Understanding our internal review process will help make the process smoother for all.
We currently receive about 250 to 275 letters of inquiry (LOIs) each year, resulting in 150 to 170 complete proposals per year. We also make more than 85 grant payments and review periodic reports from grantees.
That’s a lot of paperwork. So with our limited staff, we rely heavily on grants management software to handle administrative tracking of requests, payments, and reports. The heavy paperwork is another reason why we have begun accepting LOIs, grant applications, and grant reports online.
Once you submit your LOI or grant application online, or in paper format to our office, the review process begins. If you have submitted an LOI or grant proposal to us in the past, you will notice the online forms closely resemble what we require in the paper format.
We review all LOIs and proposals to determine if they are complete. Once they are complete, we will send you an email or letter acknowledging we received your request and notifying you when you should expect to hear from us next.
Within two weeks after the deadline for LOIs, the president and the program officer work jointly to prepare an executive summary of each LOI for the board. The directors do not review the actual LOIs submitted.
When submitting your LOI, take a step back and read it anew. Based on the information it contains, would someone who is unfamiliar with your agency and project be able to describe your request accurately and succinctly? Have you omitted anything essential to a correct understanding?
The LOI executive summary describes the agency in general and the particular project or program for which funding is sought. At this stage, staff does not evaluate the agency’s finances, program results, or other factors that are part of the full grants review process. The principal question is whether the directors believe the request is a good fit with the Foundation’s mission and grantmaking priorities.
If a majority of the directors are interested in a request, the LOI advances to the next stage. If a request cannot muster a majority, we decline the LOI unless a director has indicated a particularly strong interest in the request. Historically, the board has invited proposals from about 60% of applicants.
Within about six weeks after the deadline, all agencies that submitted LOIs receive a letter from the Foundation notifying them whether or not they may submit a full proposal.
It is usually bad form to make significant changes to a request between submission of the LOI and full proposal without prior discussion with Foundation staff. For example, if the Foundation invited a proposal for $25,000 based on the LOI, it is unwise to assume the directors will be just as interested in a full proposal for $50,000.
We encourage agencies to double-check their proposals and attachments before submission to ensure that all required elements are covered, that photocopies are clear, and so forth. If you are submitting online, attachments must be in place before the system will allow you to submit. If something is missing, you will see a note written in red indicating the attachment(s) that need to be included.
Once your proposal has been submitted you will receive an acknowledgement either by email or letter letting you know when you should expect to hear from us next. Proposals are assigned to one of two staff members who will review and analyze the request over an eight- to ten-week period.
In broadest terms, reviewers will be examining the strength and weaknesses in three areas: the agency, its finances, and the program or project the Foundation is being asked to fund. On financial questions, we try to look at multiple years of data if available, so we see overall trends and ratios rather than the results of a single year, good or bad.
No single factor determines whether a request will be funded, although it is fair to say a proposal with significant weaknesses in all three areas is unlikely to be successful. (There is a comprehensive list of site visit questions the reviewer might ask when deciding whether to recommend a grant elsewhere in this section.) Rest assured we do consider the agency’s age and maturity in formulating appropriate questions and weighing answers. We have different expectations for a 20-year old agency with a multimillion dollar budget, than we do for a two-year old agency with a $200,000 budget.
The reviewer will set up a site visit either in person or by telephone. (See hints for site visits elsewhere in this section.) Before the visit, the reviewer will analyze the agency’s financial statements and tax returns. The reviewer may also talk with other funders and perform research appropriate to the agency and request, such as checking on the agency’s status with regulatory agencies, before formulating a funding recommendation.
As with the LOIs, directors do not review the actual proposals themselves. The reviewer will prepare an executive summary, generally two pages long, that includes a description of the agency and project, the strengths and weaknesses of both, and the reviewer’s recommendation about funding. These executive summaries are provided to the directors, all of whom sit on the Grants Review Committee, a committee of the whole. Directors bring years of business, financial, and community experience to the process.
The Foundation board awards grants at its regular meetings in June and December. The Grants Review Committee meets twice a year, a few weeks prior to the board meeting at which grants will be awarded.
At the beginning of each fiscal year, the board approves a tentative grants budget for the year, taking into account multiple factors such as the federally mandated 5% payout rate for private foundations, estimated expenses, and projected investment growth. Just before the Grants Review Committee meeting, the staff updates these projections and suggests revisions to the grants budget if necessary.
Going into the committee meeting, the directors have reviewed the collective executive summaries as well as a worksheet summarizing the staff’s recommendations about funding.
At the conclusion of the meeting, the committee agrees upon a slate of grant recommendations that will be formally approved at the next board meeting. Some recommendations remain tentative, even after the committee meeting, if the committee members ask for additional research to be conducted. Or a board member may have been unable to attend the committee meeting but wishes to discuss a request with the rest of the directors. For these reasons, grant decisions are not final until the board meeting.
We attempt to notify applicants of grant decisions within one to three days of the board meeting. Successful applicants receive both an award letter and a grant contract spelling out the purpose of the grant, the payment date, and other conditions.
Unsuccessful applicants receive only a letter. But we encourage disappointed applicants to contact us by phone so that we can explain why the Foundation declined the request, in the hopes of helping the agencies strengthen future requests.
We attempt to pay our grants at a time that is optimal for both the agency and the Foundation. Grants awarded in June are paid within six months. Grants awarded in December are paid up to a year later, but most are paid sooner.
Our grant contract requires agencies to report back to us within thirty days after the grant has been fully expended, or the project is completed, whichever occurs first. We would like to know two things. First, is how the grant funds were expended. The second is whether the project or program met the goals and objective as outlined in your grant proposal. Agencies that submit requests online can also submit grant reports online. If you submit online, you can easily pull up the goals and objectives that you included in your proposal. You may even want to copy and paste that information into the report as a reminder of the purpose of the grant and what the program or project was intended to accomplish.
We realize not all programs or projects will be successful in meeting the original goals and objectives and that some of these measures change over time. If a program does not meet its objectives, we would like to know why and how the agency will make changes to future programs. If there is a significant change in how the grant will be carried out or a significant change within the organization, such as a loss of federal funding which leads to the closing of the program, call the office to discuss these changes and how they may affect the grant award.
We observe a two-year window between grants. For those organizations that receive funding, therefore, the agency should submit its grant report and wait 18 months from the grant award date before submitting another LOI. For example, if an agency received a grant award in June 2010, the agency could submit a LOI in December 2011 for the spring 2012 grant cycle.
If a request is unsuccessful, there is no waiting period to resubmit an LOI; however, we do recommend a discussion with staff about the reasons for the decline before resubmitting. An immediate resubmission, without addressing the reasons the prior request failed, is likely to meet the same result.