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Grantmaking QuarterlyThe essential newsletterFor every state, Federal, Local Government, Philanthropic and Corporate Grants Program.Achieving the Best Practice with your Grants, Awards and Scholarship Programs.

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ContentsPerformance Measurement in Grants Programs p.4Establishing a Proper Framework for improved Grantmaking

Feast or Famine p.8New Research discovers how much information grantmakers are REALLY providing online.

Grants funding p.12Are multicultural groups getting their fair share of your funds?

Grant Rage p.17We ask a series of multicultural grantseekers to nominate the barriers in accessing grants funding.

Innovate. Evaluate. Disseminate p.19 A guide to sowing the seeds of a good idea in new fields

Building Community on a strong Foundation p.27Local money for local projects - the challenges of setting up a Community fund

The Final Report p.33 What information do you require from grant recipients and what do you do with it? We ask the grantmakers.

Look before you leap p.37 How a careful scan of the horizon can ensure grantmakers make the most of their funding opportunities.

Getting to the core of the issue p43Measuring the impact of core and project funding.

PLUS conferences, jobs and news

EDITION 3

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2. www.ourcommunity.com.auBest PracticeGrantmaking QuarterlyThe Australian

Contributing Writers: (this edition)Ellen Arrick & Felicia Khan Chris BorthwickJane BreadenSylvia MentzelTim PeglerDhana QuinnKathy RichardsonBrian Walsh

We are pleased to accept stories and articles that will assist in developing the nation’s capacity in grantmaking. All potential authors should speak to Brian Walsh, the Editor of this newsletter. Editorial control is vested in the Editor.

The Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly is published by:Our Community Pty LtdNational Headquarters51 Stanley Street West Melbourne VIC 3003 Australia (PO Box 354 North Melbourne VIC 3051 Australia) Telephone (03) 9320 6800 Fax (03) 9326 6859 Email [email protected] Website www.ourcommunity.com.au

© Our Community Pty Ltd. This publication is copyright. No part may be reproduced by any process other than for the purposes of and subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act. The newsletter is available to the subscriber of the service and is not meant to be distributed or made available to the full membership of any organisation.

The articles in Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly do not necessarily reflect the views of Our Community, its staff or members.

Next Newsletter Issue: Next Newsletter Issue: August 2003 (Copy Deadline: July 31, 2003)

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The Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly publishing details

The Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly is published four times a year by Our Community

"mailto:[email protected]"mailto:[email protected]"http://www.ourcommunity.com.au"


RHONDA GALBALLY AOChief Executive Officer

Welcome to The Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly

WELCOME to our third edition of The Australian Best Prac-tice Grantmaking Quarterly and a special welcome to all those new subscribers who join us this edition.

Again we thank readers for their suggestions and ideas. We are excited by some of the topics that we will be tackling in the coming editions of the Quarterly and some of the contributors who have agreed to research articles on some of the issues facing the grantmaking community.

This edition of The Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly is a strong edition with some lively topics for discussion and debate.

Jane Breaden, a Government specialist with consultancy firm Ernst & Young, has provided some interesting thoughts and examples of the process required to institute a successful performance management regime. Increasingly this is an area where Government grantmakers (Federal, State and Local) are being called on to provide more evidence of program effectiveness and accountability for the money invested. But it is not just the government programs. More and more corporate and philanthropic foundations are being asked by Boards and Trustees for evidence on whether their funding policies are translating into results on the ground.

Another issue we look at in some length is the challenge for multicultural groups in accessing grants funding. Research from Britain shows that ethnic groups have a significant disadvantage in winning funding and those working in the field say the studies resonate in Australia. Grantmakers face a challenge to get the word out into the community about their programs - and an even bigger challenge in creating aware-ness and the confidence to apply for ethnic communities.

And what do the groups themselves say about funding pro-grams and their accessibility? We asked grantseeking rep-resentatives from the Russian, Tongan, Turkish, Vietnamese, Romanian and Muslim communities for their reaction and

advice on the problems they encounter within the grantmak-ing process.

We have also analysed the grants featured in the Easy Grants newsletter over the first three months of the year for a story on the amount of information grantmakers make read-ily available. While the vast majority of grantmakers now have their own websites, there is quite a disparity between Best Practice and Worst Practice as to what information is publicly available.

We talk to the inspirational Dr Dorothy Scott, the executive secretary of the Ian Potter Foundation, who is one of the leaders in the Australian grantmaking field when it comes to evaluating and disseminating valuable information from suc-cessful projects. Dorothy sums up her grantmaking mantra as “Innovate. Evaluate. Disseminate.” Her discussion will have many people in the field wondering whether all their energy is going into the first aim with little or no effort going into ensuring good ideas are passed on so that “the few can help the many.”

At Our Community we have been advocating about the unfair-ness of the limited number of groups that have access to Deductible Gift Recipient Status (just 19,000 out of 700,000 groups). The tax laws need reform so the legislation better reflects the work of local community building organisations and not the current Elizabethan view of “charity”.

The thorny issue of DGR has again raised its head in the establishment of community foundations and need for DGR status and also their ability to distribute money to all groups - not just those that have DGR status (again only a small percentage of the total number of groups active in regional Australia). As a new submission to the Federal Government says, the issue needs urgent attention.

We also thank Sylvia Mentzel from the Lloyds TSB Foundation of England and Wales for her summary of her recent research into the impact of grants funding for core operations and also Ellen Arrick and Felicia Khan of the Ford Foundation for their contribution on scanning the landscape before launching into new programs.

We look forward to your thoughts, reactions, ideas and suggestions which you can forward to Brian Walsh at [email protected] .

RHONDA GALBALLY AOChief Executive Officerwww.ourcommunity.com.au

"http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/funding/grant_main.jsp""http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/funding/grant_main.jsp""mailto:[email protected]""http://www.ourcommunity.com.au"


Effective performance measurement has been a key component of many recent public sector business improvement initiatives. With an increasing focus on outcomes and accountability, the capacity to measure performance has become critical.

From an accountability perspective, expenditure of public monies on grant programs is no different than any other expenditure. As such, measuring the performance of grant programs is a challenge faced by all grant managers.

Reality Check

An important first step in improving or implementing performance measurement is a reality check of how well performance is being measured now. This will allow the grant manager to identify the scope of improvements necessary.

At the macro level, a review of government audit reports available on the internet shows a number of common themes in relation to the management of grant programs. These include inadequate measures of outputs and outcomes, poor monitoring of performance, limited analysis of performance data and lack of adequate reporting arrangements.

The outcome of such a reality check is the identification of what aspects of performance measurement need to be improved. This can range from basic amendments to individual measures to a complete restructure of the approach to and management of performance.

Performance Measurement Fundamentals

Before launching into the establishment or improvement of performance measurement, it is important to first establish a few basics.

1. Identify a Performance Measurement Framework

A key component of the framework is the terminology that will be used. Many a performance initiative has been plagued by constant debate and dissention around the myriad of terms that can be used in measuring performance. These include

For grantmakers - whether running Federal, State or Local Government programs or a philanthropic trust - accountability and the ability to judge the effectiveness of what your program is doing continues to grow in importance.

The need for more information and the ability to analyse performance means that grantmakers need to establish effective systems where indicators and results can be accessed, measured and analysed.

In this article, JANE BREADEN, a senior manager in the Government Advisory Group of financial consultancy firm Ernst & Young, talks about the fundamentals for grantmakers wanting to know how their program is performing.

Performance Measurement in Grants ProgramsEstablishing a Proper Framework for improved Grantmaking

Viewpoint

JANE BREADEN, Senior ManagerErnst & Young

First Aid for Grants

One grant-managing organisation implemented a ‘Sick Grants Clinic’ to encourage grant managers to identify under performing grants and implement a more rigorous approach to grant management that includes improved performance monitoring.

Grant managers were encouraged to use their own initiative to identify grants that could benefit from some first aid. Managers brought their sick grants along for a consultation in which experienced managers and advisers examined the grant, and identified opportunities for improving grant management. In more severe cases, an adviser was allocated to provide ongoing first aid for a number of weeks or months as required.

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Establishing a Proper Framework for improved Grantmaking (continued)

Performance Measurement in Grant Programs

Viewpoint

goals, strategy, key performance indicators (KPIs), key result areas (KRAs), objective, outputs, outcomes, indicators and so on. In many cases, each attempt to monitor or report on performance is prefaced by a debate on the terminology.But there is a simple solution:

• Select a set of terminology that will be used; • Define what each component of that terminology will mean (including how they relate to each other; • Apply the defined terminology consistently.

For example, you may select the following three components for your performance measurement framework: outcomes, outputs and indicators. Each component could then be defined as:

Outcomes - the overall impact/effect that the grant program seeks to achieve.Outputs - the products or services produced by the grant program.Indicators - measure of performance that will provide evidence that outputs are being delivered and outcomes are being achieved.

In relation to this last point, indicators may be needed that allow two questions to be answered: how will the government know if the grantmaker is succeeding and how will the grant-maker know if the grant recipient is succeeding.

Consistent application of the agreed terminology can then minimise debate and allow focus to remain on performance outcomes rather than the performance measurement process itself.

2. Develop a Reporting Framework

This is an area in which many grant programs have already identified opportunities for improvement. That is because effective performance measurement involves further action beyond obtaining performance data - that data must then be analysed and then reported.

A reporting framework provides the basis for completing the performance measurement process by getting performance information back to the people that need it to make decisions. Key aspects of a reporting framework are:

Identification of responsibility for capturing and analysing performance data. It should be noted that both the grant-maker and the grant recipient can play a role in capturing data.

Identification of measurement and reporting timeframes - for example, formal performance reports may only be produced annually but monitoring of performance may be more frequent.

Mapping of the process for reporting, including how performance information on individual grants will be aggregated to provide program-level reports. This may also include arrangements for sign-off of performance reports by appropriate levels of management.

Details of feedback arrangements, such as how management feedback will be provided to individual grant managers.

2. Obtain Agreement from Stakeholders

Once the performance measurement and reporting frame-works are identified, it is important that stakeholders are given the opportunity to comment and agree to the processes they contain. As for any business issue, obtaining stakeholder agreement upfront can minimise later dissent and allow for a smoother process overall.

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Beware Poorly Defined Outputs

A State Government agency provided a government grant to a private research laboratory to conduct an assessment of a particular health issue that had been causing some problems within that State. The research was expected to take six months.

Two years later the research was still ongoing and the problem had yet to be solved.

When the grant agreement was checked it was found that it defined only INPUTS. It specified the hours per week the researchers were to work, the qualifications they should have and even the IT systems they were to work with.

It just did not mention any outcomes or outputs such as a workable solution to the problem or even a report detailing their findings. So in reviewing the grant recipients performance, the agency realised that performance could not be criticised in the terms of the grant agreement.




Viewpoint

Consideration should be given to including grant recipients in the process of formulating measurement and reporting frameworks. They are often in the best position to know what can be measured (cost effectively) and what types of reporting would suit the work they will be undertaking.

What Can Grant Recipients Do?

Advise the Grantmaker of those aspects of performance they think can/should be measured.

Identify what systems and processes they have in place to facilitate easy measurement, and what they may need to improve or develop (for their own benefit and that of the Grantmaker).

Advise the Grantmaker early of any performance diffi-culties they are having. Don’t wait for a performance milestone.

Suggest changes to measures and reports if they think it is in the interests of both parties.

Now that the basics have been established, you are ready to implement.

Implementation - Tools & Techniques

The implementation and use of an agreed performance measurement and reporting framework can be made simpler through a number of basic tools and techniques.

Measure Profiles

Having developed a list of performance measures, many measurement programs fall down when it comes time to obtain or analyse measurement data. At this point, it can become apparent that:

the effort or cost of obtaining the data outweighs the value that it provides,

no-one was assigned responsibility to collect the data and hence it is not available,

the data provided suggests it wasn’t such a good measure to begin with, and /or

the behaviour that the measure promotes is detrimental to the grant outcomes or outputs.

These issues can be addressed early through the use of measure profiles.

A measure profile is a detailed description of key information that underlies the measure, such as:

description,method of calculation,target,responsibility for reporting,data source,frequency of reporting,details of any lead indicator (interim indicators for aspects only measured annually).

For small numbers of measures a table containing the profile data is usually sufficient. At the program level however or where there are a large number of measures, a database may be a more useful format. This would then support the generation of lists of those measures particular parties are responsible for and reports on performance outcomes.

Using Key Performance Indicators

Program level managers face a particular challenge in making sense of individual grant outcomes and determining what they mean for program outcomes. One way of doing this is through the use of Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

KPIs could be included in the program level performance measurement framework and defined as key indicators of whether program outcomes and outputs are being delivered. KPIs could be either:

a specific performance indicator relating to an individual grant that is key to program outcomes, or

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Measure profiling can assist in ensuring indicators are actually measurable . . .

‘all members of the community are able to access grant information in an appropriate format’

Can it be measured? Do we really want to measure the whole community?Who decides what is appropriate?

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Viewpoint

an aggregation of performance outcomes from multiple grants to provide a program level outcome.

Tools for Transforming Data

Performance measurement can elicit large amounts of data, which can then be transformed into more meaningful information, which can be further analysed to provide intelligence to inform management decision-making and guide future action.

The process of transforming data into information and information into intelligence can often be forgotten in the excitement of finally receiving performance measurement data. This is where grant managers need to go back to their old high-school mathematics lessons and recall the many useful evaluation tools that can be used to transform data into information, such as pareto charts, control charts and scatter diagrams.

Such tools can be used to structure data in a way that allows, for example, identification of:

key drivers of poor or good performance (pareto chart),

when variations in performance are significant enough to warrant corrective action (control chart), and

relationships or dependencies between aspects of performance (scatter plots).

Analytical Techniques

If evaluation helps grant managers determine ‘what is’, then analysis is the next step which informs the ‘so what’. For example, evaluation of a set of tabular data may allow a grant manager to determine that the average time taken to produce a report is 26 days. That information determines ‘what is’. But then we must ask, ‘so what?’. How does this compare against the target, industry standards or the same period last year.

There are a number of analytical techniques that can be used to elicit this intelligence. The simplest ones to use are:

Comparative (Gap) Analysis. This approach uses a con-tract or other specifications as the benchmark from which to compare actual performance. This approach is based on

having a clear understanding of what is required and com-paring this to what has been achieved. This approach requires ‘apples with apples’ comparisons to be made. Therefore the performance information needs to be com-parable between the contract/grant service specifications and the grant recipient’s measured performance.

Cause and Effect Analysis. Also known as root cause analysis, this approach seeks to determine why something was different than expected (or why it was the same). Cause and effect analysis is often used in conjunction with gap analysis to determine where the gap is, then to determine why it occurred. A cause and effect or fishbone diagram is a tool often used to assist with this type of analysis.

Trend Analysis. This approach seeks to determine the trend over time of performance. Once again it can be used in concert with the two techniques above. Trend analysis allows grant managers to gain an understanding of systemic performance and identify those one-off or unusual issues that crop up from time to time. This approach assists in avoiding ‘knee jerk’ reactions and allows the grant manager to manage in an informed manner.

Summary

Grant managers are increasingly being required to improve performance measurement in order to meet accountability requirements. A reality check of how well performance is currently being measured is a useful way of scoping the extent of improvement required.

Ensuring that the performance measurement fundamentals are in place provides a sound basis for improvement. Beyond that, there are a number of simple and effective tools and techniques than can assist grant managers in improving their own performance and that of grant recipients.

JANE BREADEN is a Manager in Ernst & Young’s Govern-ment business unit based in Canberra. She has worked with a number of public sector agencies and and spe-cialises in performance audit, organisational review, busi-ness planning and performance measurement.

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Even where grantmakers do have websites, however, only 86.1% list the grant program guidelines in full. Some grant programs may think that their purpose and criteria are so obvious as not to need much explanation, but many sites still require applicants to write in for the guidelines, losing one of the basic advantages of the Internet - its ability to mount virtually without cost enormous volumes of material tailored to suit every situation.

Again, only 55% of grants sites offer the application form online - and that’s “offer as a downloadable form”, not “offer as a form that can be filled out and submitted online” (online submissions, while growing in number, still represent only a small percentage of all grants). It is only a small step for the laggard organisations to meet the fairly low standard of providing downloadable forms online. It only takes the ability to scan in their form and mount it as a pdf file. A very small number of grant applications looked at in the study aren’t form-based at all, allowing the applicant to write the submission as they see fit, but otherwise for most grantmakers it is far more convenient to put the form up on the Web. People who don’t know whether they want to apply or not can get all the information they need without having to go to the trouble of writing in, and people who do know they want to be in the hunt can save a few day’s mail turnaround time on getting the forms back. Both sides save their stamp, too - a win-win situation.

Feast or FamineResearch: How much information grantmakers are REALLY providing online.

Research

The Internet has often been described as a case of “information overload” but does that also apply to sites detailing grants funding programs? In his study of the online information performance of grantmakers over the first quarter of 2003, CHRIS BORTHWICK found that many grants funding bodies were still running websites on a “need to know” basis.

Grantmaking is now largely an online experience. A study of new grants listed on Our Community’s Easy Grants database in the first quarter of 2003 shows clearly that online presentations are now the norm - and shows, too, that many grantmakers’ sites are not yet meeting the needs of the grantseekers who are searching through them.

The study

Ourcommunity provides a subscription service that gives members (community groups, local councils, statutory author-ities) access to information on grants that they may be eligible for in their state or territory. To support this service Our Com-munity collects data on every formalised grant offer put out anywhere in Australia - corporate grants, philanthropic grants, and Federal Government, State Government and Local Gov-ernment grants. This database, the largest grants information database ever compiled in Australia, not only provides a valuable service for grantseekers and the community sector, it also gives Our Community a research resource that can throw considerable light on the practices and capacities of Australian grantmaking organisations. To ensure close comparability of data, this study analysed all grants (Federal and State Government, philanthropic and corporate) across all States and Territories during January, February and March of 2003. A dataset of 308 grants was chosen and rechecked and analysed statistically.

Facilities

Overall, 91.6% of grants appear on the website of the organisation that offers them. Web listing is plainly now standard and expected. The Federal Government has committed itself to “the transformation of government service delivery through the appropriate use of new technologies”, and most State governments have made similar commitments. Most people on finding out about a grant would expect to access it online. It will not be long before what was simply a convenience becomes an expectation and then a right. Any grantmaker without a web presence at this point may need to reconsider their strategy.

Grant has Website

Grant has Forms

Grant has Guidelines

PreviousSuccesses

EmailQueries

FederalAverage

StateAverage

PhilanthropicAverage

CommercialAverage

94.74% 96.39% 81.04% 100.00% 91.56%

88.07% 83.67% 66.44% 69.05% 78.90%

56.48% 51.39% 44.12% 47.62% 50.65%

4.62% 20.67% 10.63% 21.43% 13.96%

63.84% 73.33% 74.64% 54.76% 70.78%

CombinedAverage

"http://www.ourcommunity.com.au/funding/grant_main.jsp"


Feast or Famine

Research

Research: How much information grantmakers are REALLY providing online. (continued)

Prospective applicants can often be assisted more than anything else by being able to see what programs and what organisations have got funding previously, but only a small minority of sites (15.2%) offer this facility (this figure is lower than expected because some programs are being offered for the first time and have no history. If the figure was taken as a proportion of repeated grants only it would be higher but still well below 40 per cent).

The figures also show, however, that a surprisingly high percentage of grants - only 29.2% - don’t list the e-mail address of the contact person at the grantmaker’s office. Almost a third of grants list only phone numbers (and some few list only mailing addresses). One can see why a grant-maker might prefer not to receive online applications - and only 14% of grants listed during the study period allow for this - but it is not so easy to explain why they would not wish to be able to clear up inquiries and send out notifications by e-mail.

It is perhaps possible that organisations that really want to discourage online applications - organisations that (rightly or wrongly) require signatures, say, creating a need for hard copy might feel that the only way to be sure that applicants will not misread the guidelines and e-mail their submissions is to stop them emailing anything.

But there are surely alternative means of reaching this end that do not cut many applicants off from a useful source of support and advice. Remember, the complaints from grantseekers we listed in our first Grant Rage article in December’s Best Practice Newsletter included the complaint that: “Grantmak-ers who treat their guidelines as if they are highly confidential and want to know everything about a grantseeker before they will provide them with further information”.

Again, an email link is mutually beneficial for both parties - if an inquiry can be answered by email it doesn’t tie up your phone, you can answer it at your leisure, and it doesn’t involve applicants in long-distance telephone calls.

Sector by Sector

Within these general trends there are some significant varia-tions. The average of 91.6% of grants with a home page obscures internal groupings going as low as 81% for private philanthropic grants and as high as 96.4% for State Gov-ernment grants. (Commercial organisations covered in the survey, including Telstra and the Macquarie Bank, offer web-

sites for 100% of their grants, but these do not yet make up a significant proportion of the field during the period studied). The government sector is at least two years ahead of the phil-anthropic sector in this regard. Only 66.4% of private grants have online guidelines, and only 44.1% have online forms, compared to 85.3% and 52.8% for combined State and Fed-eral Governments. On the other hand, slightly more private grants have e-mail contact addresses - 74.6% as opposed to 70%.

Caveats

These figures are offered with some minor reservations. The word ‘grants’ covers a wide variety of funding schemes, ranging from small sums to encourage good behaviour to vast governmental programs with multi-mil-lion dollar budgets..

These may not show the full picture, although the grants represent a statistically significant number of the existing grants programs currently listed on Our Community’s Easy Grants database. Just to provide a rough comparison, a 2000 UK study (http://www.virtualpromise.net/vp_docs/Complete.pdf) of larger non-profits online by Joe Saxton of the Future Foundation suggested that 92% of them had functioning websites (although it complained that only 8% of them had any interactive facilities, only 6% of them had online forms capacity, and only 2% delivered any of their ser-vices online). That study included both grantmakers and grantseekers, and if it had included smaller organisations the figure would presumably have been lower, and it was done two years ago, and the figure is presumably now higher; however you look at it, though, it does not sug-gest that Australia is anywhere near the lead in these matters.

Financials

Another aspect to providing information about grants is the amount of financial data listed. Grantmakers can tell appli-cants the maximum grant size, the minimum grant size, the average grant size, and/or the total grant pool. All these fig-ures will be helpful.

"http://www.virtualpromise.net/vp_docs/Complete.pdf"


Knowing that the maximum grant will be only $2,000, for example, may lead some applicants to decide that it would not justify the work involved in a submission, while knowing that the minimum grant was $200,000 might persuade them that they were playing outside their weight range. If the maxi-mum or minimum figures are given, though, this does also have the effect of restricting the scope of the grantmaker’s discretion, and many organisations prefer to retain the flex-ibility to give as much or as little as they see fit.

In practice, basic information is provided only patchily. Some 55% of grants list their maximums (69.6% for Federal agencies, 46.7% for private philanthropy) and 17.5% their minimums. 28.6% tell us what the total prize pool is (and here, for a change, the private sector gets a better rating than the state governments - 26.3% to 23.3% - although the Federal Government scores a much better 50%). Only 3.9% of grant notifications tell us what the average grant amounts to (and another Grant Rage entry was “Not specifying the average grant amount - so grantseekers have no idea whether to put in an application for half a million dollars or $2,000.)

Overview

The study found, as one might expect, both that grantmakers have followed the majority of Australian adults on to the Web and that they often remain tentative in their use of this very new and very different medium. The primary advantage of the Web is its ability to mount large volumes of material at virtually no cost. Staff who have spent decades cutting down on unnecessary photocopying, or reducing the weight of a mailout, or emptying out a filing cabinet, have been conditioned to believe that there is a trad-

Feast or Famine

Research

Research: How much information grantmakers are REALLY providing online. (continued)

eoff between size and cost. That’s no longer true. You don’t have to put up just what you need, you can put up what you want - and there is a considerable difference between the two.

You certainly ought as a minimum to put up not only the regulations and the criteria and the forms but the guidelines. You should think seriously about adding the details of other funded projects, and their evaluations, and frequently asked questions and anything else that seems relevant. The price of computer memory is so low that there is very little reason to hold back.

“Knowing that the maximum grant will be only $2,000, for example, may lead some applicants to decide that it would not justify the work involved in a submission”

This does mean that we may have to think more deeply about the nature of the information flows between applicant and grantmaker. What do applicants ask? What, on the evidence of their applications, do they tend to guess at? What do they tend to get wrong? What do you wish they would realise?

If a website is done properly, everybody wins. The applicants find it easier to draft their submissions, the office staff have to answer fewer questions, and as there will be more appli-cants and therefore more competition the aims of the grant are more likely to be achieved.

Of course, there’s no point in putting up material if it’s not read, and one of the most common observations made by grantmakers is that grantseekers don’t read the instructions carefully enough. This is a problem, certainly, but it’s not entirely the applicant’s problem. The applicant’s aim is to get the grant, and if they misread the grant specifications they’ll fail; but your aim is to get your proposal to as wide a range of organisations as possible, and if a substantial number of them don’t get it then you, too, will have failed.

Would a different wording, or a different layout, or a different site architecture, have been easier to follow? The only hur-dles that the applicant is supposed to face are those set out in the project requirements, and if a viable candidate stum-bles over a removable difficulty then everybody loses. If pos-sible, time and resources should be allocated to testing the

MaxGrantListed

Av.Grant Listed

Min.GrantListed

TotalPool

Listed

FederalAverage

StateAverage

PhilanthropicAverage

CommercialAverage

69.58% 55.61% 46.65% 71.43% 55.84%

24.67% 14.79% 14.95% 23.81% 17.53%

1.59% 3.03% 7.15% 4.76% 3.90%

49.99% 23.33% 26.26% 21.43% 28.57%

CombinedAverage


Feast or Famine

Research

Research: How much information grantmakers are REALLY providing online.

form and the guidelines on outsiders for comprehensibility; if not, the grantmaker should still attempt to assess the pages from the viewpoint of the applicant. More research is needed at all levels. Grantmakers should monitor their websites and attempt to analyse client satis-faction through the use of online facilities for feedback and discussion. Academics should work with grantmakers and

grantseekers to probe more deeply into the needs of each group for online services. Organisations in this field should develop Internet strategies that will bring online the innovation and commitment that they already give to their clients. The Internet offers immense potential advantages, but these will not come to pass unless we take them seriously enough to give our sitemakers the necessary resources.

Your Say

We would like to hear your thoughts and opinions on articles that appear in the Australian Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly.

Please send any letters via email to [email protected], fax (03) 9326 6859 or send to us at 51 Stanley St, West Melbourne. Vic 3003.

Your Say

mailto: [email protected]


Are multicultural groups getting their fair share of your funds?

In ProfileGrants funding

Overseas research over the past few years indicates that ethnic community groups are at a significant disadvantage in accessing grants funding. Grantmakers want to make their pro-grams accessible but as TIM PEGLER discovers, there is still little recognition by many Aus-tralian grants programs of the difficulties ethnic communities face in successfully applying for general funding.

In the community sector, the sense of injustice at allocation of resources can be especially acute as new and small groups compete with more established organisations for funding from philanthropic and government grants. While this can present a challenge for any struggling or under-resourced group, the degree of difficulty quickly multiplies for those representing Australians from non-English speaking backgrounds.

Australian Multicultural Foundation executive director Hass Dellal is particularly aware that smaller ethnic communities and those comprising relatively new arrivals to Australia can feel the playing field on which they operate is far from level.

The Foundation recently completed a survey on employment services for young people from different ethnic communities. They discovered that while sufficient support services and ref-erence materials are available, the young people in need do not go to the venues where information and guidance is pro-vided.

“It’s not that there’s a lack of directories or services out there,” Mr Dellal says. “It’s just that the smaller groups often lack the knowledge of where to find them or how to access them. And there are language barriers too, which does not help.

“So from the point of view of these groups when they miss out on funds or services it may appear that more established groups are favoured - and result in them blaming the ‘system’.”

Even those departments and grants programs with the best intentions still have to work to ensure that the information gets down to the networks that are at the coalface dealing with the various ethnic groups, particularly those providing information and services to the newer arrivals that are not as savvy as the established communities in knowing where they can access funding and support.

West Australian Office of Multicultural Interests executive direc-tor Dr Leela de Mel agrees that small and newly formed groups from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) back-grounds can find the going tough when making funding appli-cations.

“It is definitely the new and emerging communities (who struggle) as this comes down to a question of know-how,” she says. “It’s not just about language difficulties. Established communities such as the Greek and Italian communities have been here a long time and know how the system works. The newer African and Middle Eastern communities are simply not as familiar with how business is done in Australia.”

In the United Kingdom, research into the experiences of black and minority ethnic (BME) groups has painted a grim picture.

Several years ago, the British Home Office published the report Black and Minority Ethnic Voluntary and Community Organisations: A Code of Good Practice. The report expressed the following concern:

“Funding for the BME voluntary and community sector, whether from existing or new sources, has been significantly below that of similar organisations in the mainstream voluntary and community sector. This is all the more detrimental given that the BME sector does not generally have the windfall legacies, income streams and leverage opportunities that the more established mainstream sector attracts.”

The Code of Good Practice was designed to trigger the changes required to ensure equitable access to funding and support for BME groups. Its proposals included:

Regular reviews of which BME groups receive funding and how access, approval and funding rates compare to the mainstream sector

Publishing reports on who gets what funding

Ensuring that if funding is withdrawn from a BME organisation it can be diverted to another group equally well positioned to perform the same work so that vital services to the sector are not lost

A more flexible approach by government to BME groups experiencing “organisational difficulties”

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Grants Funding

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Are multicultural groups getting their fair share of your funds? (continued...)

Recognising that “faith organisations” provide important community services other than promotion of religion and therefore taking care not to incorrectly rule such groups ineligible for funding

Striving for all ethnic communities to be represented on boards and policy committees to promote “race equality”.

Two years after the Home Office launched its Code of Good Practice, the UK-based Joseph Rowntree Foundation published a report entitled The role and future development of black and minority ethnic organisations. Based on a Warwick University survey completed by 200 black and minority ethnic groups in England and Wales, the report found that the most pressing priorities for such groups were help with grant applications, fundraising and obtaining sponsorship.

The foundation’s report also highlighted BME groups’ anxiety about the growth in paperwork required to achieve funding and feelings of “exclusion from the partnerships and alliances which now form the basis of much bidding for funds”.

As the philanthropic Rowntree Foundation’s report was being launched in York in 2001, another, far more damning study of the struggles faced by the BME sector was being released by the Scottish government.

The detailed Review of Funding for Black and Minority Ethnic Groups in the Voluntary Sector, commissioned by the Scottish Executive, suggested “institutional racism” was nobbling BME groups attempting to cater for the needs of their communities.

The executive reported:

“At a strategic level, the conclusions point to an overall focus, in public policy in Scotland, on promoting equality and tackling social exclusion which is not yet reflected in grant provision to black and minority ethnic groups. There is an overall lack of infrastructure for black and minority ethnic groups in the voluntary sector, and a lack of capacity building work with these groups, which, coupled with their experiences of racism and social exclusion, affect their access to grant funding. Paradoxically, however, some funders are keen to ensure that they provide funding to black and minority ethnic organisations and wish to encour-age these. There is a more general lack of monitoring data on the disbursement of funding to black and minority ethnic groups. The effect of all of these factors has been an overall lack of a coherent strategic approach.”

The executive went on to conclude:

“The actual process of securing funding for black and minority ethnic groups was also found to be complex, with a need to apply to a wide range of funding sources, with differing requirements and identifiable barriers for black and minority ethnic groups. These were found to include, for example, the dissemination of information about funding using means which may be less accessible to black and minority ethnic groups, the lack of access to advice and support to black and minority ethnic groups to help to develop funding applications, language barriers to participation and the existence of inappropriate conditions or criteria.”

Another British study, the BME Sustainability Project, began in June 2000 and is scheduled to wind up in 2003. The project team released its second report in January which endorsed previous research suggesting that BME voluntary groups experience the same difficulties as mainstream community organisations - but “more acutely”.

The report released earlier this year stated that BME groups are “finding that funding issues take up more and more time - time that is then lost to service delivery - as much of their funding is short term and below the real costs, thereby effectively giving a subsidy to the funding body. This has a knock-on effect in terms of the quality and quantity of service provision and the long term viability of BME organisations”.

The Sustainability Project researchers uncovered numerous “barriers to fundraising success” encountered by BME groups (see page 14). They noted that small and new BME groups “lack the established personal contacts which ‘grease the wheels’ in the process of grant seeking” and observed that “largely white decision makers on grants panels were not sensitive to the changing face of the sector and found it easier to fund larger BME organisations with a history of survival … rather than supporting new or ‘risky’ causes”.

An astounding 83 per cent of the voluntary community organisations surveyed believed there was a lack of fairness in distribution of funds.

Mr Dellal suggests the British findings are applicable - and instructive - to Australian grantmakers and grant applicants.

“It is not just anecdotal that (new) groups are disadvantaged, we know it is happening. And printing brochures and directo-ries is not going to fix the problem.”

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The personal touch is the best way to ensure newer CALD groups have the advice and access to the funding they need, he says.

“We identify (disadvantaged) groups and the issues they are confronting. Then I make myself directly available to them … it’s the only way. We establish focus groups with them and help them work out areas of need, how to apply for funding and so on. The more noise they make, the better results they get.”

Mr Dellal says grantmakers should be conscious that many CALD groups see the word ‘multicultural’ and assume these are the only funds they can apply for. To counter this misun-derstanding, grantmakers need to communicate that CALD groups have equal access to all grant monies.

“It’s also important to make sure that application forms are readily understood,” he says. “Keep them clean and in plain English, making sure that the information requested does not repeat or contradict itself. It’s very confusing when one question on an application form covers one aspect and then another covers it all over again.”

“The more noise they make, the better results they get.”

Information on grants is increasingly available on the Internet and through regular newsletters such as the Easy Grants Newsletter and Grants Education Service but Australian research has shown grantmakers should not assume all groups have equal access to the Web. A joint project between the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria and VICNET in 2002 revealed a “lack of awareness of the relevance and ben-efit of using the Internet” among CALD communities - particu-larly among older people.

More than one in five Victorians (21 per cent) speak a lan-guage other than English and websites that offered multiple languages were both little known and uncommon.

The report called for funding to train people from the CALD in Internet use, citing “significant gaps in uptake (of web usage) depending on age, level of English language skills, geographic location, income and availability of appropriate training and access.”

Grants Funding

In Profile


BARRIERS TO FUNDING: Key findings of the BME Sustainability Project

Grantmakers may not realise or take into account that applicants are completing forms in a foreign language and not able to write fluently. One to one help may be required.

Grant application forms invariably involved a language barrier to anyone who is not a native speaker of standard English. Application forms were seen as “unnecessarily complex” and containing too much jargon.

Rejection letters were considered unhelpful when they did not contain constructive suggestions on how to improve future applications

Use of a ‘common application form’, using a standard format for key information but with flexibility for grant-makers to add supplementary elements was strongly urged

Fundraising training courses, helplines or drop-in ser-vices could assist groups struggling to remain viable

Grantmakers could enhance the funding advice they offer by using interpreters or translators

Grantmakers may require external assistance to design ‘plain English’ application forms

Information about grants earmarked for ethnic commu-nities needs to be publicised in a way that it permeates a diverse range of groups

Small or new groups feel that funders are unwilling to take a risk on them and therefore favour established, larger organisations

Grantmakers should actively seek ethnic community rep-resentatives on their boards - and involve communities in monitoring which projects should attract grants

Need to establish dialogue between funding bodies and ethnic communities as this “may be the only way to engender an atmosphere of trust, co-operation, under-standing and joint working”

Grantmakers could establish their own benchmarks to monitor whether they support a diversity of organisa-tions.

Source: Finding the fundsSecond report from the BME Sustainability Project (Jun 2003)

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Grants Funding

In Profile


Despite these types of difficulties in accessing the Net, it remains one of the most effective means of disseminating information across a continent as vast as Australia. The fed-eral Department of Immigration and Multicultural and Indig-enous Affairs, which administers the Community Settlement Services Scheme to allocate grants among non-profit com-munity groups, migrants, refugees and asylum seekers, publishes its information kit on access to grants online at www.immi.gov.au/grants.

In a bid to further broaden awareness of the CSSS grants on offer the scheme is advertised in ethnic media and the department also holds information sessions in each state and territory where staff can explain the application process to interested parties. Applicants then have phone access to a help desk during the five-week application period.

A departmental spokesperson said that while grants applications are assessed on their merit, “priority is given to organisations providing services for refugee and humanitarian entrants and family migrants with low levels of English proficiency who have arrived in the last five years”.

DIMIA also monitors “grants funding to ethno-specific organisations” - the ‘who gets what’ aspect of funding.

The problem of awareness of particular programs is not quite as prevalent with Government funding. State and Federal Gov-ernment bodies spend a portion of their advertising budget to promote new grant schemes in ethnic media although, again, this tends to focus on the outlets informing the established migrant communities. There are few media outlets for those communities who make up the newest arrivals.

A greater problem exists for philanthropic and corporate foun-dations that often have little funds available to market or advertise their funding generally, let alone to spend money tar-geting minority groups. Building a better network with ethnic peak groups, building email networks and ensuring links from websites that are accessed by ethnic communities is one way of providing better access. But access is not the only prob-lem.

One of the issues for ethnic groups is in getting their projects past first base. One of the main concerns raised by ethnic groups is that a badly written application may not mean a bad idea or a bad project as much as a difficulty in expressing in English the benefits of the project to the local community.

In Queensland the Beattie Government’s Multicultural Queensland Policy requires annual reports to state parlia-ment detailing how measures to ensure equal access and opportunity for all residents are being implemented.

Under the 1998 policy, Multicultural Affairs Queensland (MAQ) has the responsibility of ensuring all Queenslanders have access to interpreters when required; providing cultural awareness training for public servants; and maintaining a reg-ister of ethnic community representatives available to serve on policy-making boards and committees.

When it comes to access to grants, MAQ director Steve Maguire also stresses the importance of one on one communication in providing an equitable system. “We actively provide advice to people who come forward and say ‘we are applying for grants but don’t know what to do. This service is available to everyone but the bigger, more established communities don’t tend to take it up.”

MAQ also funds 15 workers who advise and support local government authorities striving to improve access to grants and services for NESB communities.

“...a badly written application may not mean a bad idea or a bad

project as much as a difficulty in expressing in English the benefits of

the project...”

In Western Australia, Premier Geoff Gallop is personally chairing an Anti-Racism Strategy Steering Committee that has drafted the WA Charter of Multiculturalism. Dr de Mel says the premier’s involvement has ensured there is real “clout” and impetus behind the project.

She considers the WA Office of Multicultural Interests’ own grants scheme is overly complex and contains too much jargon and could favour established groups with the ability to prepare their applications more effectively. The scheme is currently under review.

In another effort to assist less established NESB groups, a full time grants officer works with community organisations, and holds grantseekers’ workshops in conjunction with the Ethnic Communities Council of WA.

"http://www.immi.gov.au/grants"


Sri Lankan born Dr de Mel says she has a unique perspective on the perceptions associated with the ‘multicultural’ tag - and behaviours that may confront NESB groups seeking access to funding and services.

“I have been in this job 1.5 years after 15 years in the public service in various roles. It is the toughest job I have had in gov-ernment … and very, very tough to make people understand that ethnic communities are just the same as everyone else.

“There is a real misunderstanding of what multiculturalism is all about. It’s not just about arts and festivals. It is about social justice, equality, inclusiveness and cohesiveness … and we

Grants Funding

In Profile


have a great opportunity now to push this agenda forward.”Mr Dellal says state multicultural commissions regularly host community consultation meetings and “money and funding will always be an issue” for ethnic groups.

“The face of Australia has changed quite a bit in recent years - and changed quickly. So these issues need to be addressed as soon as possible.”

And for grantmakers at all levels, that includes questioning whether ethnic communities are aware of their funding pro-grams and whether they have a realistic - and equal chance - of securing funding.

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Grants RageMulticultural groups nominate the barriers in accessing grants funding.

Resources

So how do grantseekers from multicultural groups rate the level of access to Australian grants programs? Not very highly, according to a survey of multicultural group leaders.

DHANA QUINN surveyed community group leaders representing Russian, Tongan, Turkish, Vietnam-ese, Romanian and Muslim organisations and found they generally felt bewildered, disenchanted, excluded and unloved by grantmakers at all levels but especially by philanthropic and corporate grantmakers.

Here are a selection of their impressions and experiences of trying to access grants funding.

“In principle, Australians embrace the notion of a multi-cultural society, but in reality multicultural groups are not given the same level of access to funds as mainstream groups.”

“Funding bodies often stipulate that a project must have wider social benefits, and for a small cultural specific group this is impossible to achieve because the funding is often needed for just the individual group, so it can maintain cul-tural customs and traditions in a new place.”

“Grants require a person to be very skilled in English in order to understand the application form and then to fill it in - cultural groups don’t always have a person with enough skills to seek funds.”

“Most grants to fund positions within organisations are short-term and contract based. This makes it hard to find people to fill these funded positions because the uncer-tainty of ongoing work makes the position an unattractive one. And if funding is received for a position, it is not guar-anteed to be re-funded and therefore any work achieved is lost when the funding dries up and the person has to move on to earn money elsewhere.”

“Disadvantaged cultural groups in Australia will remain disadvantaged unless adequate, permanent funding is directed towards these groups, and at the moment it is not.”

“The only source of funding for cultural groups is from gov-ernment. Our group does not even bother with business or philanthropic groups because we don’t have the contacts, or the time to lobby them for funding.”

“As a small community we get the feeling that we are miss-ing out on funds because the funding bodies don’t believe we know what we are doing and don’t believe that we will be able to administer the funds. It seems like you need to

be an established group to attract funding, which is hard when you are a new community trying to establish a sup-port base in a new country.”

“We have only had success with government grants because one person has had connections within a depart-ment. That person therefore knows how to fill in grant forms and understands what information is needed. If we didn’t have that person, we would be quite lost.”

“Advertisements for grants always seem to be in English. There is not enough effort by departments to ensure that advertisements are also in other languages or in ethnic newsletters.”

“It would be good to have a contact person within a gov-ernment department who could provide more support to groups that are applying for grants and also a person who is available for ongoing support if successful in receiving the grant. It should not be assumed that cultural groups have the resources to administer funds because it is likely that they have come from a country without, or with differ-ent, government systems.”

“Asking for money is not part of our culture, so we find it hard to apply and when we apply it is hard to justify ‘why’ we deserve the money because it is hard enough to even ask in the first place.”

“More information is often demanded from grant making bodies and when English is not your first language it is hard to explain what you mean, so it would be good if you could apply for funding in your native language.”

“The actual process of applying for grants takes a long time and if you only want a small amount, sometimes it is easier not to bother with a grant. And most groups are volunteer-based, so no one really has the time to research grants or fill them out; they demand a lot of information.”


Grants Rage

Resources

Multicultural groups nominate the barriers in accessing grants funding.

“Some criteria states that you must have an audit, which costs money and if a grant is only for a small amount, the audit will actually cost more that the grant itself.”

“We don’t bother applying for large amounts of money anymore because we never get them and I believe it is because we don’t have a person dedicated to lobbying or playing the political game. It is the same reason why we don’t bother asking the corporate sector for money. You really need to have contacts and the time to lobby organi-sations.”

“We are not appealing to businesses because our group is too small; we have never been successful in finding corpo-rate sponsors.”

“Grants are too rigid in their criteria especially in rural areas. It is hard to find a grant to suit our group’s needs.”

“There is not enough information about what is available. I have no idea who I should approach for funding outside the government grants that we already apply for.”

“Some grantmakers have suggested we apply for grants under a bigger umbrella of our cultural group, but in reality it just means more administration and I feel small groups

are just as valid as a larger organisation. There should be more recognition that small groups are just as permanent as larger groups.”

“There should be more recognition of the work ethnic groups play in society, but this is not reflected in the amount of money we receive. In order for people to feel secure and add to a society they need to feel attached to a community; if fully resourced we could perform this role more effectively.”

“It helps if there are people in grantmaking organisations who have a strong social welfare background and an understanding of different cultures and cultural needs. We have a good relationship with a local council worker and we have been able to achieve a lot because we have received advice and support and we know what resources are available to us at a local level.”

“It is hard for a new group to prove it deserves funding.”

“It is hard for a small group to prove it deserves funding.”

“It is hard for a cultural group to prove it deserves funding especially when you have to detail how your group ben-efits the wider community.”


Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: How would you sum up the Potter Foundation’s attitude towards evaluation and dissemination because it seems that it is something that the Foundation regards as a priority.

Dr Dorothy Scott: I think we have been more focused on innovation and talking about it in the context of the trinity of process of Innovate, Evaluate, Disseminate - a little mantra. Given the immensity of the need and the finite resources of philanthropy and the desire not to fund what should be the role of the state or the market, then the most equitable way and the most valuable way of grantmaking is to support innovation which has the capacity to ripple through - not trickle down - to affect many others.

In this sense we focus on helping the few to help the many. So by supporting an innovative approach whether it is around

indigenous maternal and child health, whether it is about salinity or accessibility and the arts it doesn’t really matter. Supporting something that is innovative and has the capacity of sustainability is really important and it is really critical that it has a life and you are not creating something that will then die which can actually damage communities more than it can assist them.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: Is that a realistic concern that grantmaking can actually do harm while trying to do good?

Dr Dorothy Scott: I think grantmaking can actually do damage by raising expectations and drawing on the social capital - the hope, community spirit and the volunteer and monetary resources - of communities for initiatives that have very little prospect of sustainability. If you walk away after two or three years of supporting a pilot program that is not sustainable you can leave the community more damaged than you found it.

Governments and, perhaps, philanthropic foundations are developing an insatiable appetite for launching new initiatives. Unless we really pay attention to the issue as to whether these are sustainable new initiatives we have the capacity to inflict greater harm than good. I am increasingly concerned and guided by the principle of “First do No Further Harm”.

The other question is how does philanthropy avoid falling into a vacuum created by the retreating state? Or doing what the

Innovate. Evaluate. DisseminateThe Secret to Sowing the Seeds of Success

In Profile

Supporting an innovative project is one thing. Trying to take the knowledge gained and then spread it to other areas or groups is another challenge altogether for grantmakers - whether at Government, philanthropic or corporate levels. It is also one area where there is still much work to be done. One organisation at the vanguard in trying to create a greater emphasis on disseminating knowledge is The Ian Potter Foundation.

The Foundation, established by stockbroker and benefactor Sir Ian Potter in 1964, has had a long history of providing grants for innovative projects, and then working to ensure the successful elements of that project are spread as wide as possible. Often more money is spent on supporting the dissemination than on supporting the original innovation.

It is a policy that Executive Secretary, DR DOROTHY SCOTT OAM, now sums up with the simple mantra: Innovate, Evaluate, Disseminate.

Those words mean the Foundation is selectively looking to fund projects it believes have the best chance of achieving a common aim of “helping the few to help the many” and that given the demand for funding far outstrips the ability to meet it, grantmakers have an added responsibility of making sure as many people as possible benefit from those projects that are funded.

"http://www.ianpotter.org.au/"


market should do. And how does it meet the enormous need which it doesn’t have the resources to meet in the most effec-tive way?

It’s about supporting innovation but also building in evaluation. If the evaluation shows that the innovation was effective and cost-effective is it possible to disseminate that innovation and possibly take it to scale across a service system?

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: What is a best practice example of that Innovate. Evaluate. Disseminate policy at work where you take a good idea to scale?

Dr Dorothy Scott: The Potter Farmland Plan, supported by the Foundation in the 1980s was a good example. It was a very ambitious initiative to demonstrate sustainable agriculture by promoting improved farm productivity while reversing land degradation and halting erosion and salinity.

It was an example par excellence in the history of the Potter Foundation and - to be fair - in the history of Australian philanthropy and it was before my time, so I am not singing my own praises.

It was the Board with the active engagement of my predecessor Pat Feilman who pioneered the Potter Farmland Plan and who first demonstrated the Plan on a farm, then demonstrated that plan to farmers as partners in the environmental movement - not enemies - and showed how you might achieve environmentally and economically sustainable agriculture. Then, through initiatives like Landcare, that message was disseminated to farmers across the country and beyond Australia’s borders.

The Potter Foundation got involved in that before the issue of salinity was in the consciousness of the general public or the consciousness of most political leaders. It was certainly in the minds of environmentalists and the minds of leading Australian scientists but the Foundation didn’t even have an organisation through which it could give money to do anything. It actually had to go out and set up its own program.

That is visionary philanthropy which was committed not just to innovation but to evaluating whether its new land management techniques were actually effective and equally committed to dissemination so that’s quintessentially Innovate, Evaluate, Disseminate.

In my time at the Potter Foundation I have been really keen to see whether we can translate that model of Innovate, Eval-

uate, Disseminate from the environment to other areas of grantmaking, whether it is engaging cultural groups that have been disconnected with the arts to participate in the life of art museums, whether its indigenous maternal and child health, whether it’s innovative mentoring programs like STAR at Mur-doch University. Can we practise this model of philanthropy and what’s involved in doing so? It’s intellectually demanding but ultimately it’s the only way of philanthropy achieving the maximum outcome for its investment.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: How important is the evaluation in the process?

Dr Dorothy Scott: It’s evaluation that has been the weak link in the Innovate, Evaluate, Disseminate template.

That’s because often organisations that are pioneering the innovative ways of working are not research bodies. They are very close to the community, they are at the coalface, they are doing it. They are not really concerned about helping the few to help the many because, fundamentally, their constituency and their mission is really more local. So they are really concerned about indigenous mothers and babies in Townsville or what they are doing in Gippsland about salinity or wetlands.

We as a philanthropic foundation may well have the mission of letting their innovative work ripple through to the rest of the world, and they are not opposed to that, but they may not have the infrastructure or the resources to do that or the reality is that saving the world is not their primary mission. It’s caring for something much closer to home.

We supported a three year $300,000 initiative called Shared Action by St Luke’s Anglicare in Long Gully near Bendigo, a community building development project aimed at promoting the safety and wellbeing of children. We then supported the evaluation of that program through Bendigo University, Latrobe University and Melbourne University so we built in to that $300,000 grant an evaluation process. We have since given small grants to help St Luke’s disseminate that through the making of the video, the publication of a book which is a nice example of taking that Innovate, Evaluate, Disseminate maxim and taken it to community rebuilding.

The Victorian State Government has now seen that St Luke’s model of community rebuilding as an exemplar in its community rebuilding strategy. The State Government is now trying to “seed” the St Luke’s experience in other Victorian regional communities.

The Secret to Sowing the Seeds of Success (continued)

Innovate. Evaluate. Disseminate

In Profile


St Luke’s is a community agency, not a research institute but it developed regional links with Bendigo University so it can have its evaluation done by people who understand the community in which the work is being done while still drawing on the expertise of, say, a consultant in program evaluation at Melbourne University. One of the challenges is getting really sophisticated evaluation which is not just about outcome evaluation (what worked?) but is about process evaluation (how was this achieved?)

It requires a combination of quantitative and qualitative meth-ods and requires the capacity to not just measure according to some pre-determined performance indicators but to give the “thick” description or the analytical narrative of how some-thing was achieved, including the things that didn’t work.

You need a rich understanding of how innovation is achieved. That’s essential for the replication of it - not that you can replicate it in another setting by some “one-size-fits-all” process. It might be more a case of transplanting the approach in other communities with adaptations to fit different contexts. What worked in Long Gully will not necessarily work in Latrobe Valley or Melbourne’s western suburbs but the core ingredient probably will. It requires adaptation and that’s where the critical, analytical narrative comes in. Not just a celebratory “this is what we did” or concrete description but analytical and critical and self-reflecting analysis about how we went about doing what we did?

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: Is it sometimes too tempting for grantmaking bodies and recipients to talk about projects in positive terms of what works while ignoring the negatives?

Dr Dorothy Scott: Absolutely. The “positivistic” paradigm in program evaluation is very much focussed on measuring outcomes and that is important but it is only half the story. We need to be able to measure outcomes, we need to be able to have evidence-based community building but we also need to know how we achieved that and it is the how that is most valuable to others seeking to try something similar.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: Is the problem that recipients are scared to fail? They are worried about saying you gave us $25,000 and the project didn’t work?

Dr Dorothy Scott: We probably have to accept that it is unlikely that all grantees will be completely frank about proj-ects. I say to them let’s tell it as it is, whatever it is (the out-

come). We say it’s marvellous if we find out things don’t work because then we don’t have to try it again.

The fact is that no knowledge is wasted. What is required is a partnership between the grantmaker and the grant recipient that is really based on trust and honesty.

What does not work is just as important as what does. That’s not a failure. That’s a success. That’s knowledge and I reassure them that reporting “limited” success will not go against them in future applications. Some grant recipients feel they must demonstrate that things work and are afraid of rigorous evaluation. In part, that’s for understandable reasons. Because of the enormous unmet need, increasingly, many non-government organisations feel that in order to survive they have to dress up what they are doing as “innovative” and “new” just to keep on doing what they already know in their bones is worthwhile.

In a sense philanthropic foundations that pursue this strategic model of philanthropy around innovation in an environment of resource scarcity may well be inadvertently encouraging many organisations to dress up what they are doing as innovation in order to get some financial support. Groups are driven by survival needs but it means we are not really partners in innovation because we are not equally open to disconfirming evidence about the success of the initiative - not equally open to something not working.

They are some of the really fundamental tensions for any grantmaker. While we say the best way to help the many is to help the few, the many still say ‘we desperately need your support and if you say you are only going to support innovation, we are going to jump through that hoop. Just like we have to jump through hoops for Government and twist ourselves into the boxes for priorities that Governments say they will fund.’

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: How difficult is it for grantmakers to say we funded it, it didn’t work but let’s celebrate it? Is there a pressure from Governments or corporations to only fund “successful” projects?

Dr Dorothy Scott: I think corporate philanthropy would find it difficult to embrace “failure” because corporate philanthropy wants to be associated with success and achievement. Phil-anthropic trusts and foundations really should have the cour-age to embark on risk. Really what we have is venture capital and we never expect the venture capitalist to only fund safe bets - that is not what venture capitalists do.


In Profile



So if philanthropic trusts and foundations are venture capitalists for the common good, then we must really have the courage to take risks, to back people who are prepared to take risks with us for the possible positive outcome and not be fussed about PR gloss that needs the positive outcome for its own public relations image. That’s not real philanthropy.

That would be very self-serving if we were only prepared to invest in that which is an assured success. Hopefully trusts and foundations that are able to take that risk will support some initiatives that will prove to be successful that corporate philanthropy will then feel they could embrace.

I think it is unfair to expect corporates to take big risks particularly in areas that are potentially stigmatising like drug dependence, some of these very controversial, high-risk areas. It’s a hard ask for a corporate but I don’t think it is a hard ask for a philanthropic trust or foundation to do that. What corporates could then do is welcome and embrace what we have been able to nurture in a more high-risk venture, to pick up some of the recurrent costs of successful initiatives.

For example if we can show that peer mentoring works with the Murdoch University STAR program (a project in which undergraduate university science students tutor high school students to help with their understanding of science) then it will be wonderful for corporates - as some corporates such as Hamersley, Rio Tinto and BHP have already done - to embrace peer mentoring programs in science education to build Australian science into the future on a strong platform while we get on and do something else at the risky end.

Philanthropic foundations just don’t have the money to provide recurrent spending and that is why sustainability strategies are so important to us. Things either have to be as cheap as chips or they have to deliver fairly major savings in government expenditure in the fairly immediate or short term so that Government resources can be re-directed to that which can, say, prevent child abuse or neglect or drug dependence or juvenile crime or they have to be attractive to corporate sponsors or public donors - or a combination thereof.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: What is the prefer-able form of evaluation or is it dependent on the amount of money you are giving and the type of project that it is? Dr Dorothy Scott: I think for a small-scale pilot project initially where you are wanting to pioneer, develop, nurture a program

early on you might encourage an internal evaluation. When they think they have developed something that is sound and rigorous one should be encouraging an external evaluation because it does bring a greater degree of objectivity and it is seen to have, in the eyes of others, greater integrity than internal evaluation. And it may be able to investigate issues of replicability elsewhere etc.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: So it might pick out those core or essential elements that can be adapted in other areas or other sectors?

Dr Dorothy Scott: Some program evaluators talk about it being unfair to evaluate programs until they are “proud”. And by that they mean programs that have ironed out their wrinkles so sometimes I think we are in danger of imposing a very demanding external evaluation on new initiatives where they haven’t learned to crawl let alone walk.

If we can, if we do have the resources, let programs learn to crawl and learn to walk with an internal evaluation which is very reflective and feeding back into the evolution of their creative work prior to moving onto a more rigorous external evaluation.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: Getting down to tin tacks, what sort of things would you have evaluated for a smaller scheme?

It would be good to know that they have already built into their data collection systems, ways of monitoring possible changes that were indicators of success. Something that can be very modest but gives some thought early on to the sort of data that would be helpful to collect in a low-cost, simple way and will be easy to analyse.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: Do you have evaluation built into all the programs you support?

Dr Dorothy Scott: Yes, to some degree, with the exception of very small grants.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: Do grantmakers do enough with the evaluation material they have?

Dr Dorothy Scott: It’s a really big challenge for us. There are some good examples of philanthropic foundations that do such as the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (www.jrf.org.uk) I understand that they disseminate the evaluation by asking



In Profile

"http://www.jrf.org.uk"


their grant recipients to not only provide a full report but a very carefully written report that goes onto their website. All their hard copy publications carry the findings so the information on what worked and what didn’t is available to the whole com-munity. It’s a condition of the grant.

Bernard Van Leer in the Netherlands is another grantmaker, one that puts in large resources into the evaluation and dissemination of information and distributes wonderful material on projects.

I think we in Australia have got a long way to go in really addressing dissemination.

Best Practice Grantmaking Quarterly: So what can we do?

Dr Dorothy Scott: We can use our websites so much better than what we do - and with links to information - and we can ask grant recipients to write reports in a succinct, accessible way that could go on their website, the grantmakers’s website and also the peak association’s website so that people looking for grants or wanting to know what else has been tried can actually check if anyone has done anything similar. I think we can all use our websites to far greater effect in dissemination but also use the mass media to better effect.

Again some philanthropic foundations put a lot of resources into communications strategies and communications consultants and I think there is a ge

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