Nonprofit grant and board IT report

Board and funder read the same cost differently

The board asks what the technology money does and who watches it. The funder asks whether the cost was allowable under the award, allocated correctly and supported by records.

Two reports from two spreadsheets can disagree. The error may surface in a board meeting, a grant review or an audit.

Keep one ten-field record under both reports, with the same cost, award terms, program, evidence, owner and date. Change only the emphasis for each reader. You can build it without hiring anyone.

Evidence is an artefact, never an invoice

A purchase does not meet a requirement. Evidence does.

This needs saying because the opposite is a common sales line to nonprofits. A vendor says its platform “meets 2 CFR 200” or “makes you grant compliant”. It costs money twice, once at purchase and again when an auditor asks for records the purchase never produced.

The federal duty is yours. Under 2 CFR 200.303, federal award recipients must establish, document and maintain effective internal control over the award. They must also take reasonable cybersecurity and other measures to safeguard information.

Establish, document and maintain are things your organisation does. A tool can support them but not do them, and no invoice proves they happened.

So the evidence column never holds a purchase. It holds an artefact, such as a dated access review, a restore test result or an approved, dated policy.

Training records with a denominator and settings exports count too. If all you have is a receipt, the honest entry is “no evidence”.

One record, two readers

	The board	The funder
The real question	Is this money doing something, and does someone own it?	Was this cost allowable, allocable, documented and as approved?
What they want first	The decision and its consequence	The award, period, amount and basis
Tolerance for open items	High, with an owner and a date	Low, so raise them before they find them
Detail	A summary, with more on request	Line by line, with documents ready
Worst failure	Items that never close	A number your ledger does not support
Language	Plain program consequences	The award’s own terms and categories
What “unknown” costs	Credibility, slowly	A finding, quickly

For the board, lead with the decision. If the first line is neither a decision nor a status, you wrote a briefing. They will treat it as reading.

For the funder, lead with the award. Give the award and period first, in their words. Use the award’s exact category names, never your own. Where a cost rests on an interpretation, say so up front and name who made it.

For both, reconcile every number. Never send a number you have not reconciled to your accounts. A report that disagrees with the general ledger creates a bigger problem than the one it explained.

Part 1: A six-section report

Six sections hold the ten fields. The order is fixed, because the order makes it readable to a board.

1. The decision or status

Give the decision requested, or the status of a past one, in one or two sentences. For a past decision, name the meeting that approved it and the promised proof of completion.

2. Program, award, restriction and period

Field	Entry
Program served	The program, department or organisation-wide function
Funding source	The award, contract, fee income or unrestricted funds
Restriction	Restricted, unrestricted or mixed, with what the restriction says

If a line is split across sources, record the split, its basis and where the allocation method is written.

3. The requirement and its evidence

Field	Entry
Control requirement	The named requirement and its source, such as an award term, contract clause, insurance condition, regulation or policy. If none, write “operating need” and explain it
Current evidence	The artefact showing the control works, with its date and maker. “No evidence” is a valid, useful entry

Use these evidence states on every sheet.

State	Meaning
Current	The artefact exists, falls within your review period and names a person
Stale	The artefact exists but predates your review period
In progress	A named owner, a named artefact and a due date
No evidence	Nothing exists yet, and you say so

“No evidence” reads better to a monitor and a board than a vague assertion. Write it.

4. Cost, reconciled to the ledger

Field	Entry
Cost status	The yearly or period cost, whether charged direct, indirect or from unrestricted funds, and any change since the last report

State every rise or fall and its reason. A price rise and a scope rise differ, and boards ask which it was.

5. Owner and reporting date

Field	Entry
Owner	A named person accountable for the line and its evidence, not a department or vendor
Reporting date	This report’s date and the period it covers

A vendor can run part of a control but cannot own it. Someone in your organisation owns whether it works and whether evidence exists.

6. Next action

Field	Entry
Next action	The next step, its owner, its due date and the artefact that will prove it was done

Every open item leaves the report with a name and a date. Items without one return unchanged for years. A board that sees that three times stops reading.

Part 2: Three sheets

Sheet 1: Awards

One row per award, contract or restricted source. Build it once and keep it current, since everything else refers to it.

#	Award or contract	Funder	Period	Amount	Restriction	Technology costs allowed	Cost treatment basis	Reporting dates	Terms read by	Date read
1

Three columns are often filled badly.

• Technology costs allowed. Quote or cite the award, never paraphrase it. A rushed paraphrase from two years ago is how an unallowable cost becomes a habit.
• Cost treatment basis. Whether a cost is direct, indirect or chargeable to a federal award at all comes from several places. They are your award terms, the funding notice, the federal cost principles and your written cost policy, never this workbook. Record what they say, and note open questions.
• Terms read by. A name and a date. If nobody has read the current terms since the application, put that in the next board report.

For federal awards, note whether federal spending nears the single audit threshold. Under 2 CFR 200.501, that threshold is generally $1 million a year in federal award spending. Your auditor decides how your spending counts.

Sheet 2: Technology lines

One row per technology line, linked to Sheet 1. This is the working sheet.

#	Line	Program	Award	Restriction	Reason	Requirement	Evidence	Evidence date	Evidence state	Yearly cost	Cost treatment	Owner	Decision
1

Every line carries exactly one of five reasons.

Reason	Meaning
Mission	It directly enables services to the people you serve
Grant	An award requires or allows it, with the term cited
Contract	A contract with a funder, payer, partner or client requires it
Control	It meets a named control, safeguarding or compliance requirement
Operating	It runs the organisation, such as payroll, accounts, email or phones

A line with no reason is a finding, and the report says so.

Read down the control rows to see which requirements you believe you meet. Read across to the evidence to see which beliefs are supported. The gap between them is the point of the sheet.

Sheet 3: Decisions

One row per decision or reported item. This sheet ends the problem of items that keep returning.

#	Date	Audience	Item	Decision	Decided by	Owner	Due	Proof of completion	Status	Closed
1		Board, funder or both							Open, closed or deferred

Decisions match the companion budget pack. They are keep, reduce, remove, defer, fund from an eligible source, or needs evidence.

A defer without a written trigger in the due column is incomplete. Write the condition that brings it back and who watches for it.

Before each board meeting, filter for open rows past due. That list is your first agenda item, and it should be short. When it stops being short, the report has told you something useful.

Part 3: A worked example

This example is fictional. Every number is illustrative, not a benchmark, and the award number is invented.

TECHNOLOGY AND GRANT REPORT

Field	Entry
To	Board of Directors, Harbor Reach Community Services
From	M. Okafor, Executive Director
Reporting date	9 June 2026, covering 1 January to 31 May 2026
Prepared with	Internal finance and program staff, none with a commercial interest in any item

1. DECISION

The board is asked for three decisions. First, remove two duplicate lines, recovering $7,140 a year. Second, approve $3,400 for an access review and restore test that close an open control item on Award HHS-FICT-2026-0417.

Third, note that the video platform line is deferred to the FY27 budget, with the trigger below.

On a past decision, the board approved documenting the case management access review on 10 February 2026. It is now in progress, due 15 July 2026, as section 6 shows.

2. PROGRAM AND FUNDING

Line	Program served	Funding	Restriction
Case management system	Housing stability program, 340 households	Award HHS-FICT-2026-0417, fictional	Restricted. The award allows direct charging of program data systems. Terms read 3 March 2026
Client scheduling tool	Housing stability program	The same award	Restricted, on the same terms
Standalone video platform	Organisation-wide	Unrestricted	None
Donated productivity suite	Organisation-wide	A donated licence, $0	None. Admin time is real and is charged to management and general
Second file storage product	Finance and development	Unrestricted	None

3. REQUIREMENT AND EVIDENCE

Line	Requirement	Current evidence	State
Case management system	Internal control over the federal award under 2 CFR 200.303, applied to access to client data	Quarterly access review, last done October 2025	Stale
Case management system	Program records can be recovered	No restore has been tested or timed	No evidence
Client scheduling tool	Operating need, with no named control	A 12 May 2026 usage report shows 4 active users of 22 seats	Current
Video platform	Operating need	A 12 May 2026 report shows 11 meetings in 90 days, against 412 on the donated suite	Current
Donated productivity suite	Account admin and removing leavers	No documented process, and three leavers’ accounts were still active on 12 May 2026	No evidence
Second file storage product	None, since the donated suite does the job	A 12 May 2026 report shows 2 active users	Current

The access review and restore test drive the second decision. No purchase satisfies either. Doing the work and keeping the record does.

4. COST

Line	Yearly cost	Treatment	Change since last report
Case management system	$18,600	Direct to the award, under the June 2025 cost policy	Unchanged
Client scheduling tool	$2,640	Direct to the award	Unchanged, with 18 of 22 seats unused
Standalone video platform	$1,908	Management and general	Unchanged, and duplicated
Donated productivity suite	$0 licence	Admin time charged to management and general	Unchanged in cash, with admin time unmeasured
Second file storage product	$4,500	Management and general	Up $600 at the March 2026 renewal, a price rise, not a scope change
Proposed removals	-$7,140		The scheduling tool and second file storage product

One allowability question goes to the auditor. Can part of the donated suite’s admin time be allocated across awards under the cost policy? Finance raised it for the August 2026 planning meeting, and nothing changes until then.

5. OWNERS AND DATE

Line	Owner
Case management system and its access review	D. Reyes, Program Director
Restore test and recovery documents	M. Okafor, Executive Director, with a flat-fee outside adviser
Donated suite admin and account removal	Vacant, which is the finding
Cost treatment and allocation	L. Tran, Finance Director

Reporting date is 9 June 2026, covering 1 January to 31 May 2026. The next report goes to the October 2026 board meeting.

6. NEXT ACTIONS

Item	Owner	Due	Proof of completion
Complete the case management access review	D. Reyes	15 July 2026	A signed review listing each account, role, reviewer and date
Run and time a restore of program records	M. Okafor	1 September 2026	A written result with date, records restored, time taken and checker
Name an owner for the donated suite and remove three leavers’ accounts	M. Okafor	30 June 2026	The owner named in Sheet 2, and a directory export showing the removals
Cancel the scheduling tool and second file storage product	L. Tran	Before the 14 September 2026 deadline	Written cancellation confirmations from both vendors
Settle the donated suite’s admin allocation	L. Tran	After the August 2026 auditor meeting	The auditor’s written answer, filed with the cost policy
Decide the video platform	M. Okafor	Deferred. Back at the FY27 budget, or sooner if the donated suite stops covering meetings, which D. Reyes watches	The decision recorded in the log

End of the fictional example.

Part 4: Five gaps that lead to findings

• A number off the ledger. Reports built from invoices and from accounts disagree, often because a prepaid yearly charge falls in different periods. Reconcile before sending, since this causes most avoidable funder questions.
• A paraphrased award term. Someone summarised the terms in 2024, slightly wrongly, and the summary has governed ever since. Cite and quote, and record who read the real document and when.
• A product name as the control. A platform name in the evidence column is a purchase, not evidence. Ask what the artefact is, its date and who made it.
• An item open for four reports. Open items are fine, but ones with no owner or date tell the board the report is decoration. Filter Sheet 3 for overdue rows before every meeting.
• A report written by the vendor. If your IT provider writes the section arguing its services are needed, a funder deserves to know. Ask the provider for usage, seat counts, settings exports and renewal terms. Write the reasoning yourself, and disclose whether any outside contributor earns anything on the outcome.

Part 5: Two questions for any quote

“Which requirement does this meet, and what artefact could I hand an auditor?” A good answer names an artefact, such as an exportable access log, a settings report or a retention record. A weak answer just repeats the requirement.

“What is the full yearly cost, including admin, and what does leaving cost?” Ask this of donated and discounted offers above all.

A $0 licence needing eight staff hours of admin a month is a real cost. It appears in no budget line.

Neither question is hostile. A funder will ask both eventually, so ask them at the point of sale, not of monitoring.

Tie both reports to the same rows

This is general guidance for board and funder reporting. It is not legal, accounting or grant compliance advice. It sets nothing about allowability, cost treatment, indirect rates, single audit or deadlines for any award.

Your award terms, funding notice, cost principles, written policies and funder set those. Your finance staff and auditor interpret them, and counsel does where the question is legal.

If the budget itself was never examined line by line, start with the companion nonprofit technology budget defense pack. Bring its results into Sheet 2 here.

SBK will review one board cycle or one federal award with you. Call (718) 407-4169.