Are We There Yet? Visualizing Your Path to Funding Diversity
Issue #6: October, 2025
Welcome to Issue # 6 of RunTheNetwork, where I share ideas, tools and resources to build a fee-based funding model, reducing your dependency on grants.
Each month, we’ll dive deep into strategies and solutions to help you build a sustainable funding strategy!
This month, we explore how to measure progress towards your funding diversity goal, without getting bogged down with systems and data!
Table of Contents
Article: SHOW ME THE … Funding Mix!
Quick Framework: Funding Mix Dashboard
Trusted Resource: Storytelling with Data
Q&A: What does “good” look like for our conversion from quotes to awarded projects to funding in the bank?
SHOW ME THE … Funding Mix!
The problem your organization needs to solve is being 100% dependent on grants.
And adding a fee-for-service offer, to complement your in-kind and cash support for research projects, can address that problem.
So you strategize, build project plans, execute those plans, communicate to your stakeholders, and launch!
What’s next?
You need to track your results.
The question you need to answer is:
Are you actually less dependent on grants? Is it working?
Now?
What about now?
Are we there yet?
How do we know?
You need data.
That data can come from:
scrolling and filtering through your project tracker, looking for service fee quotes and work in progress.
checking to see if any invoices have been sent, paid, or are overdue
logging into your bank accounts and look for fee payments
That’s at least 3 different internal systems you need to look at. And it becomes another regular task on your to-do list.
Your workload just increased.
“There must be an easier way to track this information.”
There is.
It’s called a Funding Mix Dashboard.
It’s an up-to-date snapshot of the key activities that influence your funding mix, and their current status. It’s simple. By design.
There is 1 primary measure of progress, and 2 supporting measures.
Primary Measure
Funding Received - YTD (year to date).
How much $$ is coming into your bank account, and what is the source?
Before you launch a fee for service offer, you may only have one or two sources: Grants, and maybe Other.
After your service fee launch, you need to see the service fee funds compared to grant funds.
Supporting Measures
Awarded Fee Projects
This shows the count of approved research projects that you’ll receive service fees for, and their current status. Once a project is paid, those funds will appear in Funding Received.
Completed Quotes
This shows the proportion and amount of each type of support you are including with your research quotes - cash, in-kind, and fee for service. When a PI receives their grant and confirms this work will proceed, the project will appear in Awarded Fee Projects.
How do you use the dashboard?
The simple design is intended to highlight when something out of place or unexpected.
Numbers gradually ticking upwards, and all the proportions look reasonable? Nothing seems odd or unusual? Great, carry on with your day!
BUT if you see:
the value of service fee quotes significantly lower than cash or in-kind quotes, that’s a signal to better understand the requests and quotes that your team is working on.
service fee projects completed but no invoices being sent out, that’s an internal process question for your team.
invoices marked as being paid, but no change in fee amounts received, time to check with the bank, your accountant, and the PI to ensure the money is not being held up somewhere.
Who sees this dashboard?
That’s up to you.
Just you? Makes sense when you’re still learning and getting comfortable with it.
You + your team? Use it at the start of team meetings to talk about progress and challenges, and/or make it accessible online so everyone can take a look regularly. Seeing successes in real time can be a great way to show your team the impact that adding service fees is making to the organization!
Your Board & Advisory Groups? It’s a simple, clean way to communicate the changes that are happening in your organization.
Quick Framework
Funding Mix Dashboard
The dashboard consolidates the three graphs shown above into a single view. This creates a clean, simple visual representation of how adding a fee-for-service offer is changing your organization’s funding mix.
By creating this dashboard, you avoid the need to regularly pull reports from multiple source systems to monitor your progress.
Each chart’s information tells a story and also informs the next step in the process (as indicated by the orange arrows), showing a logical flow between quotes, approved projects, and the resulting change in your funding mix!
**Start Today: Download and save the pdf version of the Funding Mix Dashboard
Trusted Resource
Effective dashboards tell a story at a glance. Storytelling with Data teaches you the fundamentals of data visualization and how to communicate effectively with data. You’ll discover the power of storytelling and the way to make data a pivotal point in your story.
Buy it on Amazon.ca.
Q&A
Let’s address a question you’ve been thinking about but haven’t dared to ask out loud.
What does “good” look like for our conversion from quotes to awarded projects to funding in the bank?
It feels scary to admit you don’t know what “good” will look like. Why?
Adding a fee for service component to your quotes is new for your PIs.
Timelines vary by grant cycles and partner approvals, and you have no control over that.
Leaders worry internal targets will become team performance expectations rather than guides.
But it’s normal not to know yet.
“Good” is learned by watching how your own pipeline behaves over time.
Start with draft targets, then monitor and adjust.
Quote mix: Aim for fee-for-service to be explicitly included on most eligible quotes. If that seems aggressive, start with 30–40% of quotes including a fee component. Based on responses, adjust as needed.
Quote-to-award rate: Establish your baseline from the last 10–15 cash/in-kind only quotes. If it’s 40%, set 40% as a goal, and monitor to see if the fee component of a quote impacts the award rate.
Complete-to-paid time: Note the median days at two steps in the process:
When your team completes the work to when you send the invoice (target 5-10 days)
The time from invoice sent to payment received (target 15 - 30 days).
“Good” is a living, breathing, moving target.
Having the right data available at your fingertips makes it easy to see your funding mix progress.
The approach and strategy outlined in this issue can be implemented independently, but support is available.
Surge Advisory offers tailored services to help you develop and execute a sustainable funding plan that aligns with your mission.
Contact us at runthenetwork.ca to explore how we can support your transition!