Finding Text
Criteria or specific requirement: Indiana Humanities (IH) is required to match outright National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funds dollar for dollar. Condition: IH grant management system contained errors that led to the misaccumulation of matching dollars reported to the NEH. Context: Matching dollars of up to $267,809 were included in the grant management system for grants that were open at close out, either because the grant was withdrawn, or IH personnel did not follow up with the grantee to determine if the final grant information was accurate and complete. Effect: Matching dollars reported to the NEH from the grant management system was over-reported. Excluding these $267,809 in matching dollars, IH still met the dollar for dollar matching requirement. Cause: IH has a significant deficiency in internal controls surrounding the grant management system related to monitoring of open grants. Recommendation: We recommend that controls surrounding the accumulation of grant information within the grant management system be established to provide accurate accumulation of matching dollars including monitoring of this information and follow up with grantees when necessary. Management's Response: "IH is in the process of implementing a new grant database, which includes features such as automated communication tools with grant recipients. One of the challenges that the grants management team has is consistently and timely communicating deadlines and expectations to our recipients. By sending automated reminders ? triggered by specific events such as the end of a grant year, completion date of the proposed project, etc., we can hopefully obtain more timely information from grant recipients. As well, the system will be able to trigger reports to staff of grantees who are delinquent in their reporting such that follow up can occur. As staff receive reports from grantees, they will examine the final report in light of the application that was approved, and request information when there are significant variances between estimated match indicated on the application, and match reported on the final report. Since match is necessary for IH to meet its obligations with the NEH, we want to ensure our recipients are also following through on their obligations. From an IH reporting perspective, on future reports to the NEH, care will be taken to exclude reporting any grants that have not been closed out. This is simply a matter of selecting only closed grants during the current reporting cycle."