I have a monad $T: \mathcal{C} \to \mathcal{C}$ on a (Grothendieck) abelian category which preserves filtered colimits and direct sums (but is not exact). There is a finite collection $G$ of compact, projective objects which generate $\mathcal{C}$ in the sense that every object $X$ is presented as a cokernel $R_1 \to R_0\to X\to 0$ of objects $R_1$ and $R_0$ which are (possibly infinite) direct sums of objects in $G$.
I know that $T$ is idempotent on $G$: Can I conclude that $T$ is idempotent on $\mathcal{C}$?
If the answer is 'no': what sorts of extra conditions do I need to check? In my case, I have access to the category of algebras for this monad as well, and what I really want to know is that the forgetful functor is fully faithful. Any ideas would be appreciated.