Giving Compass' Take:

• Casey Pechan offers advice for how funders can relax their reporting requirements for grantees in order to remove unnecessary burdens during COVID-19.

• How can funders make sure they maintain trust-based relationships with grantees throughout the pandemic? Are you prepared to relax reporting requirements for grantees in your giving?

• Discover further recommendations for better grant reporting strategies.


Fluxx is a community-focused organization. In fact, one of the reasons many funders come to Fluxx for their grants management solution needs is that our thriving community site acts as a meeting place where hundreds of funders worldwide can convene and share their tips and tricks for streamlining their work.

And this year, a topic we’ve seen surface (and re-surface) is reporting, both amongst our clients and the industry at large. A recent survey from the Association of Charitable Foundations (ACF) found that 90 percent of funders surveyed were relaxing reporting requirements in some capacity for their grantees during the COVID-19 crisis.

Much of this desire to ease reporting requirements is driven by the need to support grantees in new ways during uncertain times. This real-time implementation of trust-based philanthropy – where funders relax reporting requirements and save grantees time in the process – improves grantee relationships while also reducing burden for grantees and funders. Fluxx is proud to support our grantmakers who are adjusting their reporting, and we want to share with you four ways (including examples) that you can also implement eased reporting requirements.

1. To start, call your grantees and ask them about reporting. 

2. Put reporting on pause.

3. If you do require reporting, keep it simple! 

4. Use your grants management solution to keep you streamlined.

We will leave you with the following recommendations; if you ask for a lot of data or long-form storytelling in your reports and you don’t actively use that data, help your grantees by skipping these requirements. And lastly, make sure that the grants management system you use enables you to configure and adjust your reports on the fly – making it easy for staff to manage reports!

Read the full article about reporting requirements by Casey Pechan at Fluxx.