Pre-award risk assessment:
a practical framework for commissions

What the risk assessment should cover

• Financial stability — audit history, findings, and financial management capacity
• Operational capacity — staffing, systems, and experience managing federal awards
• Past performance — prior grant results, timeliness of reports, and compliance history
• Program design risk — feasibility of the proposed model, targets, and recruitment plan
• History with your commission — for continuation and recompete applicants

Make it consistent

Use the same criteria and rating scale for every applicant. Inconsistent risk assessments are worse than none — they create the appearance of arbitrary treatment and are hard to defend in an appeal or audit.

Each assessment should produce a clear rating (for example, low / medium / high risk) with written justification, and that rating should travel with the award decision.

Connect it to the award decision

A risk assessment that lives in a separate spreadsheet from the award decision is easy to lose and hard to produce later. The assessment should be linked to the application and the award — so when an auditor or AmeriCorps asks for the trail, it's one record, not a scavenger hunt.

How The Grant Gateway handles it

The Grant Gateway includes operational and financial risk assessments tied directly to each award, with full edit history. Staff complete the assessment in-platform, the rating attaches to the award decision, and the entire record — assessment, justification, decision — is in the audit log.