Your TL;DR: With tighter oversight, your proposal must excel in alignment, efficiency, and data-driven accountability. By building evaluation and compliance into your project from the ground up, you create resilience, win credibility, and stay ahead of scrutiny, even when an evaluator isn’t explicitly required.
Federal grantmaking has entered a new era. The August 2025 executive order Improving Oversight of Federal Grantmaking adds senior-level political review, heightens compliance requirements, and demands measurable results.
For Research institutions, accelerators, and other innovation-focused organizations, the message is clear: funding success now depends on proving your impact, running efficient operations, and embedding evaluation into your program from day one.
What the Innovation Ecosystem Should Do Now
- Conduct a Compliance and Readiness Assessment: Evaluate internal controls, reporting processes, and data systems for efficiency and audit readiness. The executive order requires agencies to ensure funding opportunity announcements include only what’s necessary and are in plain language, prioritizing transparency and accessibility.
- Embed Measurable Goals and Impact Metrics from the Start: Develop logic models and define KPIs that map directly to project goals and agency priorities—and ensure they are evaluation-ready.
- Implement Tech-Enabled Reporting and Oversight: Use dashboards, automated reports, and real-time tracking tools to meet the executive order’s mandate for clear benchmarks and progress measurement.
- Prepare for Rigid Review & Accountability: The executive order emphasizes review by senior appointees and subject-matter experts. It requires agencies to “review discretionary awards to ensure they are consistent with agency priorities and the national interest.” Ensure your evaluation systems can deliver defensible, transparent results to both technical and political reviewers.
When to Bring in an Evaluator (Even if Not Required)
- Your project includes clear goals and objectives that must be measured and reported.
- You must submit regular performance reports (e.g., quarterly, semi-annual).
- You manage complex, high-volume, or sensitive data.
- It’s a multi-year or high-dollar award.
- Your project involves high visibility or policy relevance.
How You Leverage Evaluation Strategically
- Align Outcome Metrics with Oversight Expectations: Craft outcomes and benchmarks that satisfy both technical and executive reviewers, avoiding the trap of “over-compliance” by being thoughtful, not bloated.
- Set Up Efficient, Audit-Ready Reporting Systems: Designs dashboards and automated workflows that deliver real-time data, ensuring you can justify drawdowns and outcomes on demand.
- Embed Compliance into Innovation Strategy: Incorporating evaluation reinforces your grant proposal with internal controls, fraud-risk protocols, and transparency, making your application safer, stronger, and smarter.
Your Next Move
Oversight is no longer a hurdle. It’s an opportunity to showcase your project’s integrity and impact. We can assist with design, measure, and report on your success story so you can focus on what you do best: driving change.
Ready To Take the Next Step?
We assist our clients in locating, applying for, and evaluating the outcomes of non-dilutive grant funding. We believe non-dilutive funding is a crucial tool for mitigating investment risks, and we are dedicated to guiding our clients through the entire process—from identifying the most suitable opportunities to submitting and managing grant applications.