Grant-funded positions fail at both ends. At setup: the hire happens before anyone reads the award's salary cap, the offer letter implies permanence, and time tracking is an afterthought until the first audit asks for effort certifications. At sunset: everyone avoids the renewal question until the grant ends, and a foreseeable funding cliff becomes a same-week layoff of someone who did nothing wrong.
This checklist runs the full lifecycle: setup with funding splits and honest offer language, operating disciplines — contemporaneous time and effort tracking, duties-drift monitoring, cap checks before raises — a renewal-risk review that starts six months out with a committed employee-notification date, and a sunset plan that processes the ending as the clean layoff it is.
Who should use this lifecycle checklist
- Executive directors and program managers hiring on grant funds
- Grants and finance managers who own effort reporting
- Nonprofits with split-funded staff across multiple awards
- Organizations approaching a renewal cliff right now
What it helps prevent
- Employees learning at hire's end that their job was 'always temporary'
- Time-allocation records that can't survive a grant audit
- Grant rules (caps, match, allowability) discovered after the hire
- Renewal cliffs that become same-week layoffs
- Disallowed personnel costs the organization must repay
What’s inside
- Phase 1 — Setup (before posting)
- Phase 1a — Honest Offer Language
- Phase 2 — Operation (ongoing)
- Phase 2a — Duties Drift Log
- Phase 3 — Renewal Risk (start 6 months out)
- Phase 4 — Sunset Plan
Mission does not replace infrastructure. If the same people problem keeps coming back, the system needs to be rebuilt.
Faulkner HR Solutions helps Texas employers, nonprofits, municipalities, and growing businesses fix the people systems behind recurring workplace problems. If this resource raised a risk flag, do not guess your way through the next step.