April 30, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Kelly Kleiman, a laywer and journalist who blogs as The Nonprofiteer, urges her nonprofit clients to spend more time wooing individual donors than writing grant proposals. A new report on the downsides of the evaluation craze among grant makers, by ProjectStreamline.org, underscores why.
“The report’s most provocative observation is that grantors’ evaluation demands of grantees are the philanthropic equivalent of outsourcing — that is, securing services from underpaid and unrepresented workers,” writes Ms. Kleiman.
Grant makers are better positioned than grantees to evaluate success, both because they have the money to do so and because they’ve (presumably) seen more of it. Involve grantees in discussions about evaluation, says Ms. Kleiman, but don’t make them assume the entire burden of determining success.
Other perils of the grant maker-grantee relationship?
Charities can be tempted to stray from their mission in pursuit of a big grant, writes Ms. Kleiman. “Stop letting the fund-raising tail wag the operating dog. Do what you do, and find people who want to support that,” she says.
What do you think? Do you see many downsides to foundations’ focus on evaluating the success of their grants? What more could grant makers do to improve their relationship with grantees?
