Project File Documentation

The project file is the most overlooked aspect of relationships with both applicants and grantees. No program officer can possibly remember all of the important details of every project, especially when he or she is responsible for multiple projects, so recording them on paper or on disk is essential. Grants are legal contracts between the foundation and the grantee, so there are also good legal and fiduciary reasons to keep an up-to-date file on each project. The file serves as a key source of the data that enable the project to be properly evaluated, disseminated, or brought to scale. The file also is essential as a record of the project should the foundation be audited by the Internal Revenue Service, which can and occasionally does happen.

Finally, there is the issue of self-protection. As a program officer, you are, like it or not, quite often in the business of disappointing people. For the most part, it is applicants that you must turn down, but occasionally you must also disappoint the leaders of previously funded projects. One program officer tells of a time when he inherited, from a colleague who had passed away, a three-year project just beginning its final year. After that year was up and the program officer had declined the grantee's request for a second grant, the foundation's president received an angry letter from the CEO of the grantee. The letter claimed that the program officer had totally ignored the project over its last year and had never once contacted the grantee. The letter closed with an angry demand for a meeting with the president of the foundation. The program officer was able to document, from the file, nine separate occasions over the twelve-month period in question when either the program officer or his secretary had been in touch with the grantee, and even once when another colleague from the foundation had made a brief site visit to the grantee. Unsurprisingly, when confronted with this evidence, the chastened CEO withdrew the request for a meeting with the foundation's president.

The project file is in many ways the program officer's best friend; thus it needs to be created and tended with care. You will need to exercise discretion, however, in choosing which documents to include in the file and which not to. Among the documents that belong in the file are meeting notes, field notes from site visits, all drafts of a proposal, all foundation responses to proposal drafts, funding documents (which recommend to an internal committee or board of trustees that a proposal be supported), commitment letters, commitment revision letters, annual progress reports, and evaluation reports. Other items might be included in the main file or placed in a supplemental file, such as newsletters, press clippings, videos, and the like.

Among the documents that do not belong in the file are any that contain libelous material of any sort about individuals, or unsubstantiated charges about institutions. For example, if a document quotes someone who says that an employee of the grantee is a notorious adulterer, that document should not go into the file. A good rule is never to include in the file any document that would embarrass you, the foundation, or the grantee if it were to be reproduced verbatim on the front page of a national newspaper.