1.1 Welcome: Managing Other People’s Money for a Purpose (Start Here)
Donor and grant funds are money given to an organisation to achieve a stated purpose, within a stated period, under rules set by the giver. The organisation holds the money in trust for that purpose. It must be able to show, cost by cost, that the money did what the agreement said it would. This course is about doing that well, from the day an award is signed to the day it is closed.
Who this course is for
It is for finance staff, programme managers and directors in non-profits and foundations that receive grants or pass them on to partners. It is also for corporate finance staff who move into a foundation. No earlier grants experience is assumed; a basic grasp of budgets and ledgers helps.
What makes donor money different
- It is restricted. A grant may be spent only on its purpose, within its period and under its rules. Unrestricted money, such as a general donation, can be spent on anything the board approves.
- It is accountable to more than the board. The donor, the people the programme serves and the public all have a stake in how it is used.
- Every cost must be provable. A cost that cannot be evidenced, or that breaks a rule, can be disallowed and must then be repaid from the organisation’s own money.
- Spent is not the same as finished. A grant can look fully spent in the ledger and still be repayable after an audit. Module 5 shows how that happens.
Module 3 shows how restricted and unrestricted funds are kept apart in the ledger.
How the course works
Five modules follow a grant’s life: the rules, the budget, running the money, partners, and reporting, audit and close-out. Each module ends with a toolkit lesson you can copy into Excel and adapt.
| Module | Toolkit (lesson x.4) |
|---|---|
| 1 Donor Funds and the Rules | Grant agreement checklist, funding map, compliance calendar |
| 2 Budgets and Costs | Budget template, eligibility checker, allocation and indirect-cost workbook |
| 3 Running the Grant Money | Ledger coding structure, procurement file and asset register, exchange-rate log and variance tracker |
| 4 Partners and Sub-grantees | Partner capacity assessment, monitoring plan, spot-check checklist and advance tracker |
| 5 Reporting, Audit and Sustainability | Report template, audit-readiness and close-out checklists, reference table |
Worked examples carry a Try it note with the inputs you need to rebuild the table in a spreadsheet. All figures come from one fictional data set, so a number in Module 5 agrees with the same number in Module 2.
What this course does not cover
Fundraising and proposal writing, and the design of monitoring and evaluation systems, are outside its scope. For reading financial statements, see Finance for Non-Finance Managers (course 47). Fraud investigation method is in the Fraud Risk Toolkit (course 42) and anti-money-laundering law in course 7. Public procurement law, which applies to governments rather than grant recipients, is covered in the public procurement courses.
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.
About the case company: Kuvanya Group, its subsidiaries (Kuvanya Bank, KuvaTel, KuvaPay, Kuvanya Mining Supplies and Kuvanya Shared Services), its client “the Power Authority”, the Kuvanya Foundation, the community NGO near Rustenburg, the donors and grants in the story, and every person named in this course are fictional. They were created by EunoiaData for teaching purposes only. Any resemblance to real organisations or people is coincidental. Real donors, standards, countries, laws and regulators are described as they stood in October 2026, and exchange rates in the examples are invented.
Example: In her first month at the Kuvanya Foundation, Palesa Tlhape, the new Grants Finance Manager, closes the books the way she did in group finance. Grant receipts and the group’s donation sit in one bank balance and one income line. Then the European donor’s grant manager emails: how much of the first tranche is unspent, and what was it spent on? Palesa cannot answer from the ledger without a week of sorting invoices by hand. Tendai Musarurwa, Group CFO, who chairs the Foundation’s finance committee, asks her to bring a plan to the next meeting. That plan is this course.
Check before you act: Examples use the fictional Kuvanya Foundation, its partners and invented figures and exchange rates for illustration only. Adapt each tool to your organisation’s policies and to the agreements you hold.
Three views
- From the programme side: A grant pays for a promise. Programme staff need to know early what the money can and cannot buy, so the activities they plan are ones the grant can fund.
- From the finance side: Every rand of grant money needs a trail: which fund, which grant, which budget line, which evidence. Without that trail, finance cannot answer the donor’s simplest question.
- From the donor side: The donor wants to know the money was used as agreed and that the organisation can prove it. Trust grows when answers come quickly and match the records.
Key takeaway
Grant money is restricted by purpose, period and rules, and every cost must be provable. Treat it as money held for someone else until it has been properly spent and accounted for.
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