Author: Muhammad Babangida Page 15 of 16

If you’re part of a grant-giving organization, or you are merely a business or individual who has the funds available to give to charities, you probably have a process that you use to determine which organizations are most suited to your donations. If you have a grant that you have advertised that isn’t getting many applicants, you might begin to wonder why you organizations aren’t lining up at the opportunity to have these funds. Many times, there is a disjoint in perspectives of the grantor and any potential grantees.

When you’re giving out grant money, it’s important to make sure that you aren’t placing any unnecessary red tape in the way of potential grantees. It’s important to remember that a 20-page proposal will cost organizations money to have that produced for them. Although, if you are giving out, say, $50,000 you might want to have more restrictions and proof that the donation will be spent wisely. If you are only giving out a relatively small amount, it might not make sense for the organization to hire a grant proposal writer for such a small amount. They might rationalize that all of the money that they could earn through the grant would be eaten up in the fee to the grant writer.

To avoid getting in your own way of achieving your philanthropic goals, make the proposal appropriate to the amount that will be given. If you are giving out only a few thousand dollars, it might mean that it is more appropriate to require a short two-three page letter that details what the organization does and how the funds would be spent.

You should also take a look at your own internal practices to make sure that you are aligning your internal processes to your own goals and the organizations that you serve. Although you might be interested in finding the best ways to give your money and ensure that it gets into the hands of people who will use it to great effect, it’s easy to have a lack of focus and mismanage your efforts. When you take a closer look at your own practices in conjunction with the practices and goals of your prospective grantees, you will have a better idea of how to best serve them.

If you have found that you are not getting as many applicants to your grants as you would like, take heart in the knowledge that even a few shifts in perspective and an approach more appropriate to your target grantees will bring you closer to your philanthropic goals.

Americans are well known for their charitable giving and generosity towards those who are less fortunate than themselves. Since there is so much need in the world, people are often subject to large numbers of appeals regarding all manner of no-doubt-worthy causes. In self-defense, people often elect to focus their personal efforts on a specific “cause” and leave all, or at least many, of the other needs to someone else.

Yet, even when one narrows their focus down to a limited topic, there are still many diverse organizations that are competing for the donations that go towards satisfying that particular charitable impulse. Since they all have excellent marketing campaigns and produce the same sort of heart-rending appeals for assistance, it is not always easy to know which ones truly make a real difference in their chosen charitable endeavor.

This is sometimes known, at least in military parlance, as the Tooth to Tail ratio, which is a way of expressing how much of the available dollars are spent on actually meeting the need and how much is being spent on extravagant new headquarters, large administrative costs, and even farmed-out fundraising campaigns. Indeed, there are some “charities” that frankly operate as outright scams that serve no other purpose than to provide easy living to the organizers.

Likewise, many large and well-known institutional charities have becomes so bureaucratically sclerotic that their administrative costs eat up gigantic amounts of money before spending a dime on their chosen mission. The best way of protecting oneself from giving your donations to regrettably unworthy organizations is to double-check with one or more of the disinterested charity rating services such as Charity Watch, Charity Navigator, or the compilations published at intervals in Consumer Reports.

Yet even these watchdogs are not immune to giving the benefit of the doubt to a charity that matches their own charitable impulses, which is one reason why it is best to consult with more than one. An even better way might be to give locally to a struggling organization that does not enjoy the worldwide cachet and fundraising prowess of some of the major “causes”. Nor does such a donation have to be monetary. Volunteering a little time to a local organization can not only be a big help to them, but it can also provide the rock-solid assurance that, when you do choose to donate your money as well as your time, it is going to be used wisely and efficiently.