Folly #28: Painful Budgets
Why do funders try to control spending?
Recently I wrote a grant application for a client. The application was not especially onerous: fairly standard and reasonable questions about the project’s purpose, objectives, activities and outcomes, with no character limits. We were sailing along.
Until we got to the budget.
Nearly every proposal allows an applicant to upload a project (or operating) budget. Wise funders leave it to the nonprofits to define their expense priorities in the categories that are both standard and make the most sense for their business model.
But not this funder.
Microscopic Expense Detail
This application’s budget required contortions of expense categories into line items that were, frankly, absurd. Is it some twisted rite of passage that nonprofits must be resigned to a Sisyphean endurance of painful grant applications?
This particular grant was for three years. Each line item required a per item cost and the quantity of “units.” Why would any funder feel the need for every applicant to define items to this level for a 6-figure funding request?
Communications expense: Online hosting/maintenance was a separate line item.
Logistics: Venue rental, coordination, setup and staging; audio-visual; and, my favorite, separate categories for attendee snacks, attendee lunch, attendee dinner, attendee refreshments. Really? We need to count the number of snacks we expect to serve at an event 30 months in the future??
Travel: Separate category requiring very specific details about rates for hotel rooms and airline flights.
Meals: Broken down separately with equally specific information requested.
It took an hour just to put a perfectly reasonable and clear Excel spreadsheet into their categories.
Expansive Time Frames
This is even more ridiculous given the timeframe for proposals and funding, which can span months or, like this one, cross fiscal years. Nor does it give any credit to the limitations of a nonprofit’s accounting systems, begging a logical question that any applicant may wonder:
Will we have to contort reports to fit these artificial categories as well? And how much staff time will that take?
Reporting requirements may not be top of mind for a nonprofit eager to get funding, but painful grant reports distract small staffs and scarce resources from the work that is their mission.
It seems to go back to control. But isn’t philanthropy supposed to be about shifting resources towards solving difficult social, economic and environmental issues? Then there needs to be trust in the nonprofit you’re asking to do that work.
Moving Towards Trust
Foundations on the cutting edge declare a desire to partner with their grantees and learn from them in something called trust-based philanthropy, the topic of a former Folly. I’d venture that a preliminary step in that direction is letting a nonprofit define budget detail in a way that makes sense to their own mission and financial systems.
If you’re looking for grant writing tools, including budget templates, the next Map to Successful Grantwriting online class starts October 4 or check out free resources at communitygrantwriters.us.
Know a foundation who does this right? Share it in a comment below and forward this to friends. Together we can create change. And, if you haven’t already, please …