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Criteria for awarding grants
Hello! Our community foundation is in the process of reviewing the criteria we use to determine which grant applications we will fund during our competitive community grant cycle. We are looking for best practices. Would anyone be willing to share their foundations criteria and/or scoring rubric/matrix for evaluating grant…
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Grants to Government Entities
Hi all, Due to the nature of our grantmaking, we often end up granting to military installations, national parks, public schools, etc. I've been struggling with how to manage these entries in Foundant when every organization is essentially filtered by their EIN. We have a ton of applicants who, rightfully, end up entering…
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Submitting grants to board for approval
Our board allows staff to approve grants $5,000 or below as long as due diligence has been completed. Our grant committee approves anything above $5,000 via DocuSign. We currently submit an exhaustive list of all grants processed from donor advised funds, designated funds, scholarships, expense to fund, etc., regardless of…
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RFP for Senior Programs/Projects
Hi all, We are planning to open a call for proposals from local nonprofits to support programs/projects focused on seniors specifically. We want to keep the initial RFP flexible and do not want to add many requirements on the type of program it should be however we are thinking we should avoid funding any programs that…
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Challenge Grant Cancellation Letter Example
In GLM we make challenge grant awards with a dollar for dollar match. Once they raise the match we match with our commitment. We have a challenge that isn't going to be met and we need to cancel it in GLM, but I need to send a formal letter advising them of the cancellation. I was wondering if anyone has done this in the…
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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…
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Capital Campaign
Hello, everyone! Does anyone have a capital campaign policy in place that you wouldn't mind sharing? We are in the process of creating one and would like to get ideas, view guidelines, and see an application. Any bit of info helps! If you would like to you can email me at: gracie@dccfound.org Thank you so much.
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Language around engaging in political activity in grant acceptance forms?
Hi everyone, Do your grantees have to sign grant acceptance forms to receive their grants? We started including language directly in the award letter for DAF, Agency, and Designated Funds, but we use electronic grant acceptance forms for discretionary funds through GLM. We thought it might be prudent to add to the form…
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Conflict of Interest - Board Members awarding grants other Non-Profits where they serve on a Board
Our auditors are asking us to compile a list of grants made by Board members (via their DAF or Designated Funds) to other non-profits where they sit on the Board. Has anyone done this and if so, how do you go about generating a report out of CSuite? Thanks.
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Outcomes
We are reevaluating how we collect anticipated outcomes in competitive grant applications. We currently just ask for them to be listed in a textbox, but notice many nonprofits struggle with this portion of the application. How does your organization collect anticipated outcomes in grant applications and what guidance do…
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Performance Measures, Grant Application and Follow-up Report Forms
Hello, I am new to Foundant and I am interested in learning how other foundations structure their application and final report questions pertaining to results/performance measures to facilitate ease of grant monitoring and evaluation. I am wondering how best to structure application questions and final report follow up…
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Have you made any changes to your grant process(es) to make it easier for applicants?
Foundant facilitated a panel of grantseekers to hear what they 'wish funders knew'. Lots of great ideas for improvement. Have you made any changes based on this or other feedback you've received from your applicants / grantees? Please share. Access to the recorded webinar:
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Guidestar and Secretary of State corporation status not matching up
As part of our grant eligibility screen, I run the guidestar charity check before I move applications forward for review. Most all of the applicants checked out on Guidestar as "verified" but when I started building our grant agreements and sent them to our legal counsel for signature, legal counsel found two organizations…
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Partial Funding Question
We are exploring adding a question to our grant application that asks applicants if they would be able to accept/complete their project/program with partial funding. We often partially fund applications and would like to be more transparent up front with applicants. I am struggling to come up with appropriate verbiage to…
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Please share your current grantmaking strategies - competitive and discretionary!
Hi! We would like to hear more about what other folks are doing currently with their discretionary grantmaking funds (FOI & unrestricted) this coming year: 1. Grant area priority areas, e.g. disaster response, human services, childcare, arts & culture, environment, education, affordable housing, etc. 2. Purpose of grants,…
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Looking for unique or favorite grant application questions...
Our LOIs and Applications are very similar from year to year. I am looking for some new questions that would help us learn more from the organizations. What questions would make the organizations stand out based on their potential answers? They could be very specific targeted questions or larger, big picture questions.…
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Inflation Adjustments for Grants
Hi All, I hope I've aimed this query at the correct board. Our (small, private, Philly suburb) foundation has been wondering if it would make sense to offer inflation adjustments to grants we've given in 2022. Has anyone's organization done so? If our Board agreed to do this (send out $ on 2022 grants to adjust for…
