Subrecipient monitoring
What a pass-through entity must do to satisfy itself that its subrecipients are using federal money properly — risk assessment before the subaward, monitoring during it, and follow-up on any findings. The obligation is the pass-through’s, and it is not delegable.
Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.
Also called Sub-monitoring · Pass-through monitoring
In detail
Risk assessment comes first and drives everything after it: a new subrecipient with no federal experience gets closer attention than an established one, and the difference has to be documented.
Monitoring is not a form. Reviewing financial reports, checking deliverables, and following up on audit findings are the substance, and an annual questionnaire on its own does not meet the standard.
Against an audit
An audit is an independent examination on a fixed cycle. Monitoring is the pass-through’s own continuous duty and does not wait for one. A subrecipient below the audit threshold still has to be monitored. Neither is anything a record holds: we describe opportunities, not the administration of awards downstream of them.
How GrantTrove stores it
- The funder on a record is the entity that published the notice, so a pass-through appears as itself and links to its own page through the funder record’s `source_url`.
- We do not model the chain from a federal award to a subaward, and that gap is stated rather than implied by an empty column.
Common questions
Can we outsource monitoring?
You can hire help. The obligation stays with the pass-through.
Does a low-risk subrecipient need monitoring?
Yes, proportionately less. Risk changes the intensity, not the duty.
Do you track subawards?
No. We hold published opportunities.