Does anyone have experience with non-competitive grant models?
Hello everyone! As grant makers and funders, I'm sure we've all had our moments of wishing that we could fund all of the amazing projects that we have the privilege of reviewing. One of my Board Members recently expressed frustration with the number of applicants we have to turn away due to lack of funds, and posed the question "what if we could give a little bit to everyone?"
While divvying up our funding pool equally between all applicants isn't feasible, her question got me thinking about non competitive grant models, or models where all eligible applicants get offered at lease a base amount of funding. A Google search on the topic didn't return many results, so I'm turning to this excellent community for further insight.
Does anyone here have experience with this type of "fund everyone" or non competitive grant models?
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I have had some experience with this sort of funding. Years ago I operated a statewide coalition of teen centers. We brought in large amounts of funding and then split it evenly between the teen centers so long as they submitted a simple application, met certain requirements, and agreed to provide data we could use in making the case for ongoing support. That was years ago, but it worked well. I think the key in that case was the similarity of the services.
I could imagine doing something similar with diverse programs, so long as there was some thread of similar intent.
Best of luck with your exploration.
Barbara
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We do something like this with our partner hospital program. A hospital applies to join the program the first year, everyone is approved initially if they are a hospital with at least 20 pediatric inpatient beds and have a non-profit foundation or government agency (for international mostly) that we can give to. Once a hospital joins the program they just fill out a little "application" every year that says how they used last years gift.
Everyone that does that gets on the list that year and we split up our pool of dollars amongst them all, scaling on size of hospital and if they have a large sum from the previous year they have not spent yet. While the amount can vary year to year on how much they get, the Child Life staff are very appreciative that its a consistent gift they can count on every year to help refresh the games and tech they have available for patients.
While we have only recently started using GLM for this, we have been doing these type of gifts for almost 20 years. Let me know if you want more information.
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