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.

Santee Smith of Kaha:wi Dance Theatre wins Canada Council's first ever John Hobday Award

NetGain would like to extend its congratulations to Santee Smith & Kaha:wi Dance Theatre (KDT). Santee has just been awarded the Canada Council for the Art's new award for arts management, the John Hobday award. She shares this honour with Sherri Johnson. The award comes with a $10K prize which is to be used for professional developement.

Last night we attended the ceremony at Theatre Aquarius in Hamilton, Ontario where KDT performed excerpts of two new(-ish) works, A Story Before Time and A Soldier's Tale. Bob Sirman, the Director of the Canada Council for the Arts had many nice things to say.

Santee is one of Netgain's current clients (strategic planning as well as general management) but we have also been friends with her ever since Doug helped her negotiate free studio space at the National Ballet School and she occupies an office above ours. I found a biography of her here, but it is a little out of date and I am pretty sure she was born in '71 and not '61. She would be appalled.

Kaha:wi Dance Theatre will be performing a full evening of work at the Canada Dance Festival in Ottawa on June 10th; at Luminat'Eau @ Harbourfront in Toronto on June 14th, and sometime later in the summer as part of Dusk Dances @ Withrow Park. Please feel free to contact us for more information, or contact her directly. Santeekahawi (AT) aol.com. She does not yet have a website. It's one of the things I'm working on this summer! Look out for that.