This is my last in a series of four posts that explore the causes and implications of a difficult reality. In the interest of being strategic and making greater impact, many grant funders are becoming increasingly focused, structured, and in some cases, prescriptive, in their funding. This leaves nonprofits to juggle overlapping, divergent, and, in some cases, competing demands. My first three posts were a little more conceptual or philosophical. I presented some ways of thinking, planning, and collaborating to increase alignment with funders. Now, I want to get down to brass tacks. If you can’t change the conversation (yet), what can you do to better manage your many sets of requirements?
Diagnosing the Problem
First, I’ll share with you some of the tell-tale signs I see that indicate a nonprofit might be re-making itself in the image of its funders or is being pulled in too many directions to keep them all straight.
- When you ask program staff and leaders what success for their program and clients look like, they start naming funders and rattling off grant requirements verbatim.
- You have spreadsheets, forms, or (worse!) programs, that are named (at least unofficially) after the grant that supports them, so your team can keep the requirements straight.
- You only collect the data that’s required by funders.
- It’s only when a grant report is due that program leaders become fully aware of what was promised. Then they spend days or weeks digging through files, spreadsheets, and database queries to sort, organize, and package your data to report according to the funder’s requirements. Even then, it feels a little like cramming a square peg into a round hole.
Each of these pain points could be resolved by some system improvements in how you write and manage grants and how you design your documentation and data collection tools. But if process improvement isn’t on the menu right now, there are some intermediate steps you can take to minimize the madness.
Laying it All Out
One tool that comes from the world of Continuous Quality Improvement and is valuable in making sense of this madness is a Requirements Tree or Table. The tool is intended to visually organize the requirements of multiple stakeholders, so you can see where they overlap or diverge. I’ve adapted it to address this particular challenge.
In the case of grant-makers, their support often is tied to specific expectations or promises regarding four aspects of your programming.
- Who you serve (target population or eligibility criteria),
- How you serve them (activities, dose),
- How many of them you serve & how much service you provide (outputs), and
- What you accomplish (outcomes).
When multiple funders support the same program, but have unique needs and requirements in any of those four areas, things can get messy.
There are three main benefits to using a tool like the Requirements Table:
- Save time digging through files. By consolidating all the requirements in one matrix per program, you save your grant-writer, grant-reporter, and program managers the hassle of digging out and referencing dozens of individual grant applications or grant agreements.
- Coordinate grant and program teams. Everyone will know what was promised, to whom, and for how long.
- Align future promises to avoid self-inflicted wounds. This is the key! If your program leaders and grant team can see at a glance what’s already been promised, they can be avoid making new promises that diverge or conflict. I see so many non-profits make life harder for themselves by writing each grant in isolation, without considering their bigger funding picture and the interaction of their various funders’ requirements. A tool like this allows you to see where it might be possible to kill two birds with one stone. It is often possible to align multiple funder requirements by using the same outcome statement, indicator, or measurement tool where funders’ interests and definitions overlap, even if their labels or vocabulary don’t.
Here’s a simple template for you to adapt and use.
To my friends who work as Grant Writers and Grant Managers, I bet your program leaders will love you if you created and maintained a tool like this.