Increasing the Capacity of Individuals, Families and Communities

Sub-Award Management

Designing Sub-Award Programs Overview | Determining Your Sub-Award Process

Developing Your Sub-Award Plan

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Determining Your Purpose: Starting with the End in Mind
The first step in developing your sub-award plan is to determine the reason or purpose underlying the effort. In other words, why conduct a sub-award program? What impact do you want to encourage? What change in the organizations receiving awards do you want to see take place?

To identify your purpose, you will need to determine what you want to accomplish and how it fits in with the goals and outcomes of your overall grant proposal. Be sure to review the Federal program announcement for any information on the purpose of the sub-awards from the Federal perspective. Also, if you have already submitted a grant proposal, be sure to review that proposal for guidance and consistency in developing a purpose statement.

A purpose statement usually contains the following elements:

• Whom you will serve or work with
• What you will do for them
• What you expect to be the result or outcome

Here are some examples of sub-award purpose statements from CCF intermediary organizations. Christian Community Health Fellowship (CCHF), a national network of Christian health professionals and others concerned about the health care needs of the impoverished communities in the U.S., identified the purpose of their sub-award program as assisting faith-based and community health care organizations to become operationally effective and financially viable providers of community-oriented primary health care in underserved communities and populations.⁷

Another 2002 CCF intermediary, Mennonite Economic Development Associates, an organization dedicated to helping the poor earn sustainable livelihoods through the development of business, listed the purpose of their sub-award program as advancing community and faith-based organizations’ efforts to build capacity, increase their efficiencies, and expand their scope of services. They further specified that sub-awards would be expected to increase grantees’ ability to respond to organizational needs; capacity to expand their services; access to funding; capacity for effective publicity; and ability to engage in effective long-term planning.8

Checklist for Determining Your Sub-Award Plan Purpose   Review the program announcement for guidance Review your grant proposal for purpose statement language Develop a purpose statement that contains three purpose elements: whom you will serve, what you will do, what is the expected result Check your written purpose statement to make sure that it is consistent with the program announcement/guidelines as well as your grant proposal

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Designing Sub-Award Programs Overview | Determining Your Sub-Award Process