The problem with grants

I was having a conversation with my brother who works with Big Brothers Big Sisters, a mentoring program in Toronto. Oh, and by the way, if you are a visible minority male-- he is always looking for more mentors. Apparently they have no problems finding women mentors for girls. But I digress. He also works with a number of other not-for-profits and the conversation turned to grants. He told me about a report called "We Can't Afford to Do Business This Way" (Officially, "A Study of the Administrative Burden Resulting From Funder Accountability and Compliance Practices"). If you work with a non-profit at the organizational level and have been responsible for grant writing, this report won't tell you much that you haven't already experienced first hand, and the data collection was not in the area for the arts. It is still an eye-opener and I recommend it highly.



Download the report here.



Three findings that could be applied to arts/culture generating organizations:



The cumulative administrative burden on agencies is all consuming. The agencies respectivelycompleted 182, 48, and 94 major funder reports a year. Each funder and/or program had its ownreport requirements and formats. Securing and reporting on grants is the priority activity for thesurvival of organizations and their programs, pushing aside other organizational priorities suchas overall agency budgeting and strategic planning, community relations, staff development, and program management.

Funders are slow to approve/reject grants, and the slow response time causes “gap”problems for service delivery [here, substitute "arts programming or planning" for "service delivery"]. Agencies often found themselves with “nine months” to deliver“12 months” of service. If an agency guesses wrong and retains staff during the “gap” and thendoes not receive the grant, it incurs significant debt. If it lets staff go, program delivery and continuitysuffer. Response time for 73% of grants was four to five months or longer from the time the proposalwas submitted to the time the funder made a decision.

Grant applications and reporting, and addressing the challenges posed by funder practices andrestrictions, dominated the attention of senior management [...]. Senior managers are very aware and worried that they cannot replace themselves.Senior managers reported that frontline staff are reluctant to take on management jobs.Moreover, the agencies do not have the administrative capacity to train the next generation ofsenior managers. The reluctance of funders to compensate senior managers adequately iscompounding succession-planning. Grant management, of necessity, takes priority over other management responsibilities.

Scary, isn't it.