Our Grant
management
services

What is grant management?

Put simply, it’s where we sign grant agreements on behalf of grantees and support them through the grant process.

We take care of the risk management for grantmakers, helping them to expand their reach. This helps groups access formal funding, as well as the support they need to manage the grant process.

 

We can:

  • Get money to an individual or grassroots group without them needing a legal entity
  • Hold the funds on behalf of grantees
  • Help grantees manage their funds collaboratively and transparently
  • Help grantees with financial admin and reporting
  • Help grantees access payroll support

Our fee

7% on all funds granted (additional fees may apply if more support is needed).

Find out more

For a 7% fee, we’ll take care of:

  • Due diligence
  • Onboarding and set-up
  • Holding funds in a separate bank account
  • Supporting with reporting and budget management
  • Managing all financial transactions
  • Providing mentoring support*
  • Supporting grantee(s) with payroll*
  • Inviting grantees to join a community of 300+ groups

*The level of mentoring support and payroll included in the 7% depends on the grant amount. Please see here for more details. 

What’s included at a glance

Grant size Fiscal hosting Support from PM Reporting reminders Mentoring support Payroll support
Under £10k ✅ ✅ ✅ – No
£10k-£50k ✅ ✅ ✅ – No
£50k-£100k ✅ ✅ ✅ – 1-2 staff
£100k-£500k ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 1-4 staff
£500k-£1m ✅ ✅ ✅ ✅ 5-10 staff
£1m+ Tailored package

Because we take a fee of the grant to cover our costs, we tier our support according to the grant amount. The table above is a rough guide to what’s typically included in the different tiers, but we’re always happy to talk about a set-up that suits your needs.

Extra Support

You may also want to consider grant management alongside our Consultancy or Process Hosting service.

Get in touch

Get in touch

In their words

“It was inspirational to see there’s a way to operate independently/collectively in the grassroots space… SCN allows for critical interventions and activity to take place at a grassroots level. The time/knowledge it takes [to incorporate] means that only university-educated, middle-class people are able to do grassroots work. Nest is doing radical work enabling working-class people to get involved.”
Taiwo
“The process and anticipated operational demands for running our own organisation (as two part-time organisers) felt overwhelming, and the legal responsibilities to Companies House and the Financial Conduct Authority felt in conflict with our own principles. Thank you SCN for always being a massive support to us.”
Decolonising Economics
“SCN supports you with all the admin and backend processes (and all the parts you don’t have experience in) so that you can put all of your energy into the vision of your work. SCN also supported YTM in building powerful networks. What’s particularly powerful is that they build you up and encourage you to be independent, instead of clinging on – that’s true social change.”
Mita DesaiYoung Trustees Movement
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Relevant FAQs

You’re a group that’s already been awarded a grant
Contact us with all the details. We’ll then set up a call to make sure we’re the right people to support you. If we’re a good fit, we’ll then review the grant agreement and ask you to sign our terms of service.

You’re a grantmaker looking to get funding to grassroots groups/projects or an individual
Drop us a message to share as much detail as you can. We can then have a chat to see what’s possible. If we do move forward together, we’ll get in touch with the grantee(s) to review the grant agreement and share our terms of service for them to sign.

You’re a group looking to apply for funding that’s only open to legal entities with a nonprofit status
Get in touch and we’ll talk everything through with you. If we’re able to work together, we’ll be happy to give you any information you might need to complete the funding application(s). Just make sure to check with your funder if they’ll accept groups that are fiscally hosted, as this isn’t recognised by everyone in the UK (yet).

  • A named main contact to sign the service agreement on behalf of the group. We also complete due diligence checks on them.

  • The ability to access documents stored on Google Drive.

For groups, the process can take anything from 1–6 months to set up. The exact timeframe depends on how responsive groups are, whether or not they’re receiving grant funding, and how responsive the funder is when making payments.

Open Collective is a platform that allows you to collaboratively and transparently manage your funds. As a fiscal host, we license Open Collective and work together to hold funds on behalf of grassroots groups in a way that allows them to make all the decisions.

Yes – many groups using our grant management service use Open Collective to hold and spend down their grant. Hybrid set-ups are also possible, where you use Open Collective for some funding and manage the rest outside the platform. If you’d like to access our payroll service, please note we can only do this outside of Open Collective.

No, you don’t. We also offer fiscal hosting off the platform, which doesn’t use Open Collective.

No, it doesn’t cost anything to make an application.

No. We’re a pretty small team, and the process to become fiscally hosted hinges on the responsiveness of both the group and the funder. 

If you need us to sign a grant agreement on your behalf, we charge 7% of the grant. That 7% is sometimes covered by funders, so we recommend asking yours if they’ll cover the fee.