Congratulations! You received a grant! Now you’re done, right? Wrong. Things just got more complicated.

Calling to say thank you to your contact at the funder is a courteous practice and a great first step in developing a relationship. The funder’s program officer will remember you did this. Also, even when you are successful, it’s a good idea to ask for comments from the trustees or grant panel. Knowing what parts of your proposal appealed to this funder might help you focus proposals to others.

If you received the amount you requested (which is fairly rare), and other funding has been coming in, your program will be fully funded and can proceed as planned. It’s still advisable to review proposals with program staff when the money arrives so you can find out if they’ve already modified the program and take appropriate actions with the funders if needed.

In some cases, reduced funding might make it impossible to carry out the program as described in your proposal. If this is so, the sooner you let all funders know about changes to the program, the better.

In my experience, funders are understanding about changes to programs. If a program will still be able to accomplish its mission and goals (even if it’s conducted in a different manner and serves fewer people), it’s unlikely you’ll encounter a problem. Some funders ask you to send them a letter noting the changes. It’s important you do this so your reports will be based on the modified proposal rather than the original.

Remember: a grant is a contract between your charity and the funder. You’ve accepted the funder’s money on the condition that your charity will carry out a certain program in a particular way in a specified amount of time. The funder has a right to know if any conditions of the contract won’t be met.

Within a day of receiving a grant award letter, someone in authority at your charity should sign and send a letter acknowledging receipt of the grant and thanking the funder. Ideally, the same person who signed the cover letter that accompanied the proposal will sign the acknowledgment letter. The executive director, board president, or even the director of development can sign the acknowledgment letter. The important thing is that it be sent promptly.

An acknowledgment letter should contain …

Here’s a general acknowledgment letter:

I like to put the legalistic IRS language in the postscript so it doesn’t spoil the flow of the letter, but I just as easily could have inserted it before the last paragraph.

If one of your board members helped pave the way for a successful grant, you should write her a thank you, too. Depending on your relationship with the board member involved, an e-mail or phone call might do. If the grant is particularly large, a letter or call from your board president to the helpful board member would also be in order.

You can never say thank you too often. Especially with large grants or grants of any size from a new funder, it’s a good idea to send a second thank you a few days later from someone else at your charity. This is especially important if, in order to get the acknowledgment letter out quickly, it didn’t have the same signer as the proposal cover letter.

The second thank you should not repeat any language in the first one. Only the acknowledgment letter should have the IRS language, so you have more freedom creating the second letter. And yes, it might be you writing all the thank you letters, no matter who signs them.

A handwritten note from one of your charity’s board members is a nice follow-up to the letters from staff. These are particularly important when you use a board contact to help get the grant. Use the signer’s personal stationery or note cards. These notes can be very short, something like this: