How to Prove Taxpayer ROI on Government Grants
For every dollar spent on a publicly funded grant, what did taxpayers get back? That's the question government grant managers are increasingly required to answer — for legislators, constituents, and oversight bodies.
This video shows how Submittable's reporting tools take you from basic spending tracking to provable, presentation-ready ROI on publicly funded programs.
Using a $500,000 workforce development grant as an example, here's what Submittable tracks automatically:
✅ Inputs — dollars invested and programmatic data
✅ Outputs — people trained, program completion rates
✅ Outcomes — job placement rates, time to employment, six-month and one-year employment retention
✅ External data integration — tax revenue generated, avoided unemployment costs
✅ ROI dashboard — exportable to slides in a few clicks for your next legislative briefing
In the example shown: for every $1 invested in the workforce development grant, $0.36 came back in first-year tax revenue alone — a projected 5-year return of $892,800 on a $500,000 investment. That's the kind of ROI your legislators and constituents can see.
Submittable is grant management software for government agencies, local governments, and state programs built for the full grant lifecycle — including the impact reporting and ROI documentation that public accountability demands.
Transcript:
Taxpayer ROI on publicly funded grants comes down to one simple question. For every dollar spent, what did taxpayers get back?
With Submittable's reporting tools, you can go from just tracking spending to actually proving impact.
Here's how. Imagine a five hundred thousand dollars workforce development grant to train unemployed adults in high-demand tech skills.
As your grant management system, Submittable will automatically track your inputs, such as dollars invested and programmatic data. You'll also use Submittable to track outputs from awardees.
How many people were trained? How many completed the program?
Over time, you'll be able to track outcomes as well. Graduates placed in jobs, time to placement, employment rates at six months, a year, and beyond.
And then the number that changes everything.
What was the actual return on the investment?
Connect external data points into Submittable as well to tell that full story, like tax revenue generated and avoided unemployment costs.
Put it all together in a dashboard that exports to slides in just a few clicks.
In this case, for every one dollar invested in that workforce development grant, zero three six came back in first year tax revenue alone. Over five years, that's a projected return of eight hundred and ninety two thousand eight hundred dollars on a five hundred thousand dollars investment.
That's ROI your legislators, and more importantly, your constituents can see.
See what Submittable can do for your reporting with a custom demo.
