Falaah Falaah AI

Grants Management

Manage grant programs, AI-powered proposals, budgets, outcome tracking, disbursements, grantees, received grants, and board packages in Muin.

Muin’s Grants Management module handles both sides of the grant lifecycle: grants you make (outbound disbursements to grantees) and grants you receive (incoming funding from grantors). It includes AI-powered proposal writing, budget tracking with variance analysis, outcome measurement, grantee relationship management, board package preparation, and a Kanban pipeline for tracking received grant applications.

Grant Programs

What are Grant Programs?

Grant Programs define the areas of focus under which your foundation awards grants. Each program has outcome metrics, budget categories, and reporting requirements that flow down to individual disbursements.

How to Create a Grant Program

  1. Navigate to Nonprofit > Grant Programs
  2. Click Create Program
  3. Enter the program details:
    • Program name and description
    • Program area (education, health, environment, etc.)
    • Funding available for the year
    • Application and reporting requirements
  4. Define Outcome Metrics for the program:
    • Metric name (e.g., “Students Served”, “Meals Provided”)
    • Metric type (count, currency, percentage, text)
    • Target value and unit of measurement
    • Sort order for display
  5. Save the program

Managing Outcome Metrics

Outcome metrics set the expectations for grantees when they submit reports:

  1. Navigate to the grant program detail page
  2. Click the Metrics tab
  3. Add, edit, or remove metrics
  4. Each metric flows into outcome report forms that grantees complete

Grant Proposals (AI-Powered)

What are Grant Proposals?

The Grant Proposal Assistant writes a first draft of a grant proposal with you. It asks what it cannot already find in your records, then the Proposal Drafter agent writes each section and cites the source of every figure. Drafting is included in Grant Finder (paid) and the Grants Solution, and in every Plan.

How to Create a Proposal

The quickest start is from a grant you track:

  1. Go to Grant Seeking > Received Grants and open the grant.
  2. Click Start a proposal. The proposal opens with the grant linked.

You can also go to Grant Seeking > Proposals, click New Proposal, enter a name and optionally link a received grant.

Before you apply

The proposal opens with the Before you apply card: the registrations and standing a funder will check before it accepts your application (IRS exempt status, annual filings, SAM.gov registration, and state charity registration where the state publishes it). Each check shows its result, its source and the date it was read.

  • Passed, Needs attention (with Fix this linking to where you fix it), Could not check today (with Try again), Not checked: this state does not publish registrations, or Not required.
  • The summary reads Ready to apply: 4 of 4 checks passed only when every counted check passed. A check that could not run keeps the card from reading ready.
  • UEI: the 12-character ID from SAM.gov. Federal programs require an active registration.

The card informs; it never blocks. Start Interview works whatever it says.

The interview

  1. Click Start Interview.
  2. Answers Muin already knows are filled in for you, with a label saying where they came from: Filled from the tracked grant, From your Company Profile, From your saved answers, or Suggested from your records. Keep the answer to confirm it. If you change it, the label reads Edited from suggestion.
  3. The questions depend on the kind of grant. A security grant asks for your most recent vulnerability or risk assessment, the threats or incidents on record, and the total cost of the security improvements. A food grant asks how many pounds of food you distributed in the last 12 months. Each question shows its help text.
  4. Not sure of a number yet? Tick To be confirmed. The draft marks that spot [To provide] instead of guessing.
  5. Click Next Question until you reach Complete Interview.

Drafting

After the interview, click Generate All Sections. Drafting runs in the background; the page shows Drafting the sections: 3 of 8 written and sections appear as they are written. You can leave the page and come back.

Every draft is written from your interview answers, the tracked grant, your public 990 history, your program accomplishments and public statistics. In the draft:

  • Each figure is followed by a source chip naming the dataset, the year and the place (for example “ACS 5-year 2019-2023, 2023, King County, WA”). Click it to see the evidence.
  • Public statistics come from the county of your organization address and each place in Settings > Organization > Places you also serve. A housing proposal cites HUD Fair Market Rents and HUD housing cost burden, with HUD as the source and the release year (FY2027 rents show as 2027).
  • [To provide: …] marks a fact only your organization has.
  • [To verify: …] marks a figure no public source or answer supports. Replace it or confirm it before you submit, so nothing unchecked reaches a funder.
  • Each section title appears once.

What we still need

The Gap Collector agent turns each fact the draft is missing into a task for the person who has it. The What we still need panel on the proposal lists those facts by section, each with its owner and whether it is still open or answered.

  • Each task goes to the tracked grant’s named contact and lands in their Workspace > Inbox. With no named contact the tasks go to the owner, and the panel says “No one is assigned to this grant. Assign someone”.
  • By default there is one task per missing fact. In the agent’s settings (Agents > My agents > Gap Collector > Settings), Gap policy lets you choose one task per section instead.
  • After you answer a task, Muin offers to put the answer in the draft and redraft that section. When the fact is in the draft, the task closes.
  • Running the agent again never files a second task for a fact that already has one.
  • If the agent is not turned on, the panel says “Turn on Gap Collector in Agents to send these to the inbox.”

Proposal Sections

Each section shows Generated once it has content and Pending until then. Click Edit to change the wording, or Regenerate to write the section again. Regenerate asks first (Replace this section with a new draft?) because it saves over what is there, including wording you typed; its sources are kept and checked again.

When the sections are ready, click Submit Proposal. This also moves the linked grant to Application Submitted.

Once any section has text, Download Word and Download PDF give you the proposal as a file. The Attachments panel keeps the budget, letters of support and other files for the application. See Grant Finder + Tracker.

Review an application before you send it

Open Grant Seeking > Review Application to check an application you wrote, in Muin or anywhere else, before you submit it.

  1. Under Which grant is this application for?, choose the grant. The list shows your grants that are still in progress (Identified, LOI Submitted, Application Submitted or Under Review). Not listed? Add it under Grants Received first.
  2. Upload the application file.
  3. The review runs in the background and the results appear on the page in a minute or two.

The review shows:

  • The funder’s questions: each question Muin read from the funder’s requirements, marked answered or missing, with a note when your answer is over the funder’s length limit. Attachments and certifications the funder asks for are listed to check before you send.
  • Funder’s rubric: when the funder publishes points, the score for each criterion.
  • Your ask and this funder: the amount you request next to this funder’s typical grant, from its IRS filings.
  • Budget: the total asked, whether the cost lines add up, the match required and stated, and the indirect cost rate.
  • What to change: each suggestion quotes your own sentence, says what to change and why, and names the funder question it serves.
  • Figures you state: each figure or outcome you claim, next to the matching figure in your records. When no recorded figure backs it, the review says so.

The review is saved on the grant, so the grant’s Compliance tab shows the same review. Click Open the grant to go there. After you edit the application, click Review a new version to upload it again; the page shows how many questions the last review found answered so you can compare.

Give someone access to your grants

To let a grant writer or a volunteer run your applications without making them an admin, invite them in Settings > Members with the Grant Manager role. A Grant Manager can:

  • Use Find grants, tune matching (suggested rules and What Muin reads) and track matches.
  • Edit, move and delete tracked grants, and draft letters of inquiry.
  • Upload applications to Review Application, and read award letters, budgets, grantee reports and the grant-seeking reports.

A Grant Manager cannot move money and does not see the grants your organization makes to others. A person invited with a role sees only what that role allows.

Grant Budgets

What are Grant Budgets?

Grant Budgets track the approved spending plan for each disbursement and compare actuals against the budget over time. This enables variance analysis and ensures grantees stay within approved allocations.

How to Create a Budget

  1. Open a grant disbursement
  2. Click the Budget tab
  3. Click Create Budget
  4. Add budget line items by category:
    • Category name (personnel, supplies, travel, equipment, etc.)
    • Approved amount for each category
    • Notes or justification
  5. Save the budget

Reporting Actuals

Grantees submit actual spending for each reporting period:

  1. Open the budget for a disbursement
  2. Click Submit Actuals
  3. Enter the reporting period (e.g., Q1 2026)
  4. Record the actual amount spent in each category
  5. Add a narrative explaining any variances
  6. Save the report

Variance Analysis

View the variance analysis to compare budgeted vs. actual spending:

  • Navigate to the budget detail and click Variance Report
  • See per-category breakdown: budgeted amount, actual spent, variance amount, and variance percentage
  • Identify categories that are over or under budget
  • Use this data for mid-grant check-ins and renewal decisions

Grant Calendar

The Grant Calendar is one view of every date your grantmaking depends on: Grant deadlines, Space bookings, Volunteer events and Board meetings, each on its own layer.

It is not a sidebar row. Open it from Grant Seeking > Find grants, from Find grants on Received Grants, or from the grants card on the Nonprofit Overview.

Use it for incoming grant application deadlines, report due dates and payment dates in one place. If it reads No deadlines this week, nothing falls in the window. Widen it rather than assuming nothing is due.

Find grants. The top of the page runs the Grant Finder agent. Click Scan (or Scan again) and the scan runs in the background, so you can leave the page and come back. Results are saved with the time of the scan. See Finding Grants for the full walkthrough.

Pages you watch. Add a funder’s grant page or a program’s application page and Muin reads it on every scan, in addition to the public sources it searches for everyone.

Status as read on. Every result shows what the program page said and the date it was read: Open, read 7 Oct 2026; Check the page: read Open on 6 Oct and Closed on 5 Oct when two readings disagree; Unknown: we could not read this page when the page could not be read. An unread page is never shown as Closed.

Expected openings. Turn on the Expected openings layer to see when recurring programs are likely to open, for example “Expected to open around Feb 2028 (even years; 2024 and 2026 rounds)”. Nothing is predicted without history: a program never seen open, or one that runs on a rolling or irregular basis, shows no event. Once a program announces its date, the event reads “Opens 3 Feb 2028 (announced)”. With no history yet the layer reads “No expected openings yet. Watch funder pages and we learn their cycles.”

Grant Outcomes

What are Grant Outcomes?

Grant Outcomes track whether funded programs achieve their intended impact. Metrics are defined per grant program, and outcome reports are submitted against a metric.

Define a metric

  1. Go to Sidebar → Nonprofit → Grantmaking → Grant Outcomes. The screen is program-scoped: if you arrived without one, pick a Grant program from the selector, or use Go to Grant Programs.
  2. Click New Metric and fill in Metric Name, Description, Target Value and Unit (e.g., people, dollars, hours).
  3. Click Create. The toast reads Metric created.

Submit an outcome report

  1. On the metric, click Submit Report.
  2. Enter the Actual Value, the Period (e.g., Q1 2025, Jan 2025) and any Notes.
  3. Click Submit. The toast reads Outcome report submitted.

Reviewing outcomes

Reports appear under Outcome Reports for each metric, showing Period · Actual Value · Notes · Submitted. Compare values across periods to track progress toward the target, and pull outcome data into board packages and program evaluation.

Grant Disbursements

What are Grant Disbursements?

Grant Disbursements are outbound grant payments from your foundation to grantee organizations. Each disbursement follows a structured lifecycle with maker-checker controls and compliance screening.

Disbursement Lifecycle

Status Description
Pending Created, not yet put forward
Recommended Grant proposed by program officer
Under Review Assigned for evaluation, or waiting on a second signer
Approved Authorized by approver (cannot be the same person who created it)
Award Letter Sent Award letter issued to the grantee
Awaiting Payment Approved and queued for payment
Payment Failed The payment attempt did not go through
Disbursed Paid; payment reference recorded
Completed All payments made and reporting requirements met
Declined Not funded; reason recorded

Working the disbursement list

Go to Sidebar → Nonprofit → Grantmaking → Disbursements. Four tiles summarize it, Total Disbursed, Active Grants, Pending Approval, Overdue Reports, and seven tabs split the queue: All, Applications, Under Review, Approved, Awaiting Payment, Disbursed, Declined.

The table shows Grant · Grantee · Amount · Status · Source · Date · Fund · Report Status · Compliance · Actions, with Via Portal marking the ones that came in through the grantee application portal. Search by grant number, purpose or grantee; filter by fund; sort by newest, amount, grant number or status.

Select rows and click Send to Board to build a board review package from them. Only disbursements in Recommended or Under Review can go into a package; Muin creates per-member access tokens and vote rows, and the toast tells you how many board members were emailed.

Export writes the list to CSV with the grant number, grantee, fund, amount, currency, purpose, program area, status, approved and disbursement dates, compliance status, report due date and created date.

How to Create a Disbursement

  1. Navigate to Nonprofit > Grant Disbursements
  2. Click New Disbursement
  3. Enter details:
    • Grantee Organization (select from grantee directory)
    • Amount and currency
    • Purpose and program area
    • Grant Period (start and end dates)
    • Fund to source the payment from
    • Restrictions on how funds may be used
    • Whether a grantee report is required and the due date
  4. Save (status: Recommended)

Applicant check

Open a disbursement from Grantmaking > Disbursements to see the Applicant check card: public facts about the applicant, so your review starts from the record.

  • IRS standing: whether the applicant is a tax-exempt organization in good standing, with the date it was checked.
  • Revenue trend: revenue and expenses by tax year from its public 990 filings. Each point names its filing.
  • Peer benchmark: how the applicant compares with similar organizations, for example “Compared with 40 similar organizations”, with the 25th percentile, median and 75th percentile of each figure. With too few similar organizations it says so instead of showing a figure.
  • Prior federal awards: its awards from USAspending.gov, or No prior federal awards found. Awards matched by name only ask you to confirm they belong to this applicant.

With no EIN on the applicant’s record, the card says so and offers to ask the applicant for its EIN. When the Grantmaker Applicant Due Diligence workflow is turned on (Workflows > Catalog), the Grant Recommender agent runs this check when an application arrives and the card reads Checked automatically on the date it ran.

Approval Workflow

Disbursements enforce maker-checker separation: the person who creates a disbursement cannot approve it.

  1. A reviewer opens the pending disbursement
  2. Reviews the purpose, amount, grantee, and fund balance
  3. Clicks Approve (with optional notes) or Decline (with reason)

Disbursement Processing

After approval, process the disbursement:

  1. Open the approved disbursement
  2. Optionally click Send Award Letter first
  3. Click Approve Disbursement: Muin runs OFAC screening and compliance validation
  4. Once approved, Muin creates a Bill in your connected QuickBooks
  5. Pay the grantee from your bank account, then mark the disbursement disbursed with the payment reference: Muin tracks it against the QuickBooks Bill
  6. For manual payments (wire or check), record the reference number and payment date
  7. Track disbursement and reconciliation status in real-time on the disbursement detail

What can block an approval or a payment

Approval runs three gates, in this order:

  1. Sanctions screening (OFAC SDN). Not overridable. A match reads: “Sanctions screening matched this grantee against the OFAC SDN list ({type}, score {score}). This block cannot be overridden. Resolve the match before approving.” If the list itself could not be refreshed you get “Sanctions screening could not be completed, so this grant cannot be approved. Try again shortly…”: also a block, deliberately, because an unscreened grantee is not a cleared one.
  2. Zakat eligibility. Not overridable. A zakat fund may only be disbursed to a zakat-eligible (asnaf) program.
  3. Fund spending rules. Overridable with a stated reason: “Fund spending rules blocked approval. {violations}. Provide override_reason to proceed.”

Payment adds two more:

  • Separation of duties. Depending on your governance posture, the person who approved a grant may not be the one who pays it, and a single-operator setup requires a note explaining why the same person did both.
  • The bank gate, for automated payments only. It fails with “No bank account linked for grantee”, “Bank account verification failed” or “Bank account not yet approved by admin”. Wire and check payments skip it, because there is nothing to verify.

A disbursement must be Approved before it can be marked disbursed: otherwise: “Cannot disburse grant in status ‘{status}’. Must be approved first.”

Overdue Reports

The Overdue Reports tile counts disbursements where the grantee has not submitted a required report by the due date. The Report Status column reads Not Required, Pending, Received or Overdue. Record report receipt when it arrives to clear the alert.

Disbursement Summary

View aggregate statistics by year:

  • Total disbursed amount
  • Number of disbursements by status
  • Fund breakdown
  • Program area distribution

Disbursement Batches

What are Disbursement Batches?

Disbursement Batches group multiple approved disbursements into a single processing run. This is useful for board meeting cycles where many grants are approved at once.

How to Create and Process a Batch

  1. Navigate to Nonprofit > Disbursement Batches
  2. Click Create Batch
  3. Name the batch and select the approved disbursements to include
  4. Click Validate to run pre-flight checks (compliance screening, sufficient fund balances)
  5. Click Approve (maker-checker enforced: approver cannot be the batch creator)
  6. Click Submit to push all approved disbursements as Bills to QuickBooks. Track each one’s reconciliation status, pending, matched, or overdue, from the disbursement list.
  7. View the Settlement Report after processing for a full audit trail

Batch Statuses

Status Meaning
Draft Batch created, disbursements selected
Validated Pre-flight checks passed
Approved Authorized for processing
Processing Payments being executed
Completed All payments processed
Partially Failed Some payments failed; review individual results

Grantees

What are Grantees?

Grantees are the organizations that receive grants from your foundation. Muin maintains a profile for each grantee with relationship stage, compliance status, and reporting history.

How to Manage Grantees

  1. Navigate to Nonprofit > Grantees
  2. View the list with filters for relationship stage and reporting status
  3. Click Add Grantee to create a new profile:
    • Organization name and contact information
    • EIN/Tax ID
    • Relationship stage (prospect, active, alumni, inactive)
    • Program areas they work in
  4. View a grantee’s profile to see:
    • All disbursements (past and pending)
    • Disbursement and reconciliation status
    • Reporting compliance (current or overdue)
    • Total funding received to date

Received Grants

What are Received Grants?

Received Grants track funding your organization applies for and receives from external grantors. This is the counterpart to disbursements: here, your organization is the recipient.

How to Track a Received Grant

  1. Go to Grant Seeking > Received Grants
  2. Click Add Grant
  3. Enter details:
    • Title of the grant opportunity
    • Grantor Organization or Grantor Profile
    • Grant Type (program, operating, capital, etc.)
    • Amount Requested and Application Deadline
    • Assigned To (staff member managing the application)
    • Fund to receive the award
  4. Save the grant to the pipeline

Pipeline View

Received grants use a Kanban pipeline with stages:

Stage Description
Identified Opportunity found, for example tracked from Find grants
LOI Submitted Letter of inquiry sent
Application Submitted Application sent to the funder
Under Review Funder evaluating the application
Awarded Grant approved with award amount
Agreement Signed Grant agreement signed
Funds Received Money received
Active Grant period in progress
Reporting Reports due to the funder
Completed Grant period complete, all reports filed

A grant can also end as Declined, Withdrawn or Lapsed. Those grants stay on the board in a Not awarded column, each marked with how it ended.

The Pipeline value above the board adds up only the grants still waiting on a funder’s decision. Awarded, declined and completed grants are not in it. An amount that was never stated shows Not stated, never $0.

Transition a grant between stages to keep the pipeline current. The grant page offers only the steps that can come next. You can skip LOI Submitted when the funder takes a full application directly, and record Awarded or Declined straight from Application Submitted when the funder answers without a review notice. When awarded, record the award amount, grant period, and contact information.

When Find grants runs again, weekly, monthly or by hand, a program you already track shows Tracked with its current stage and a link to the grant, so it is never added twice. Programs that are new since the last scan say New this scan.

Grant money funnel

Analytics > Grant seeking opens with your grant dollars at each step:

Step Dollars shown
Potential What the matches in your latest Find grants scan state they award
Pursuing Requested on every grant you track
Applied Requested on grants you applied for, including ones later declined
Awarded Awarded on grants you won
Received Money that has arrived

Each step after Pursuing also shows its share of the step before. A step whose grants state no amount says Not stated. Click a step to see the grants behind it, or Potential to open Find grants. Moving a grant to Application Submitted records the date it was submitted.

Muin reminds the person assigned to a grant 7, 3 and 1 days before its application deadline, and 60 and 30 days before a won award’s period ends. Renew on a grant you won starts next cycle’s application from it. See Deadline and renewal reminders and Renew a grant you won.

Grant contact

On a received grant, the Grant contact card on the overview names the person who gets the questions and reminders about this award: readiness questions, spend-plan questions and report reminders.

  1. Open the grant and press Choose a contact (or Change when someone is already named).
  2. Pick a person and press Save contact.

Only active members of your workspace can be chosen; anyone else is refused with “That person is not an active member of this workspace. Choose someone else.” With no one named, the card says No one is named. Questions go to the workspace owner. If the named person later stops being an active member, new tasks go to the owner role instead, and each task says why.

Next steps and how grants work

Every grant opens with Next steps: what moves it forward from where it is, each a button that does it or a link that opens it. Before the award: research the funder, read the funder’s instructions, start the application, and record the date you submit. After the award: upload the award letter, confirm what it says, record each payment, and write the report a payment waits on. A declined grant offers Ask the funder for feedback and the Grant Calendar for the next round. A step done on record shows a check.

How grants work (on Find grants, Received Grants and each grant) shows the stages Find, Track, Apply, Awarded, Comply and report, Get paid, Close out and Renew, what to do at each and where, and marks the stage the grant is at.

The overview also shows Original request (the funder’s own page, an unverified source) and What this grant takes: the reports, matching funds, payment terms and audit the funder’s request states, each with its sentence. The funder’s name, website, contact and email are links.

Review your application before you send it

Open Review Application under Grant Seeking, choose the grant the application is for, and upload it. The same review sits on the grant’s Compliance tab, and the grant’s Next steps mark it done. Muin checks the application against that grant:

  • The funder’s questions: each reads Answered with your passage and Open application, page 1, Missing, or Check it is attached for a required attachment. A passage over the question’s limit says how many words or characters over.
  • Funder’s rubric: when the funder publishes one, the score against each criterion, never past its maximum.
  • Your ask and this funder: the amount you request against the funder’s typical grant in its IRS filings.
  • What to change: each suggestion quotes your own sentence, opens the application at its page, and says why the funder would score it higher.
  • Figures you state: each number is matched to your records, or marked No recorded figure backs this.
  • Budget: the cost lines added up against the total you ask for, and that total against the amount recorded on the grant. A mismatch is named; otherwise it reads The budget adds up and matches your ask.

Upload a new version or press Review again and each score shows what moved since the last review.

Letter of inquiry

Some foundations want a short letter before they invite an application. On the grant’s Compliance tab, Letter of inquiry > Draft the letter writes four short paragraphs from your mission, the grant’s purpose, the questions the funder asks applicants to address, and your ask. In Find grants, a tracked past funder whose site says Invitation only or No open call found offers Draft a letter of inquiry. Every number in it is your ask, a year or one of your recorded figures, listed under Figures from your records; a sentence with any other number is left out. Copy the letter to send it, or Draft again.

Award letter terms

On the grant’s Compliance tab, upload the award letter or grant agreement under Award letter terms. Muin reads it and lists, each with the letter’s own sentence and Open letter, page 2:

  • What the grant owes: each report, audit or other obligation, and its due date when the letter states one.
  • How it is paid: each payment, its amount, and the report it waits on, for example $20,000 after Interim report.
  • Other conditions: matching funds, spending restrictions and payment terms.

A sentence the letter does not contain is never listed, an amount must be written in its sentence, and a date is kept only when its year is. Nothing is tracked until you Confirm it (or mark it Not a term). A confirmed obligation joins Funder obligations with its sentence, its page and who confirmed it when. An obligation the letter gives no date needs one before it can be confirmed. Open letter opens the document at the page, with the sentence shown above it.

Payments

The Financial tab lists the grant’s Payments: confirmed from the letter, or added with Add a payment (amount, expected date, what releases it, and the obligation it waits on). The payments cannot add up to more than the award. A payment that waits on a report that is overdue, or due within 14 days, reads At risk and names the report.

Mark received asks first, then records the payment as a grant contribution from the funder and an entry on the ledger. It is not a donation and no receipt is sent. The first payment moves an awarded grant to Funds received. Open the contribution opens it. Cancel payment stops expecting one the funder will not pay.

Past grants

Grants you won before using Muin. Grant matching favours funders you have won from and sizes awards against what you have actually won, and proposals can cite past wins. A past grant is saved as completed and never counts as a tracked grant, so it does not use your free plan’s saved-grant limit.

To add one by hand:

  1. Go to Grant Seeking > Received Grants and click Add a past grant.
  2. Enter the Funder, the Amount awarded and the Award date. What it funded and the grant period are optional.
  3. Optionally attach the Application and the Award letter.
  4. Click Save past grant.

The award date must be today or earlier, the amount more than $0, and the grant period must not end before it starts. Each field says so when it is not.

Past grants found in your documents. When you upload an award letter or grant agreement, Muin reads the funder, the amount and the grant period from it. Each letter that is not yet a past grant is listed on Received Grants under Past grants found in your documents:

  • Review and add opens the same form with what was read filled in. Check each field and save; the letter is attached as the award letter.
  • Not a past grant removes it from the list for good.

A saved past grant shows its files on its Documents tab, each opening the document.

Import your grant history and grant ledger

Both imports are under Settings → Data Import. Import the grants first, so the ledger lines have a grant to land on.

Grants imports the grants you already track, one row per grant, with its name and funder. Each row lands at the status in its status column, or as awarded when that column is blank, so a history of grants you won, applied for, are still waiting on or were declined comes in as it is. An award amount is required only on a row that was awarded; a grant that was never awarded keeps its amount requested and no award amount. An Award Date column records when each grant was awarded; an awarded row without one takes its start date, and the row is flagged so you can check it. Grant matching counts a past win by its award date. A column can mark a grant as a federal award. On a free plan, each row past your saved-grant limit is refused by name and the rows before it land.

Grant Spending (ledger by grant) imports a ledger export from your books, one row per expense line, with its date, amount and the grant number it is charged to. A budget category, account, description, vendor and transaction id are optional.

  • Each line lands as an approved expense charged to that grant. No journal entry is posted, because the general ledger stays in the accounting system the file came from.
  • Each line goes through the grant’s allowability rules, the same as an expense entered by hand. A cost the award’s rules bar still lands, with the decision and the rule recorded, so the grant agent can raise it.
  • A line with no budget category is matched to the award’s category its account names. A line that matches none is flagged as uncategorized.
  • A row is refused, with its reason, when its date or amount cannot be read, when the grant number is not one of yours, or when that grant was never awarded.
  • Importing the same file again adds nothing new.

The imported spend shows on the award’s Financial tab, each line opening its expense, and the allowability decisions show on its Compliance tab.

The ledger lines behind a grant finding

When the Grant Compliance Monitor agent raises a finding about a grant, the finding cites the ledger lines its figures were added up from: expenses, volunteer expenses and grant disbursements charged to that grant. To see them:

  1. Open Agents and find the finding under Findings by site, grant and severity, or open the agent’s run.
  2. Press Show your work on the finding.
  3. Under Sources, each ledger line shows what it was, its amount, its date and its budget category. A line that has its own page in Muin, such as an expense, opens it.

A category overspend cites only the lines in the over-budget categories, and a barred-cost finding cites the barred costs. Other findings cite every line charged to the grant. When there are more than 50, the 50 largest are cited and the finding says how many there were.

Your own SAM.gov registration

A federal award can only be drawn down while your organization’s SAM.gov registration is active. Muin reads yours from your organization’s own filing entity.

  1. Open a federal award and choose its Federal award tab. The SAM.gov registration card shows the UEI and expiry on record.
  2. Choose Record the UEI and expiry on the organization’s filing entity. This opens Filing Entities, which you can also reach from the Filing Calendar.
  3. Edit your organization’s own entity and fill in SAM.gov UEI and SAM.gov registration expires, then save. See Filing Entities and the Filing Calendar.

When you have a federal award, the Grant Compliance Monitor raises one finding per run about your registration, on the first federal award it checks:

  • Critical when the registration has expired.
  • High when it expires within 30 days.
  • Medium when the UEI or the expiry date is not recorded, or your organization’s own filing entity is not recorded at all, because a lapse cannot be detected without them.

A current registration with both fields recorded raises nothing. Muin does not check these dates against SAM.gov; it watches what you recorded, which is why the card’s Last verified against SAM.gov line reads Never.

Board Packages

What are Board Packages?

Board Packages compile grant recommendations, financial summaries, and supporting documents for board meetings where grant approvals are discussed.

Board package templates define the standard sections and data pulls for your board materials. When generated, each package pulls live data from your disbursements, budgets, and outcome reports.

Tips & Best Practices

  • Use outcome metrics from day one: Define metrics at the program level so every grant under that program collects consistent data
  • Enforce maker-checker on all disbursements: Never allow the same person to create and approve a grant payment
  • Track received grants in the pipeline: Even if you do not win every grant, the pipeline gives you visibility into your application success rate
  • Batch disbursements by board meeting: Create a batch per board meeting cycle to streamline approvals and payment processing
  • Review variance reports quarterly: Catch budget overruns early so you can work with grantees on corrective plans
  • Use the AI proposal assistant for first drafts: It saves significant time on narrative sections; always review and customize before submission

Common Issues

Problem Solution
Cannot approve a disbursement I created Maker-checker is enforced by design. Ask a different authorized user to approve.
Budget variance shows large negative numbers Grantee may have submitted actuals exceeding the approved budget. Review and discuss with the grantee.
Proposal section not generating Ensure the interview is complete. Some sections depend on answers from earlier phases.
Batch processing partially failed Check individual disbursement statuses. Common cause: OFAC screening flag or accounting software connection issue.
Received grant stuck in pipeline Verify you have edit permissions on the Nonprofit module. Transition the grant status manually.
Outcome report metrics missing Ensure outcome metrics are defined on the parent grant program before submitting reports.

Sharing evidence with an auditor

  1. Open the grant under Grants Received.
  2. Choose Share with an auditor and pick the files to share.
  3. With Grant Procurement Compliance, include the procurement records for this award, and optionally limit them to a date range.
  4. The auditor gets an emailed link to a read-only page with exactly those files.
  5. The link opens a session that lasts 12 hours.
  6. Every download is logged.
  • The auditor can record a finding. It reaches you as a task.
  • The auditor’s sign-off is recorded. If a procurement record changes after sign-off, the auditor is notified.

Need Help?

If you have questions about grant management, contact your organization administrator or reach out to Muin support. For detailed guidance on disbursement payment flows, see the Foundation Features documentation.