grant reports

In Pursuit of Better Outcomes Through Transparency-Fueled Adaptability

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By Don S. Doering, Executive Director, JRS Biodiversity Foundation

This post originally appeared in Glasspockets’ blog Transparency Talk (March 9, 2015). The JRS Biodiversity Foundation, an Exponent Philanthropy member based in Seattle, WA, supports open access to biodiversity data and knowledge.

If you’re a small foundation aiming to greater philanthropic impact, how can transparency be a tool? At JRS, we’re using transparency as a lynchpin to greater philanthropic impact through better project management and grantee relationships: transparency for adaptability rather than accountability. Open access to biodiversity information to benefit nature and society is our foundation mission. The principle that data access enables change applies to philanthropy as well as conservation and aligns well with our foundation strategy and culture. Transparency underlies practices we employ such as customized progress and financial reports, detailed report reviews, amending grant agreements and plans, and maintaining grant web pages.

From the first steps in grant applications through final grant reports, we try to model and achieve openness and accessibility. An important moment for new grantee relationships is an orientation video-conference that introduces our approach for managing the funded project. We use the call and future communications to promote the continued refinement of thoughtful, qualitative and quantitative indicators that can lighten grantees’ reporting burden and to let us collaboratively identify areas where plans need to change. During the project, we regularly remind project directors that the plan made months or years earlier to win our funds was merely the starting point; they need to execute the best plan today to meet their stated goals, which requires flexibility on their part and on ours. When grantees are transparent about what is going wrong, we’ll help them revise budgets and plans to do what makes sense based on the current context. Rose-colored reporting and rigid grant agreements don’t help anybody, and candor keeps the small challenges from becoming big problems. We try to keep a promise to our partners that we’ll match our attention to milestones and metrics with our enthusiasm to adapt to emergent challenges and opportunities.

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Inverting the Power Imbalance: Testing a New Grantmaking Program That Enables Nonprofits to Do Their Jobs

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By Suzanne Skees, Skees Family Foundation

Excerpted from the original post that appeared on Seeds of Hope, the Skees Family Foundation blog, on June 28

It sounds ludicrous—and it is: Often we donors throw roadblocks in front of the very programs we seek to support. Requiring reams of application pages, hours of preliminary meetings, and acrobatics of performance if and when we fund, is crazy-making for the social entrepreneurs and nonprofits we supposedly trust to solve our most entrenched environmental, financial, educational, and social problems.

This is not just theory. It’s not overworked, underpaid employees whining. We’ve gleaned an inside view of this reality through field visits with and story gathering for our partners, some of the world’s smallest grassroots organizations. Because our grants are tiny and our ambitions are mighty, we’ve always approached our work as if the time we give to partners’ communications, strategy, program development, and fundraising matters more than money. Our multifaceted style of partnership allows us to see a lot more than our partners’ websites, fundraising events, and annual reports. We try to work with them and for them, rather than the other way around.

No one engaged in grantmaking or impact investing wants to believe we’re thwarting our partners’ best intentions. I tried for years to convince myself that the power imbalance between the donor and recipient didn’t have to exist, if only we approached people with honesty and humility. But guess what? It does. To change that dynamic, we asked, could we change the structure of how we give?

Seeking Ways to Bring Greater Efficiency to Grantmaking

We wondered, when we undertook a landscape analysis of our own funding area (global access to education and jobs), if nonprofits could operate more effectively if they didn’t need to spend so much time, energy, and yes, even funding, on chasing down the next grant dollar. [Editor’s note: See Project Streamline’s Guide to Streamlining, a set of tools to help funders reduce the burden on grantees and themselves]

Our grantmaking committee and all-family board engaged in some wonderfully deep conversations about our intentions. Since we have such a small budget (~$150,000), we want to direct every dollar for maximum impact. We agreed on some core objectives:

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Streamlining Our Grant Process

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By Gail Vento, Lana Vento Charitable Trust

streamliningLana Vento Charitable Trust (LVCT) recently tailored its grant process to fit a local theater’s organizational capacity and reflect the size of its grant. Read about the steps it took to minimize the theater’s paperwork and maximize its time spent on programs.

For the past 7 years, Lana Vento Charitable Trust (LVCT) awarded Pistarckle Theater program-specific grants. Pistarckle is a small nonprofit theater that provides educational programs to youths in addition to running a regular performance program. It is a relatively small organization with an operating and program budget of $330K.

Initially Pistarckle was asked to submit a complete grant application, but, during the grant evaluation process, it became evident that Pistarckle is truly a grassroots program with few staff, none dedicated to grantwriting.

LVCT saw the need to minimize the theater’s time spent gathering paperwork and maximize its time spent on programs. In an effort to do so, and only after establishing a healthy grantmaking relationship, our application process was streamlined in the following ways.

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How to Know You Made a Difference: Grant Impact Reports

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By Dr. Paul T. Penley, Intelligent Philanthropy

Is my giving really making a difference? That is a question that haunts every giver. Every day individuals and foundations make decisions about where to give. Over a million active U.S. charities provide endless opportunities to support big visions and passionate leaders. The difficult task for those of us screening opportunities is how to know who is really making a difference.

The task should be easy. Charities should be measuring their performance and reporting the results. All of us who issue grants at foundations should have no more difficult a task than reading grant impact reports from previous gifts. But it’s not that simple. The quality and clarity of grant reporting is all over the map. So what do you do to raise the bar for grantee reports? Here are a few things we learned. Continue reading →