Final and Interim Reports

All grants require a final report that reviews and analyzes the things learned in the course of the grant project and that accounts for the funds spent. Specific guidelines for your grant report are sent with the initial grant contract.

Reports are due 30 days after the close of the grant period.

If grant projects exceed 12 months, interim reports may be required. Consult your grant contract for deadlines specific to your grant.

Please notify the Wabash Center 30 days in advance if you are not going to meet the reporting deadlines listed on the contract.

When writing the final narrative report, we understand that no project proceeds entirely as planned. Some strategies work better than hoped, others do not. But an honest assessment of what worked and what did not is generally useful for future work.

Put your project into a larger context of reflection and interrogate its assumptions and method. How did your strategies and design work? What might you or others do differently in the future? What do you see now about your problem or question that would press you to do things differently?

Final reports have three parts:

Final Narrative Report that is written by the grant’s project director. This report interrogates the goals, activities, and outcomes of the project to see what was learned during the course of the project.
Official Financial Report that is prepared by the institution’s financial officer. It accounts in detail for the expenditure of the grant funds.
Learning Abstract that summarizes the grant project. This abstract will be posted to the Wabash Center website.

Final Narrative Report

We are interested in knowing what you did, what you learned, what questions were answered and what ones were not, and what follow-up work you plan to do. The report should be approximately 12 pages in length.

Presenting Question and Goals – Briefly summarize your presenting question or problem for the grant project. How did this shape the design, strategies, and activities? What were your goals for the project? What were your hopes for its outcome?
Project Activities – Indicate what activities were undertaken and/or accomplished in this reporting period. How did these activities advance specific project goals? How realistic were your timeline and expectations? What adjustments did you make to the design or activities?
Internal Evaluation – Describe the processes that you used for evaluating the success of the grant. What did these processes tell you? What feedback did you receive? What did the grant project accomplish? What did you learn as you carried out the work?
Reflection – Reflect on the significance of what happened. What have you learned about your presenting question or problem? What has the grant helped you learn about your institution or teaching context? What are the challenges that you see ahead?
Next Steps – Sketch out the next steps for you or your institution in relation to your project (either for the coming reporting period or for continuing the work of the grant once it is done). What steps are you taking to sustain this effort when the grant ends?
Dissemination – How are the findings being disseminated? Are there any grant products to share at this time? What are your plans to present what you learned to professional colleagues?

Official Financial Report

The financial report accounts in detail for the expenditures of the grant funds. The project director and the institutional financial person should be working closely to track expenses and to report accurate information to the Wabash Center in a timely manner.

The financial report must be prepared and signed by the financial officer of your institution. It may be sent as a hard copy or from the financial person’s email account to Stacie Cordell, cordells@wabash.edu.

Review the budget that was approved by the Wabash Center.
List each line item and the amount that was approved. Report the totals for each line item for the current reporting period, the total for each line for the cumulative grant period, and what the balance is per line.
Explain any variation of $500 or more per line item with written comments.
Determine where you are with your grant budget and if any Budget Revision Request should be made to move funds from one line to another line. See the next few pages for examples.
You are required by the contract to return remaining funds to the Wabash Center with the final Financial Report. If you have ideas for the excess funds that are congruent with the original grant goals, contact the Wabash Center for approval prior to the end of the grant period. This requires the submission of a Budget Revision Request.

Learning Abstract

In less than 150 words, summarize what you learned from the project’s activities and conversations. What might your project contribute to the conversation on teaching and learning? This will be posted on our website with your Proposal Abstract for others to read.

Grant Products

It is of critical importance to us to know about any products that may be generated as a result of your grant. The Wabash Center would like to receive copies of any grant products (4 copies of books, DVD’s, audio and video tapes, and 2 copies of articles and/or published documents) as well as information about websites, data collections and bibliographies that are produced as part of the work of the grant.

Questions and more information:
Stacie Cordell
Grants & Finance Administrator
cordells@wabash.edu
800-655-7117

Final Grant Reports are considered by the Wabash Center to be internal documents.

A conference paper or article, which is written to disseminate the findings of the grant to one’s colleagues or a professional group, is not considered an evaluative report of the grant project.

Interim Grant Reports Should follow the same guidelines as the Final Report: please provide a narrative and financial accounting of the activities for the time period covered by the report.

A Revised Budget Request should accompany the report if there are future expenditures that will vary from the approved budget.

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