Looking to move from an Annual Grant Cycle to Spring and Fall Cycle
Hello all,
Our Foundation currently runs 1 grant cycle per year (4 different Grants), with applications opening in Feb to March. Then April/May are adjudications, decisions etc. and payments are in June. The funding usually targets projects for the summer and remainder of the year, but they can also use the funding up to the next year (max 1 year from Grant Award Date).
Our Reviewers are finding themselves overwhelmed with the many grant applications they review (we are a large urban area) - thus we are considering splitting them 2 grant intakes in the Spring and 2 grant intakes in the Fall.
My question is - I am looking for some insight from any other foundation with a similar Spring/Fall intake set up? When do you intake applications, when do you adjudicate? And when do you pay out per cycle? How long do they have to use the money up before they can apply again?
Appreciate anyone's input as we begin to map out a plan.
Comments
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Hello,
At Health Foundation of La Porte, we have two grant cycles per year for grants addressing our priorities.
Cycle 1
First or second Friday of January: Cycle opens
Last Friday or first Friday of March: Applications due
March - April: Evaluation
Fourth Friday of May: Recommendations presented to board
June: Applicants notified of decision and grant payments made
July 1: Grant term begins. Our grant term typically was for one year (July 1 - June 30). Over the last few years, we have been awarding more and more multi-year grants (2 or 3 year). When a multi-year grant is awarded, grantees submit an interim report at the end of year 1 prior to year 2 funds being disbursed, etc.
Cycle 2
Fourth Friday of May: Cycle opens
Second Friday of July: Applications due
Late July - first week of September: Evaluation
Fourth Friday of September : Recommendations presented to board
October: Applicants notified of decision and grant payments made
November 1: Grant term starts.
We have maintained the same grant calendar since our first grant cycle in 2017. We are currently looking at making changes as we are changing our board meeting calendar and going into a strategic planning process. Our guideline is that an organization may apply for up to two grants per year in any grant cycle.
Feel free to contact me if you have any questions.
Jessica
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Hi There,
We are a 40 year old public community foundation in Canada. We are serving a much smaller population of 11,000 plus surrounding Indigenous communities that have unceded ancestral territory within our island borders. We had an annual granting cycle with only one grant program until 2018, except for occasional special grants from bequests that had a special purpose competitive cycle annually. Since 2018 we have had twice annual calls for our main Community grants program, twice annual calls for our Youth grants program, and once annually a call for grassroots Neighbourhood grants program (Very small award values for community-building projects). Over the pandemic, we developed three other internal funds that have annual competitive cycles - an Indigenous grants program, Land protection program and (when necessary) an Emergency preparedness and response grants program. As a result of this growth in our organization, starting in 2024 we went back to an annual cycle for Community grants, for two main reasons: 1) staff resources to mount so many distinct programs are not present and we are switching grant and donation management software 2) it's more equitable for applicants who are denied a grant in our spring cycle and who do not re-apply in the fall but who may have very eligible projects. We'd rather see all applications in one intake adjudicated against one another. The fall cycle typically only has 1/3 of the budget as the spring cycle, and we were just seeing each cycle oversubscribed, but sometimes applications awarded in the fall might not have been as strong as some that were declined in the spring. We are now proceeding to do a targeted evaluation with feedback from funding recipients about how our programs are serving them as we've run them in 2024. I hope this is helpful to you. Our small staff of 3.1 FTE is very keen to see Trust-based philanthropy taking center stage in our organization as we seek to maximize accessibility of funding to the priorities in the community, while also building capacity for all charitable sectors because we are a full "community foundation".
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Hi Gavin,
Our main competitive grant has 3 cycles each year. We are intentional to never change the dates even if it opens or closes on a weekend. This helps our nonprofits to always know the cycle dates. We grant out up to $150,000 each cycle. Our spring cycle opens on Feb 1-Feb 28, evaluated 2nd Wednesday in April, Approved by board 3rd Wednesday in April, notification the next morning. The summer cycle is June 1-June 30; evaluated 2nd Wednesday in August, Approved by board 3rd Wednesday in August, notification next morning. Fall cycle is Sept 15-Oct 15, 2nd and 3rd Wednesdays in November. I have an external review committee, and they are given the dates at the November meeting for the coming year. Historically, our largest number of applications is in the 1st cycle, but is not an overwhelming number. Wapello County is about 35,000 people. We have a restriction that nonprofits can apply in 2 of the 3 cycles and only 1 application per cycle. Payouts take about a week and the awardee has 1 year to expend the funds.
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Hello everyone! Thank you very much for a quick outline of your grant processes for multiple grant cycles. These are valuable points that will help us as we being charting our own path!
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Following. Our foundation is beginning our very first edition of an intended annual cycle this fall; applications open this coming Monday!
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