Funder asks for too much information for too little money.
From Vu Le of “Crappy Fundraising Practices”
Athletes For Animals awards grants averaging $1,000 (not a typo). Applications require: a specialized cover sheet; a narrative with evaluation methods; a budget on their form; board and key staff descriptions; and organizational financials plus the IRS letter. (And if you’re awarded funds there’s a required final report.)
This will take a few hundred dollars in staff time, operating expenses, and overhead yet Athletes for Animals pays for none of that.
One Comment from a reader on the LinkedIn post: “When non-profit leaders better understand their cost structure and cost recovery model, they will stop wasting time on things like this.”
Equitable Grantmaking Assessment Guide
To further educate foundations, Vu Le also teamed up with RVC, an organization he founded in Seattle to promote social justice, to create “Making Philanthropy More Equitable: Introducing the Equitable Grantmaking Continuum.”
It outlines funding practices ranging from the most equitable to the most inequitable. The tool can be used by funders to assess their funding and grantmaking processes, and to clearly identify steps they can take to improve them.