It seems obvious that your charity would spend the money received from grants in the manner the funder agreed to. But I’ve seen many cases where this hasn’t happened. Those running programs sometimes don’t understand that the funder didn’t just make a $15,000 grant—the funder made a grant of $10,000 to be spent on personnel, $500 to be spent on telephone service, $2,500 to be spent on travel, $2,000 to be spent on printing, and so on.

If it turns out you incurred no travel expenses, that doesn’t mean you can spend that $2,500 on something else. Small amounts (like $100 or $200) don’t need clearance, but it doesn’t hurt to keep the funder informed and involved with major changes. This might be an unrealistically strict interpretation of the use of grant money, but if you’re not spending the money as planned, the program probably hasn’t been conducted as planned, either, and that can present problems when reporting the program’s results to the funder. A gentle inquiry of program staff as a program progresses about how the budgeted expenses compare to actual expenses might help avoid misunderstandings or at least nip them in the bud.