Jerry Petersen
For REI Systems‘ Wagish Bhartiya, grants modernization is being driven by an increased focus on budgets and the evolution of technology, Federal News Network reported Monday.
The growing focus on budgets has led grants providers to evaluate how much funding is going into grant management processes and how much is actually being “deployed into the community” while technological evolution has made it possible for grants providers to now “be thoughtful about performance and mission,” the REI Systems chief growth officer said in an interview with the news outlet.
According to Bhartiya, these two trends have led to attention being given not just to risk mitigation and compliance but also to “the grantee experience” — that is, “the mission impact in terms of what are the tangible and successful outcomes.”
Bhartiya went on to say that because of these changes in perspective, providers are more open to changing the way they traditionally handled grant management, where each insisted on making everything “bespoke and tailored to the Nth degree” rather than leveraging best practices learned from other agencies.
