Why yes! We can help you solve your grantmaking problem

This month's 'how to' essay is the latest to share some of what we have learned by doing consulting with grantmakers in the UK, Europe and the US.

If you're a grantmaker and you're facing a problem you're not quite sure how to solve, please do talk to us. Over the last year we've helped funders to solve problems that range from faciltiating a single tricky meeting, through to setting up an entirely new foundation. Get in touch here, or just hit reply. Here's how we can help.


How to prevent unwritten criteria from creeping in when awarding multiple grants

Here’s a familiar situation for most grantmakers. A big day is coming up where a number of grants are going to be judged, some ending up in the succesful pile and some not.

It might be you and your colleagues doing this judging, or it might be a board or external panel. Whatever the system, preparing for it is a huge amount of work and by the night before you're probably feeling pretty knackered.

The day dawns and the judging starts. You might work for a funder that has a clear scoring system here, with points awarded to different criteria. Or it might all be a bit more based on gut feel. But whatever system you have in place, scoring and rating is fundamentally the business of the day.

Time passes. The assessors do their thing. Gradually all the proposals get rated, and towards the end of the day you've got your list of successful applicants.

Now in theory most grants assessment processes should stop here. The proposals with the top scores should get the money, everyone else gets polite 'we're sorry' emails. 

But that’s very often not actually how these meetings actually end.

Instead, as things are winding up, one of the judges reviews the pile of neatly sorted proposals and feels a sudden sinking feeling in their stomach. Then they pipe up and make an observation like this:

• “This set seems to be a bit skewed towards only big charities, isn’t it?”
• “Ooh it’s all a bit ‘Londony’, isn’t it?”
• “Oh God we've just chosen ten organisations that are all run by men"

And this is where the familiar but often unofficial game of balancing the grants portfolio starts.

Now, it is totally legitimate for a grantmaking organisation to seek some sort of balance in terms of who it gives money to. But this moment of balancing is a really dangerous moment for good grantmaking because this is when unwritten criteria can creep in most easily.

Balancing act

What is an unwritten criteria? And why are they so bad?

In a funding context, criteria are simply the list of things grantmakers are looking for in funding proposals. Applicants will usually find the criteria that a funding organisation uses by reading the "how to apply" guidance written for them.

An unwritten criteria means a criteria that grantmakers are going to apply when judging applications, but which is never written down or shared with the applicants. Because the grantseekers can't see such unwritten criteria, they don’t get to adjust their proposal to demonstrate that they can meet them. Nor do the applicants get the chance to read the unwritten criteria and conclude "Oh! Well, I won't apply then, because our proposal will never be selected". 

Unwritten criteria are also known as hidden criteria, but whatever name you use they are really terrible for fair, impactful grantmaking. They waste masses of applicants' time spent writing applications that cannot succeed, and they can allow criteria that embed unsavoury biases to creep in to the crucial moments when key funding decisions are made.

For example, if a new and unwritten criteria such as "trustworthiness" is introduced during an end-of-day balancing process, it can easily become a vehicle for all kinds of social prejudices to sneak in, just at the moment when key decisions are being made. These prejudices will - unsurprisingly - normally favour the applicants who the funder already knows.


A better way to handle the balancing of multiple grants

Assuming that you work for the sort of funder where this balancing tend to happen (we acknowledge a few may not allow it), here's a suggested path of action:

First, you should make everyone in the process aware that there is going to be a balancing stage at all. That means putting it in your published guidance. You should explain what it is, why it will happen, and when it will happen.

Second you should tell applicants what sorts of criteria will be used to achieve the balance the judging panel will be trying to meet, for example:

• A balance of organisations in different parts of the country.
• A balance of large and small organisations.
• A balance of organisations run by people from different social groups.

Getting these criteria written down honestly may mean gently twisting a few arms of your judges, to get them to be honest about the factors they care about.

Finally, you should facilitate the balancing conversation with the written-and-published balancing criteria nailed clearly to the wall. For bonus points, appoint someone around the table to be the party-pooper who calls out their colleagues when someone suggests using an unwritten criteria. They won't be popular, but they will making your process fairer, better and fundamentally more Modern Grantmaking.

Have you ever experience a grants balacing process you thought was especially good? Or really awul? Hit reply and let us know, in confidence.



Next Modern Grantmaking Trainings

We’re next running our ‘Modern Grantmaking Fundamentals’ training on 27th March 2024. Our last workshop sold out so book your place here now!

We’re also running an updated ‘Improving Grantseeker Experiences’ training workshop a week earlier, on 20th March 2024. Book now!


Latest Reading - Modern Grantmaking recommends 

• IG Advisors speak with two MacKenzie Scott grantees to talk about the experience of receiving a surprise phone call offering massive piles of unrestricted funding. Listen to the episode here. 
• Interested in the role of random selection in grantmaking and handing out other opportunities? There's now a 'How to' guide from Pervasive Media Studios and the recently merged Jerwood Arts. 
• The Foyle Foundation (UK) announced that it will complete its grantmaking programme and close in 2025, after giving another £23m in grants over the next two years.
• London Funders will be piloting a shared approach to due diligence to try and help reduce the time and resources grantseekers spend on funding applications. Take a look at how they’ve designed the pilot and how other funders can get involved.
• The Trust-Based Philanthropy Project has created a guide that invites a reimagining of the program officer role - “away from conventional norms of compliance and oversight, and towards trust-based norms of partnership, collaboration, and service". 
• The Economist recently published a special series of short articles on philanthropy. These explore approaches such as ‘no strings giving’ and are all accessible here (behind paywall, free trial is available).
• ARIA, the UK's new DARPA-inspired R&D agency has written up a bit about how their model works. It's really quite different from most funders and so worth a look.

How about a new job or trustee role in grantmaking?

• Cripplegate Foundation/Islington Giving is hiring for a Director of Finance and Resources.£60,000 - £65,000 per year. Deadline is 10am, 26 January 2024.
• The Nutritional Wellbeing Foundation is hiring for a trustee (unpaid). Deadline is 5pm, 26 January 2024.
• UnLtd is hiring for a Director of Social Entrepreneur Support. £70,644-£77,709 + £3,285 London Weighting. Deadline is 29 January 2024.
• Corra Foundation is hiring for a Finance Manager. £43,359 – £47,448 pa FTE (role is part-time / salary is pro-rata). Deadline is 12pm, 31 January 2024.
• John Ellerman Foundation is hiring for a Grants Officer. £35k per year. Deadline is 12pm, 12 February 2024.

Want to see your job ad in next month’s newsletter? Ping us! We now only share job ads that #ShowTheSalary. 


Next Modern Grantmaking Trainings

We’re next running our ‘Modern Grantmaking Fundamentals’ training on 27th March 2024. Our last workshop sold out so book your place here now!

We’re also running an updated ‘Improving Grantseeker Experiences’ training workshop a week earlier, on 20th March 2024. Book now!

Grantmaking ‘joke’ of the month

Did you hear about the foundation trustees who cryogenically froze their brains?

They wanted the foundation to exist in pituitary.


Got any terrible or actually funny grantmaking jokes to share?......tell us. 


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Who writes this newsletter?

We are Gemma Bull and Tom Steinberg - we run Modern Grantmaking. We do consulting and training specifically for funders, and wrote a book on how to be a modern grantmaker, too. We love chatting to anyone with any interesting news in grantmaking-land, so please do get in touch.