I closed the Grants Module and when I went back to enter more grants my default settings weren't there.

Scholarship programs and Grant programs tend to be managed in different ways.  

The scholarship process tends to encompass a longer period and all scholarships tend to be coded with similar batches and payments- the defaults tend to be the same.  Thus, the scholarship defaults are the same for all users and persist until changed.

Grants are frequently processed by batch and in the course of a day different people might be entering different batches and will use different defaults.  The defaults are retained in a session setting and are associated with the login id.  Once the Grants module is closed, the session settings are removed.  This allows multiple staff to have their own set of defaults at the same time.  Minimizing the module will not lose the settings.  Closing the module ( clicking the "x") will remove the settings.