A declination results from a combination of factors, not a single reason. Requests need not be perfect to be funded, but a request that presents a number of negative factors is at a serious disadvantage. Here are some of the most common characteristics of unsuccessful requests:
Examples: The board is very deferential to the board chair or the CEO, has spotty meeting attendance, or has little to no committee participation.
Example: The agency offers an educational program taught by untrained volunteers who operate without any curriculum guidelines.
Example: The agency cannot show whether a long-standing afterschool program, the agency’s centerpiece effort, leads to any learning or behavioral gains among participating children.
Examples: The agency has generated worsening operating deficits for five years straight, but does not have a meaningful plan to reverse the decline, and the board seems uninvolved or unconcerned. Or the agency has complicated finances and significant revenues, but cannot provide a recent audit, or a sound explanation for the lack of an audit.
Examples: The agency does not mention the resignation or dismissal of key staff, withdrawal of major support, or pending litigation.
Example: The agency knows that a long-standing government grant, representing a significant portion of its revenue, will end in a year, but has not started developing other financial resources to replace it.
Example: An agency does not perform adequate community research before developing a new program, and therefore cannot demonstrate convincingly why its program is actually needed or how it is unique.
Example: The agency is requesting $100,000 for a $1 million piece of equipment, which will have a useful life of five years and serve 200 people.
Example: An agency projects it will need $250,000 per year in new philanthropic support to sustain a proposed program. But the agency has never previously raised more than $20,000 in a single year, and does not plan to add staff to its development operation.
Examples: The agency serves a generally affluent metropolitan area like Houston, which has a large number of private philanthropists and grantmaking foundations relative to other parts of the state. Or a private school has a strong network of wealthy alumni and parents who can support the project.
Examples: The agency submits a request for a building program that is still largely conceptual, with no final architectural plans or firm cost estimates yet developed. Or the agency presents a request for a “demonstration project,” but has not yet decided how the project will be evaluated or how it might be replicated.