Donor and Grant Funds Financial Management: From Award to Audit

Donor money is other people’s money given for a purpose. It comes with a period, a budget and a set of rules, and every cost charged to it must be provable. This course shows finance staff, programme managers and directors in non-profits and foundations how to manage grant funds from the day an award is signed to the day it is closed.

You follow Palesa Tlhape, Grants Finance Manager at the fictional Kuvanya Foundation in Johannesburg, through her first year with three grants, a community partner near Rustenburg and work in Kitwe.

This course is independent. It explains donor rules, accounting guidance and published frameworks in its own words, and does not reproduce any donor’s templates or guidance. It is not endorsed by, or affiliated with, any donor, standard-setter, regulator or organisation named in it. Donor rules differ by award: always follow your own grant agreement.

What you will learn

• Explain why restricted funds need their own rules, and map who funds what, until when and on what terms
• Read a grant agreement for the clauses finance must own, and set up a system for each before money moves
• Build a donor budget by unit cost, and test each charge as eligible, allocable and reasonable
• Share costs fairly, recover indirect costs once, and show the board the full-cost gap
• Code every transaction to a fund and grant, apply the agreement’s exchange-rate method and test budget changes before spending
• Assess partners, manage advances and spot checks, and respond to red flags, safeguarding concerns and aid-diversion risk
• Prepare donor financial reports, respond to audit findings, and close out a grant that ends early

Your toolkit

Five toolkit lessons give you templates to copy into Excel: a grant agreement checklist, funding map and compliance calendar; a budget template, eligibility checker and allocation workbook; a ledger coding structure, procurement file, asset register, exchange-rate log and variance tracker; a partner capacity assessment, monitoring plan, spot-check checklist and advance tracker; and a donor report template with audit-readiness and close-out checklists.

How figures and rules are used

Real donors, standards and regulators are described as they stood in October 2026. Story donors, grants, people and exchange rates are fictional. Donor rules differ by award: the course teaches principles and always sends you back to your own agreement.

How the course works

There are five modules, each with four lessons and a short quiz. You need 70% on each quiz to complete the course and earn your certificate. The course does not prepare you for any certification exam.