By Dr. Stacy Van Gorp, R. J. McElroy Trust
Our goal is to make the McElroy Trust the easiest place to seek funding for good ideas. It’s not the easiest place to get a “yes,” because we see a lot of proposals, ask hard questions, and have high standards. But we try to never make a grantseeker jump through hoops.
I estimate that changes we have made in recent years to streamline our grant application and reporting process save our grantseekers (in total) about 840 hours each year, increase our net grant size—the dollars received after subtracting the cost of applying for and reporting on a grant, and save time for our staff and board.
Our changes were driven by several factors:
- Our approval rate moved from about 6/10 approved proposals in 2005 to 3/10 during the depth of the recession in 2009.
- Our trustees were interested in ways to enhance our support of youth-serving organizations, even as our assets had decreased.
- For a few years we asked our applicants how long it took to apply. The average response was 10 hours for a 4- to 6-page application. Time spent writing our application ranged from one hour to 80 hours! We discovered there was no relationship between the amount of time spent and our decision to fund. People who spent more time writing were no more or less likely to be approved.
- I was ready for change internally. We had been using staff time to summarize proposals for the board, which seemed cumbersome for us and the seekers.
- We were also asking questions we knew the answers to! For example, we asked the Boys and Girls Club to describe its mission and organization every year, even though we had funded them several times.
