What's wrong with the grant application and reporting processes

Nonprofit organizations face a common issue of needing to raise funds from multiple sources to support their programs. Unfortunately, grant applications from different funders usually vary in proposal format, documentation requirements and budget templates, which can present a significant challenge, particularly to smaller to mid-sized organizations. Moreover, applications for smaller grants often call for the same demanding proposal and reporting requirements as the larger ones, which often strain their limited capacity.
This is why a recently published report called "Drowning in Paperwork, Distracted from Purpose," by a group called Project Streamline (http://www.projectstreamline.org/), is particularly interesting and relevant. The report is a credible effort in calling for foundations to adopt certain practices that aim to streamline the grant application and reporting processes. Funded by some of the country's largest and well-known foundations, Project Streamline is an impressive collaborative effort among many of the major philanthropic and nonprofit membership groups.
The report identifies what it considers ten flaws in the grant application system. Grant writers, development directors and even grant makers will easily recognize these:
1. Enormous variability from foundation to foundation.
2. Application requirements which aren’t “right-sized” to the grant size or type or even if the organization is a past-grantee.
3. Grant awards that don’t recognize the true up-front costs of getting and managing a grant.
4. Proposal or grant awards that put the burden on the grantee for administrative costs, such as making multiple and costly copies of proposals, or evaluative costs, requiring the grantee to participate in an evaluation methodology that may not be right for the program.
5. Lack of trust between foundation program officer and organization development director, which limits honest communication and feedback.
6. Progress or interim reports that are submitted for compliance but aren’t read or responded to.
7. Jumping through hoops to comply with foundation guidelines and processes, like keeping two sets of books to meet budget template requirements, or feeling that it’s necessary to reinvent a successful program in response to foundations that like to fund new and innovative efforts, or describing a program within a limited number of characters for an online form.
8. Fulfilling redundant or unnecessary documentation, especially if the organization has already supplied the information already.
9. Streamlining efforts like online applications or common grant applications that have created a different set of problems for grant seekers (making it more difficult to actually talk to a foundation representative in the case of online applications) and grant makers (not getting strategic enough answers when reading responses to a common grant application form).
10. Foundations also suffer from some of the same inefficiencies with grant makers receiving too much or different information than they want and being hobbled by their own internal processes.
Project Streamline’s report is an honest attempt to bring these flaws to the surface and offer some recommendations for both grant seekers and grant makers to make the entire process more efficient. The concrete suggestions they specify include encouraging foundations to reassess the information they need to make funding decisions; making the process "right-sized" to the grant size and any prior relationship the foundation may have with a grantseeker; and finding ways for foundations to take more responsibility for the administrative tasks in the grant application process. In all, not surprisingly, the recommendations are broad and may be difficult to implement on a large scale, but Project Streamline recognizes that the findings are an important launching point for a larger discussion and effort to resolve some of these challenges. We're encouraged by what they’re doing and hope that Boston area foundations assess their own grant application and reporting requirements and processes to determine whether they allow nonprofits to focus on improving and sustaining effective program delivery and successful outcomes for the constituents they serve.
In light of this report, we'd like to hear from Executive Directors, Development Directors and Program Officers:
• Do the grant application flaws identified by Project Streamline reflect your own experience?
• What’s the one thing that you feel foundations could change about their grant application and reporting process that would have immediate long-term and value-added benefit for your organization?
• Has a funder ever asked you how they can improve their application and reporting process, and if so, what did you say to them?