USADF and The Mandela Washington Fellowship Develop A New Grants Management Course

Feb 12, 2021

Managing a grant is about “more than money.”

Sure, you win a grant and get an infusion of free capital to start a project or expand your organization.

And, you also have these opportunities:

  1. to test out your hypothesis,
  2. to build your network, and
  3. to increase your sphere of influence.

How?

By learning from USADF, the grant funder, and young African leaders, the grantees, who have successfully managed their own grants.

In partnership with the Mandela Washington Fellowship, USADF has developed a new Grants Management course – exclusively for Fellowship Alumni. 

What are some of the challenges we are exposing Fellows to, so they can carry out their grants well, and do so in ways that will continue to reap benefits? 

We went to the Fellows directly, to get some of their perspectives and best practices.  Co-instructors of the course alongside USADF – Adjo Dede Asare of Alfie Designs in Ghana and Mmabatho “Batho” Mokiti of DreamGirls Academy, Mathemaniacs, and RedShift Local Store Connector in South Africa – are both founders of social ventures funded by USADF and had this to say: 

“You need to be accountable to your funder, on what is and isn’t working as planned, and go beyond the minimum requirements of reporting.”

“Grantees sometimes make the mistake of focusing on their activities, instead of involving their funders and other stakeholders in the stories and data on the actual outcomes and impact they are creating, to transform people’s lives.”

“Grant-making at its best is about building relationships of ‘shared value’ – funders and founders need each other to solve the problems we both care about and are tackling.”

USADF is glad for the opportunity to share its lessons learned and know-how from supporting young African leaders since 2014 with grant funding, advice, and other support to start and scale their business ventures.  We are also pleased to showcase over a dozen USADF-funded Fellows in the course, in addition to Adjo and Batho, who share their best practices and experiences managing grants with their peers. 

Since 2014, USADF has awarded over $5 million of entrepreneurship grant funding to young African innovators in more sectors than we can count.  To learn more about this work, go to USADF's Entrepreneurship and Job Creation webpage.

Fellowship Alumni may learn more about our Grants Management Course here.

View the USADF Grants Management Course Trailer here.