How did I miss this until now?! The latest National Grants Partnership white paper as been released, titled, The Need for Federal Grants Management Standards [PDF]. From the executive summary: 

In an effort to achieve [the goals of grants streamlining] and provide context to the topic of grants standardization, this white paper sets out to provide a brief background and history on standardization, addresses the need for grants management standards based on survey and interview responses, and outlines recent developments in the areas of grants streamlining and standardization. 

Massive kudos should go to Merril Oliver of the Maryland Governor’s Grants Office for leading the effort to produce this paper, which I co-chaired (but, really, Merril did all of the work of keeping the team going and getting the paper published!). The paper contains the results of a survey completed by grantors and grantees across the country, so it really gives a good flavor of the standards that exist, how they are being used, and how they might be used in the future.