Grant Review Practices

I'm looking for advice from an organization that has experienced growth and had to adapt their grant review process. We are small, but growing. We now regularly receive 50+ grant applications for each cycle and our current process is an "everyone is involved in everything" approach. All board members evaluate the applications (in GLM), staff organizes the results so we have a first draft of a prioritized list, and then we meet (virtually) to review the list and make funding decisions. We add in grantee interviews if needed. It's a process where everyone reviews and has a say in everything, but as we grow, we need a more sophisticated process that spreads out the work but still leads to the board feeling good about the decisions we make.

Anyone else been on this journey and have advice on how to structure grant reviews as an organization grows? Thanks!

Comments

  • ShreeLedfordShreeLedford Posts: 5 ✭✭✭
    Summit 2024 First Compass Anniversary Name Dropper First Comment

    @garrettmarch,

    I want to thank you, on behalf of our Community Programs department, for your insightful idea. One of our programs received way too many requests for each person to review. The idea of splitting them up by focus or program area is a great one. We will likely implement the plan for ours.

  • elianapritchettelianapritchett Posts: 13 ✭✭
    Name Dropper First Comment 5 Likes First Compass Anniversary

    Hi! This is such a great question!

    We typically receive 100+ applications each grant cycle; however, they are split by locality so each application receives between 5-55 each cycle. We have 1-2 staff members do due diligence on the applications (checking documents, IRS status, etc.) before they are reviewed. This process usually takes 1 - 2 weeks depending on what other projects are going on.

    Currently, we have committees of volunteer reviewers that score the applications on GLM and meet to discuss them. They make recommendations which are then approved by our board.

    If an application receives more than 30 or so applications, we may split them between committee members. To do this, we randomly assign reviewers so that each application has at least three reviews.

    Loving all the ideas in this thread!

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