-award, award, and post award phases of the grant lifecycle. Since this is such a wide range of duties that require diverse skills, there are often more than one grant manager with different areas of oversight.

Specific examples of activities of a federal grant manager include:

• Developing grant policies and procedures
• Providing training and technical assistance to grant recipients
• Evaluating grant applications
• Reviewing performance and financial reports
• Point of contact with grant recipients

For even more details, read OPM’s Grants Management flysheet. Part one of answering, “What is a grant manager?” gives us a base for discussing their counterpart colleagues in part two—grant managers for the recipient organizations.

Please post a comment below or on Twitter if you have experience or information that will help the grant community answer the question, “What is a grant manager?”