Australian Institute of Grants Management GRANTMAKER OF ...€¦ · The Australian Institute of Grants Management, a division of the award-winning social enterprise Our Community,

Australian Institute of Grants Management

GRANTMAKER OF THE YEAR AWARD

2012 REPORT Setting the Grantmaking Reform Agenda

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Grantmaker of the Year: 2012 REPORT2

AIGM GRANTMAKER OF THE YEAR AWARD 2012 REPORT:Published by Our Community Pty Ltd Melbourne Victoria Australia © Our Community Pty Ltd

This publication is copyright. Apart from any fair use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be produced by any process without permission from the publisher.

Requests and inquiries concerning reproduction should be addressed to:

Australian Institute of Grants Management (AIGM) Our Community Pty Ltd PO Box 354 North Melbourne 3051 Victoria, Australia

First published May 2012

Please note:While all care has been taken in the preparation of this material, no responsibility is accepted by the contributors or Our Community, or its staff, for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies. The material provided in this guide has been prepared to provide general information only. It is not intended to be relied upon or be a substitute for legal or other professional advice. No responsibility can be accepted by any contributors or Our Community for any known or unknown consequences that may result from reliance on any information provided in this publication.

Special thanks:Our sincere thanks go to all those who entered the 2012 AIGM Grantmaker of the Year Awards, but particularly those selected as the winning and shortlisted nominees: Caitriona Fay, Nina Collins, Denise Fox, Jon King, Benjamin Jardine, Sharon Nathani and Genevieve Timmons. We thank you for giving us access to your expertise and ideas. None of us is as smart as all of us – we look forward to drawing on these ideas and more as we push forward in our grantmaking reform agenda in the months and years to come.

We welcome your feedback: We are always keen to hear from you. Send your feedback to [email protected]

Grantmaker of the Year: 2012 REPORT 3

THE AUSTRALIAN INSTITUTE OF GRANTS MANAGEMENT: LEADING GRANTMAKING REFORM

The Australian Institute of Grants Management, a division of the award-winning social enterprise Our Community, has for the past decade been at the forefront of innovation in grantmaking in Australia.As well as producing the country’s only cross-sector best practice grantmaking publication, we also convene and coordinate a number of grantmaking affinity groups and cross-sector grantmaking events.We are active in seeking and documenting best practice lessons and examples, are codifying what we are learning through our dynamic website and Grantmaking Toolkit, and embedding all of that knowledge in SmartyGrants, our best practice online grants management system, which is streamlining and standardising grantmaking across the country.

WE BELIEVE:

1. Grantmaking is an absolutely central element in the Australian economic system. Not one dollar should be wasted on poorly designed, poorly articulated, poorly evaluated, or inefficient systems. Grantmakers must maximise resources by sharing lessons, and seeking and learning from those shared by others.

2. Australia needs more and better professional grantmakers. The job of grantmaking should be afforded appropriate professional status, training and recompense.

3. Grantmakers must listen to the communities they serve. Grantmakers should be driven by outcomes, not process. They must trust and respect their grantees and offer programs, systems and processes appropriate to their needs and capacities.

4. Grantmakers should be efficient. Wastage is indefensible. Skimping on systems, technology and professional staff is equally wicked.

5. Grantmakers must be ethical. Grantmakers must ensure that the process of grantmaking is fair, unbiased, and open.

You can read more about our values and beliefs in our grantmaking manifesto: www.grantsmanagement.com.au/manifesto

The 2012 Grantmaker of the Year Award has elicited some thoughtful speculation from some of Australia’s leading lights in grantmaking.

Unlike most other awards, the AIGM’s Grantmaker of the Year Award rewards future potential as much as past glories, asking grantmakers not just what they have done, but what they think should be done to forward the practice and profession of grantmaking. Their ideas are outlined on the following pages.

We are well on our way to achieving a number of the aims put forward by award entrants, and we are starting work on others. We thank the award entrants for helping to frame our thinking and chart our course.

AT A GLANCE: AWARD ENTRANTS’ IDEAS FOR REFORMING GRANTMAKING IN AUSTRALIA:

Professional training

Establish an accredited training course incorporating modules from currently available business and management courses Allow acknowledgement of grantmaker skills by professional networks through Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL)

Professional networking

Build up cross-sector professional networks Set up a curated wiki / drop-box to allow dissemination of best practices Organise an online network that allows grantmakers to connect with co-workers in a private, secure social network

Professional recognition

Encourage change in the profession’s vision of itself Set up an accreditation/awards system to recognise and reward best practice grantmaking organisations

Grantseeker/Grantee support

Institute proactive promotional practices to ensure funding opportunities reach new organisations Act as network enablers and advocates for grantees Give groups the skills they need to endure, through training and development Adopt a more active educational approach with organisations Cultivate face-to-face relationships with grant recipients so that evaluation, monitoring and general progress can be discussed rather than documented

Stretching the envelope

Pursue and reward grantmaking transparency Don’t punish failure; treat it as a learning experience Allow time for outcomes to emerge Seek opportunities to share lessons Allow a percentage of granted funds to be “risk” money, where there’s no guarantee of results Develop better ways of assessing difficult-to-count aspects of grantmaking

2012 AWARD REPORT


2012 Grantmaker of the Year Award winner Caitriona Fay, left, is pictured with AIGM director Fiona Dempster and Our Community Group Managing Director Denis Moriarty

ABOUT THE AWARD

The Australian Institute of Grants Management’s Grantmaker of the Year Award is designed to unearth the people leading the field of grantmaking in Australia, and draw out (and share) their vision for where we should go next.

It is our belief that none of us is as smart as all of us.

We are using this award process to help guide us in our work to drive professionalisation of the sector – we hope others will find inspiration in it too.

Entries for the inaugur al award opened in August 2011 and closed on November 24, 2012.

The winner was announced at the Grantmaking in Australia Conference in Melbourne on February 24.

Entries for the 2013 awards will open in August 2012 –visit www.grantsmanagement.com.au/award

2012 Winner:Caitriona Fay, Senior Program Manager, The Ian Potter Foundation

Caitriona is the Senior Program Manager at The Ian Potter Foundation, a role which includes assessment of grants and leadership of the foundation’s grantmaking strategy.

She also co-chairs Philanthropy Australia’s Education Affinity Group, is a Project Member of the Leading Learning in Education and Philanthropy research team, and is co-contributor and co-founder of the www.3eggphilanthropy.com blog, which aims to encourage grants staff to discuss issues in philanthropy.

Caitriona’s experience in grantmaking began in 2002 at Scotland’s Heritage Lottery Fund, a “good causes” distributor of lottery profits in the UK.

Her application for the Grantmaker of the Year Award put forth a range of practical ideas for breaking down the barriers between grantmaking silos, shifting power from grantmaker to grant applicant, and improving professionalism in the field of grantmaking.

Caitriona’s prize included the award title, plus $5000 prize money, and a complimentary 12-month membership of the AIGM.

Highly commended:

• Nina Collins and Denise Fox, City of Yarra Grants Team (YarraGrants)

• Jon King, Community Broadcasting Foundation

• Benjamin Jardine, local government grantmaker

• Sharon Nathani and Genevieve Timmons, Inner North Community Foundation

Grantmaker of the Year: 2012 REPORT 5

WHAT IS THE MAJOR PROBLEM WITH THE AUSTRALIAN GRANTMAKING SCENE?

A lack of “right-sizing” in the application process, a shortfall in appropriate metrics, and a lack of appreciation of the true value and potential of grantmaking were identified by Grantmaker of the Year Award entrants as among the greatest challenges in grantmaking today.

The lack of cross-sector collaboration between grantmaking bodies was also identified as a key impediment to grantmaking reform.

“Grantmaking in Australia operates in silos,” said the Grantmaker of the Year Award winner, the Ian Potter Foundation’s Caitriona Fay.

“Across and within the grantmaking sector there is very little collaboration or information sharing.

“Whether it be philanthropy, corporate or government grantmaking, grantmakers do not naturally work to support each other.”

6 Grantmaker of the Year: 2012 REPORT

Collaboration was more likely to be serendipitous than planned, Caitriona said.

“When funders talk about collaborations, what they are actually talking about tends to be co-funding,” she said.

“This means information sharing, streamlined reporting approaches and learnings are rarely shared the way they should or could be.”

Part of the problem, suggested YarraGrants team members Nina Collins and Denise Fox, may lie in the fact that grantmakers were viewed as administrators rather than community development professionals.

Relationship-building tended to be valued less than smooth administration, they said.

“A grantmaker’s role is often weighed down with time and labour-intensive administrative tasks, at the expense of community capacity building and relationship development work.

“Grantmaking needs to be recognised for what it is – community development work using the tool of grants.”

The YarraGrants team said that relationship-building created more enjoyable work for the grantmaker, greater trust between grantmaker and grant recipient, and reduced risk.

PROBLEMS WITHIN

7Grantmaker of the Year: 2012 REPORT

“This can be best achieved when we’re freed from our desks – to engage with the community, think creatively and develop the skills our profession demands.”

The Inner North Community Foundation team comprising Sharon Nathani and Genevieve Timmons also believe that authentic relationships are key, advocating the use of a “high-trust, low documentation” approach to grantmaking.

Deficiencies in the application process were also identified as key problems in Australian grantmaking today.

Jon King from the Community Broadcasting Foundation said grantmakers should do more to help disadvantaged grantseekers navigate the application process, while the Inner North Community Foundation team said more should be done to eliminate the hoops that grantseekers were forced to jump through for small amounts of funding.

Local government grantmaker Benjamin Jardine said the most pressing problem in grantmaking was the lack of appropriate metrics around social impact, a situation that forced grantmakers to zero in on the financial aspects of an application.

“What is more valuable? A dollar spent on the homelessness problem or a dollar spent on preventing domestic violence? What special skill does the grantmaker have to make that determination?” Benjamin said.

“In the absence of a transparent, accountable method of judging social value we are drawn back to assessment of financial risk and return.

“This results in cost cutting, under-budgeting, reduction in scope and other methods designed to convince the grantmaker that a group is ‘good with money’ and able to squeeze value out of every last dollar.”

The Inner North Foundation team said grantmakers needed to be prepared to take more risks and to forego “demonstrable, quantifiable and immediate proof that their support has been helpful”.

“Sometimes outcomes take longer than the identified timeframe for a project (and that shouldn’t discount the value of the support),” they said.

BIG IDEAS FOR PREVENTING WASTE

Let’s not just reduce waste, says Benjamin Jardine – let’s redefine it.

“Fundamentally, and perhaps naturally, grantmakers tend to believe that any funds that do not result in a ‘successful’ project outcome are wasted,” he said.

“In doing so, we severely impair innovation because projects are punished for not achieving stated objectives. This approach critically de-emphasises the role of learning and knowledge acquisition in developing projects.”

Failure should instead be seen as a necessary part of the development process, Benjamin said.

“Time and time again I have seen organisations punished for a ‘failure’ and denied future grants when the knowledge they have gained through struggling with a difficult project would have led to a much better project the next time around.

“Instead, we grantmakers seem to prefer to fund a newcomer organisation which does not have this experience and must learn all the hard lessons learned by the experienced group before it can generate results.

“This self-fulfilling prophecy results in far more waste than acknowledging ‘failure’ of a project as an important phase in project development ever would.”

The Inner North Community Foundation team believes that the development of stronger relationships with grantees could be one of the keys to reducing waste.

Such relationships allowed evaluation, monitoring and general progress to be discussed rather than documented, Sharon and Genevieve said.

Establishment of a drop-box tool to allow sharing of templates and key planning documents would also help to reduce waste, they said.

PREVENTING WASTE


GRANTMAKING PROFESSIONALISM

BIG IDEAS FOR ENCOURAGING GREATER GRANTMAKING PROFESSIONALISM

Many of our leading grantmakers believe that access to accredited training could be the key to pushing professionalisation of grantmaking in Australia.

Such a course must recognise past qualifications and be grounded in the real-world, best practice grantmaking, a number of the Grantmaker of the Year entrants said.

“Other professionals have a range of customised courses available to their needs, why not Grantmakers?” the YarraGrants team said.

Pushing this concept further, Caitriona Fay suggested that senior management and boards needed to be encouraged to invest in their grantmaking staff.

Organisational leaders must recognise that good grantmaking requires individuals with a unique skill set, she said.

“It also requires an organisational belief that by improving the quality of grantmaking staff, the quality of applications will improve, the experience for grantseekers will be better and community outcomes will be stronger.”

Caitriona suggested that an award be created to celebrate those grantmaking organisations that champion such values.


BREAKING DOWN GRANTMAKING SILOS

“Technology today allows for the free-flow and exchange of ideas. A platform that really engaged grantmakers as a ‘living’ tool would go some way to breaking down the substantial barriers that exist among philanthropy, government and commercial grantmakers,” she said.

Jon King agreed that technology could offer opportunities for greater sharing of knowledge.

“A curated wiki could be developed as the ‘go-to’ space to promote and access best practices in grantmaking,” he said.


BIG IDEAS FOR BREAKING DOWN GRANTMAKING SILOS

Social media is offering new opportunities for breaking down grantmaking silos, Caitriona Fay suggests.

“I envisage a tool that provides for the natural flow of ideas, problem solving, co-funding, best practice and true collaborations,” she said, pointing to Yammer as just such a possible tool.

GIVING GRANTEES GREATER POWER


BIG IDEAS FOR GIVING GRANTEES GREATER POWER

Grantseekers can’t seize power over the grantmaking process – grantmakers have to offer it.

Publication of assessment and selection criteria is one way of doing that, says Caitriona Fay.

“All grantseekers are aware there are limited pots of funds held by grantmakers and that not all good projects can be supported,” she said.

“By providing clear guidelines, the grantmakers enable grantseekers to make better decisions around who they seek funds from. This is a significant equaliser for grantseekers.”

An accreditation program should be created to acknowledge and reward those grantmakers who were working hardest to achieve transparency, Caitriona said.

“Giving greater power to grantseekers is really about providing those organisations with the opportunity to make good decisions,” she said.

“As it stands at the moment, too many grantmakers hide behind the funder veil which is ultimately the initial source of that power imbalance.”


• Allowing auspicing arrangements, and, where possible, facilitation and sourcing of auspice organisations

• Running capacity-building and application workshops to help new/emerging grantseekers to navigate the application process and successfully run a project

• Developing separate funding streams (or quarantining of a certain percentage of grantmaking funds) for small/new/emerging/ risky organisations, and providing a different style of grantmaking/grants for that category

• Acknowledging risk up front, accompanied by deliberate (and board-authorised) risk-taking and implementation of a “face-to-face, high-trust, low- documentation” grantmaking approach.

BIG IDEAS FOR INCREASING DIVERSITY IN GRANTMAKING

This was the issue that proved most popular among our Grantmaker of the Year Award entrants, with grantmakers acknowledging that “allowed to apply” does not equal “access”, particularly for smaller, riskier and emerging organisations.

Lots of (often overlapping) ideas poured forth for increasing diversity in grantmaking, among them:

• Close examination of your community to ensure you know who’s missing out.

• Establishing proactive promotional practices to reach new and different grantseeking organisations, using non-traditional media channels where possible

• Use of interpreters, translation of application forms and guideline materials, and use of disability-compliant systems

DIVERSITY IN GRANTMAKING


Nina and Denise said that while many grantmakers might informally note who was applying for (and who was missing out on) grants for their programs, formalising this part of the process helped to remove the guesswork.

The YarraGrants team had included a multiple-choice question in their application form that asked applicants to identify the category (e.g. women/girls; GLBTIQ) into which they or their project most easily fit.

“From this we saw which sectors were under-represented, and drilled down to see whether this is because there really is less need, or if we have to work more closely with those sectors,” Nina and Denise said.

“We can work with the community to support them and learn how our requirements can be reshaped to better suit applicants.”

Once you know who’s missing out, you’re better equipped to act.

“For example, when we realised that we had few applications, and no successful applications, to our Annual Grants 2010 from the GLBTIQ community, we addressed this by running a GLBTIQ information session, advertising the grants in GLBTIQ media, and inviting GLBTIQ groups to participate in our skills and training program,” Nina and Denise said.

“This year we have seen a leap in the number of successful GLBTIQ applications and we plan to continue this approach in the future.”

The YarraGrants team said they also used an anonymous survey tool to ask applicants what questions they would have liked to have been asked on the application form, and where they would recommend they advertise their grants.

ABOUT US:

Australian Institute of Grants Management (AIGM)


BIG IDEAS FOR GOING “BEYOND THE GRANT”

Again, this topic proved very popular among our 2012 Grantmaker of the Year Award applicants.

The leading entrants offered a variety of ideas for beyond-cash grantmaking, including:

• Extraction, documentation and sharing of key lessons to ensure that all new applicants could get the opportunity to learn from what had gone before them;

• Sharing of grantmakers’ own expertise in particular areas;

• Acting as “network enablers and advocates”, partnership-brokers and auspicing advice-givers – providing links to other organisations and other ideas for support or income;

• Provision of skills and training sessions on grantseeking, fundraising, volunteer management, marketing and governance; and

• Incorporating capacity-building tools into grantmaking through provision of meaningful feedback for unsuccessful applicants, and development of multi-year funding underpinned by a partnership (rather than fee-for- service) approach.

BEYOND THE GRANT

ABOUT US:

Australian Institute of Grants Management (AIGM)

The Australian Institute of Grants Management (AIGM)is a best practice network for government and local government grants managers and grantmakers.

The AIGM is working to help grantmakers review and improve their grants programs, and keep abreast of best practices both within Australia and internationally.

The AIGM is a division on Our Community, a world-leading social enterprise that provides advice, tools and training for Australia’s 600,000 community groups and schools, and practical linkages between the community sector and the general public, business and government.

As well as overseeing a number of grantmaking affinity groups, the AIGM’s major offerings include:

• SmartyGrants – Australia’s best practice online grantmaking system, used by more than 1000 grants programs of all types and sizes.

• Grants Management Quarterly (GMQ) – plain language publication tracking best practices in grantmaking across Australia and from all over the world.

• Grantmaking Toolkit – an all-in-one decision-making framework, workbook (including policy building templates), and check-up tool designed to walk grantmakers through the process of building, reviewing or refreshing a grants program.

• Grantmaking Manifesto – framing the drive for reform and professionalisation of grantmaking in Australia.

• Code of Practice for Professional Grantmakers & Code of Practice for Grantmaking Agencies – setting performance and practice standards for leading grantmaking organisations and individuals.

• Grantmaking Knowledge Bank – searchable, topic-based listing of best practice thinking and case studies.

• Best Practice in Grants Management Conference, Training & Events – generalised and topic-based conferences, networking events and training for government, philanthropic and corporate grantmakers.

• Grants in Australia Survey – annual survey of grantseekers tracking the performance of grantmakers throughout Australia.www.grantsmanagement.com.au


GRANTMAKEROF THE YEAR AWARD

Documents

Australian Institute of Grants Management GRANTMAKER OF ...€¦ · The Australian Institute of Grants Management, a division of the award-winning social enterprise Our Community,