How Foundations Can Help Grant Seekers Achieve Results

Many foundations are making efforts to ensure that their grants make a difference. Giving away vast sums of money is a privilege and, in these difficult times, it is heartening to see so many foundations taking steps to make the most of their financial commitments.

In this spirit, foundations should also take the time to solve two of the most vexing problems that face many nonprofit executives: First, what can be done to make sure that program officers present the best proposals to the foundation board members who must approve grants? Second, what can be done to make sure that, once proposals are accepted, well-intentioned foundation staff members do not use their role to force on programs changes that are inconsistent with the purpose for which the programs were originally supported.

Those issues are of increasing importance to small nonprofit groups for whom each grant is critical to the survival of the organization and the accomplishment of their mission. My purpose is not to disparage the dozens of foundations that have supported my work over the years, because the vast majority of foundation officers I have had the pleasure of interacting with have been professional and competent. Rather, my goal is to share important lessons I have learned from working with the best foundation officials.

One of the key measures of foundation staff members is how they perform as a conduit to the board of directors. All foundations struggle to use their resources wisely and when one of my grant proposals is rejected, I can live with it — if the process seems fair and open. Ultimately it is up to the board of directors of each foundation to approve or disapprove the suggestions of a program officer.

In reality, though, program staff members are the gatekeepers, weeding out proposals before they ever get to the board. Of course, proposals supported by a program officer get rejected all the time, but the converse is rarely true: If a program officer does not bring a proposal to the board, it has no chance of getting any money.

A board of directors is well served when it reviews proposals that are based on objective criteria that match the causes the foundation supports. If program staff members do not have the skills or expertise to evaluate a proposal, the board may be deprived of an opportunity to achieve its goals.

A second measure of a foundation’s success is how it uses its “soft power” to augment or hinder the efforts of grantees. Foundations often can do important things that go beyond providing money. For instance, grant makers often bring people and organizations together for conferences or to explore the potential for collaboration.

But there is a subtlety involved in the use of “soft power,” because it is very difficult to say “no” to a program officer who uses soft power to push an idea that you — in your heart of hearts — know won’t work out.

For example, a number of years ago a program officer brought a group of organizations together insisting that, without additional money, we push for an immediate policy change in Washington. I instantly knew that the advocacy effort it would take to persuade policy makers to make the change would cost millions of dollars and take many years. Unfortunately, none of us wanted to challenge the flawed assumptions of the program officer, because none of us wanted to risk losing future grants. So we all worked on the effort, and when it failed, there were plenty of bad feelings to go around.

As the inner workings of foundations are coming under more scrutiny, foundations themselves (and organizations that help them evaluate their performance, like the Center for Effective Philanthropy) have started to use self-assessment tools that will reveal ineffective practices. In the last several years, if my in box is any indication, it has become much more common for grantees to be asked to participate in surveys about foundation effectiveness.

Moreover, it is clearly understood that garnering the right pool of grant applicants, and then supporting grantees with well-thought-out nonmonetary assistance (managerial training, for instance) is crucial to the long-term success of a foundation.

Those are all positive developments, but don’t really provide a framework for dealing with program staff members who limit the pool of applicants or employ soft power in ways that undermine the overall mission of the foundation.

If we lived in a world where nonprofit organizations were richly supported and sources of money were plentiful, it would be easy to deal with misguided or unskilled program staff members: You could try to educate them about why their ideas were not practical or walk away and go to the next foundation.

But, as the vast majority of nonprofit managers know, in today’s fund-raising environment, every dollar is precious and a relatively small number of foundations support any given cause. Most of us can’t afford to walk away from a foundation or be seen as a nemesis by a program officer. Talking to a superior or a board member is fraught with risk and some foundations now explicitly request that you don’t contact board members.

So here are some easy ways foundations could take steps to deal with the problem:

• Foundations should ensure that their performance-assessment surveys include applicants that did not receive grants. I have never received a survey from a foundation that did not support my organization, but it would certainly be welcome. Sure, there may be some sour grapes thrown into the mix, but over all, the comments from rejected applicants will give foundation trustees a broader perspective.

• Since personnel experts now suggest that employee reviews come from an array of perspectives, not just the employee’s immediate manager (the aptly named “360 review”), why not invite one or two grantees to anonymously offer comments on a program officer’s performance?

• While every rejection letter I have ever received tried to make me feel better by explaining that there are so many worthwhile projects and so little money, what would really have been helpful would have been some honest assessment of what distinguished my proposal from one that successfully got support.

• That is a common practice among government and private organizations that support science projects, in which outside reviewers make anonymous comments that are used to strengthen future proposals. I understand that written assessments on every rejected proposal would take up too much time, but how about if every foundation pledged to randomly select 5 to 10 percent of rejected proposals for a real written assessment?

  Those assessments don’t have to be long, but foundations can strengthen charities working on causes they care about by helping organizations to recognize weaknesses in their plans or proposals, as well as eliminate any conjecture about bias or favoritism.

  Almost all of my interactions with foundations have been very rewarding, even if, at the end of the day, my organization did not get any money. On a few occasions, however, it has been hard to avoid the impression that the merits of competing proposals were not considered sufficiently.

If foundations really want to be effective, they need to make sure that their program officers are doing the best job they can to bring forward great ideas.

Joshua Horwitz is executive director of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence, in Washington.