Grant reporting: which questions can you stop asking?

To simplify grant reporting, start with the questions your foundation asks, not the form that holds them. Keep a request when you can identify who uses the answer and what they do with it. Look for an existing source before asking a grantee to prepare the same information again. If a question has no clear use, put it forward for retirement, subject to a review of the grant's requirements.

This article proposes a question audit for foundation program officers and learning teams. It is a working exercise, not a legal checklist or a claim that fewer questions will automatically produce better results. The output is a marked-up reporting form and a short record of what your team intends to change.

Council Fire's foundation work connects portfolio strategy, grantee alignment and monitoring, learning and evaluation. Apply that sequence here: decide what the foundation needs to learn, agree how partners can provide it, then design the reporting process.

What decision should each grant reporting question support?

Take the reporting form you intend to send next. Beside each question, write the decision it supports and name the person who will read the answer. Be specific. “For the board” is an audience, not a decision. “Help the program committee decide whether to fund technical assistance” gives the reviewer something to test.

Some questions support learning rather than an immediate funding decision. Keep that distinction visible. A question about an unexpected obstacle may help a program officer organize support, revise an assumption or plan a conversation. Write down that use instead of forcing every answer into a renewal score.

Ask the named reader to show how they used the previous answer. A meeting note, an adjustment to the program or a follow-up with the grantee is more useful evidence than “we might need it.” If the question is new, record the intended use and when you will check whether anyone used the answer.

Council Fire's guide to collective-impact measurement begins with shared outcomes rather than separate grant metrics. That is a useful boundary for this audit. A common question should support an agreed purpose across the portfolio; it should not remain common merely because it appears in everyone's form.

Which requirements should you check before removing a question?

Before editing the form, separate discretionary learning questions from requests your team believes are required. Ask the appropriate grants-management, finance or legal owner to identify the relevant agreement, policy or other basis for each requirement. Do not decide that an item is optional because nobody remembers why it was added.

Give unresolved items their own status: “requirements review needed.” Record who will resolve them and by when. This prevents the audit from becoming an informal decision to stop collecting something important.

Check the scope of the review, too. This exercise concerns the questions your foundation sends to grantees. It does not authorize deleting historical records, changing retention rules, ignoring an agreement or waiving another funder's conditions. Those are separate decisions.

A useful test is to distinguish the information needed from the format used to obtain it. Your reviewer may confirm that the information must stay while allowing a different submission method. Record both conclusions. “Keep the information” does not necessarily mean “keep this exact form,” and “change the form” does not mean the obligation has disappeared.

Can you reuse an answer the grantee already provides?

For each remaining request, look for an existing source: the current application, an agreed progress update, a financial document or another report the grantee is willing and able to share. Ask whether that source answers your question for the correct period and scope.

Do not require a grantee to reformat a whole report simply to fit your portal. Consider accepting the existing document with a short pointer to the relevant section. If something is missing, ask for the missing information rather than the entire report again.

Reuse needs boundaries. Check permission, confidentiality and whether the document covers the work you funded. A public annual report might describe the whole organization while your question concerns a specific program. Mark that difference rather than treating the broader result as evidence about your grant.

Council Fire's foundation reporting guide addresses the wider process of selecting metrics and organizing reporting. The narrower recommendation here is to make reuse explicit: note the source, its date, the relevant passage and the remaining gap before sending a new request.

Would a conversation answer the question better?

A written report is one option. In General Service Foundation's published verbal-reporting example, hosted by the National Center for Family Philanthropy, staff ask three questions about the grantee's recent work, the strategic questions it faces and how the foundation can help. The document says staff take notes during the conversation and add them to the organizational database.

That is a concrete example of a different format, not evidence that every foundation should replace reports with calls. The document is identified as a 2022 resource. It does not establish a current universal policy or demonstrate a quantified reduction in workload.

If you test conversations, let grantees help choose the format. Offer the questions in advance and explain who will attend, how the discussion will be documented and how the record will be used. Avoid making the call an additional requirement on top of the unchanged written report.

Decide who writes the summary. Build in a way for the grantee to correct it before others rely on it. A shorter form is not much help if the same organization must then spend hours repairing the funder's notes. These are recommendations for your pilot, not practices attributed to General Service Foundation beyond what its document states.

How do you run a keep, reuse, change or retire audit?

Use one row per question. Keep the worksheet small enough that the program officer and grants manager can work through it together, then invite grantees to challenge the assumptions about effort and usefulness.

Audit field	What to write
Current request	Copy the question exactly, including required attachments.
Decision or learning use	State what the answer should help someone decide or understand.
Named reader	Identify who reviews it and when.
Requirements check	Record the basis, reviewer and any unresolved question.
Existing source	Identify a usable document or explain the specific gap.
Preparation effort	Ask the grantee what work is needed; do not invent an estimate.
Proposed action	Keep, reuse, change or retire.
Review point	Name who will check the result after the next cycle.

“Keep” means the request has a supported purpose and an acceptable way to answer it. “Reuse” means the necessary information already exists in an agreed source. “Change” may mean narrowing the question, changing its timing or offering another format. “Retire” means the responsible owner has approved removing the request after the requirements check.

For a hypothetical example, take a question asking grantees to repeat their full organizational mission in every progress report. If the foundation already holds a current mission statement, propose reusing it and asking only whether it changed. Verify that the older statement is still current before making the substitution. This illustrates the audit; it is not a description of a Council Fire engagement.

For a question about an unexpected program result, the right action may be “keep,” but with clearer wording. Ask what changed and what evidence supports that interpretation. Avoid forcing the grantee to attribute the whole result to your funding.

How will you know whether the revised process works?

Test the revised requests with a willing group of grantees before extending them across the portfolio. Explain what is changing, what is staying and who can answer questions. Choose the group deliberately, including organizations with different reporting capacities rather than only those most comfortable with your current process.

After the cycle, review both sides of the exchange. Ask grantees what they had to prepare and what was confusing. Ask staff whether the information arrived in time, whether they used it and whether they had to request more. Keep preparation, review and correction effort separate so you can see where work moved.

Record missing information without treating every gap as proof that the old form was better. Was the question unclear? Did the agreed source cover the wrong period? Did staff expect a level of detail they never specified? Adjust the specific request and explain the change.

Council Fire's foundation services include program design, grantee capacity-building and monitoring, learning and evaluation. Those are relevant next steps when the audit exposes disagreement about the reporting purpose or who owns the decision. Agree the process before specifying software to support it.

Bring your marked-up form and unresolved questions to a Council Fire consultation if you need help connecting the reporting cycle to portfolio strategy and grantee needs.

Frequently asked questions

Should we remove every question that did not affect a grant decision?

No. Our recommendation is to distinguish funding decisions from learning, support and reviewed requirements. A question may have a clear use without changing an award. Name that use and its owner. If nobody can explain either, review the request before sending it again.

Can verbal reporting replace written reporting?

It can be an option to assess, rather than a blanket replacement. General Service Foundation's published example uses conversations with staff notes. For your own process, confirm requirements, grantee preference and how you will maintain an accurate record before changing formats.

Should every grantee answer the same questions?

Use common questions where the portfolio has a shared purpose, but examine whether each request fits the particular grant. Council Fire's collective-impact guide distinguishes common measures from grantee-specific milestones. The audit should record that distinction rather than automatically applying the longest form to everyone.

Should we buy software before simplifying the reporting process?

Start with the audit. Our recommendation is to agree what information is needed, who owns it and how it will be used before specifying a tool. Then assess whether the remaining work needs software. Do not make automation a reason to keep requests nobody can justify.

What should we do when a board member wants to keep a question?

Ask what the answer would help the board decide and whether an existing source would meet that need. If the use is legitimate, keep or revise the request. If the need is uncertain, agree a review point rather than arguing about the question in isolation. This is a suggested governance conversation, not a rule overriding the board's authority.

Related Resources

• Metrics, monitoring and verification for foundations: design the measurement system behind the questions you retain.
• Measuring and communicating collective impact: agree shared outcomes and distinguish portfolio questions from grant-specific ones.
• How foundations can strengthen climate grantmaking: connect reporting choices to the wider design of climate funding and grantee support.
• Measuring and reporting ESG impact for foundations: place the question audit within the broader reporting process.

Additional Resources

• General Service Foundation's three questions for verbal reporting: NCFP's resource page identifies the original example and links to its document.
• Read the original verbal-reporting document: the short source describes the questions and staff recordkeeping; it is not an evaluation of results.

About the Author

George Chmael II is Council Fire’s Founder & CEO. The article draws on public sources and proposes a practical exercise for teams working on foundation strategy, program design and evaluation.

Cover photograph: Pexels — Documents in Paper Tray on Office Desk. Illustrative stock photograph, not a Council Fire project.

Written by

George Chmael II

Founder & CEO

Corporate lawyer turned social entrepreneur, guiding organizations toward three bottom lines for 25+ years.

Full bio →All 71 articles by George →

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