Online Newsletter Issue 4: Spring 2012
Communicating Effectively with Grantees
The main purpose for exchanging information with applicants and grantees is to make sure your organization gets the best possible results with the grants it makes. How you ask your questions and the way you respond to grantseekers and grantees affects the accuracy, and usefulness, of the information you receive from those who seek and receive support. So how do you communicate effectively with applicants and grantees?
How to Make Your Writing Clear and Concrete
In most writing grantmakers are trying to persuade someone to do something — for example, to decide wisely on whether to apply for a grant, to submit timely and complete reports, to communicate candidly on success and failure, or to think about new ways of approaching a foundation goal. Tony Procio outlines some simple tools to make your writing clear and concrete, and elicit a response that is useful to you and your organization.
The Moriah Fund
The Moriah Fund felt it was receiving longer and more repetitive applications and reports than needed, so it recently embraced streamlining, amending its grant application and reporting processes. Administrative Officer Kathy Jagow talks about the progress The Moriah Fund has made and the challenges it has faced in streamlining.
Making Streamlining Stick
You have decided to streamline your grantmaking process—congratulations! Project Streamline's Making Streamlining Stick Guide can help, whether your organization is just beginning to explore streamlining or is already deeply engaged in a change process. Making Streamling Stick provides a framework illustrating the four basic phases that many grantmakers move through as they streamline and suggests activities and questions that can propel your process forward.
Sharpening the Streamlining Mindset
Project Streamline, in partnership with the Grants Managers Network and the Center for Effective Philanthropy, released the Grantmaker Assessment Tool in 2011. The tool is a free online self-assessment that enables funders to compare their grantmaking processes to those of other funders, assess how closely their processes align with Project Streamline’s principles, and determine the costs associated with grantmaking processes for their organization as well as their grantseekers.
Already more than 140 funders have completed the survey, and so far, the data is striking.
Nonprofit Survey Says … STREAMLINE!
Participants in the Nonprofit Finance Fund 2011 State of the Sector Survey were asked to describe one thing they would like to see funders do differently to better help their organizations. The results, released in March of 2011, continue to show more streamlining efforts are needed.
Guide to Streamlining Series
Project Streamline is pleased to announce that all six components of the Guide to Streamlining Series are now available. The Guide to Streamlining Series supplies the necessary tools to help grantmakers apply Project Streamline’s four principles.
What to Expect in 2012
What can you expect from Project Streamline as it enters its sixth year? We will be assessing the impact Project Streamline has had on the philanthropic field to date even as we continue the field-wide momentum to eliminate unnecessary and burdensome practices by sharing concrete, replicable ideas and examples of what works and how change positively impacts both grantmakers and grantseekers.
One of Project Streamline’s key goals is to raise awareness in the philanthropic community of the burden that application and reporting practices place on grantseekers and grantmakers. In the News provides links to recent stories about Project Streamline’s efforts.