Chapter Four

Reviewing Proposals

The job descriptions of program officers in the more than fifty-eight thousand foundations across the United States vary widely, but if there is a single task that all share, it is that of reading, declining, and recommending proposals for funding. Doing this consistently well is at the heart of any program officer's job, but defining what is meant by “well” is notoriously difficult. Proposals are received in a truly infinite array. They can focus on virtually any subject, whether the foundation is interested in that subject or not; they can be terse or verbose, elegant or clumsy, brilliant or vapid, typeset or scrawled in pencil. No two are ever exactly alike, and no one can formulate a one-size-fits-all set of rules for assessing them.

Reviewing proposals is, inescapably, a subjective business. Although it is possible to compare one proposal with another, these comparisons are rarely, if ever, exact. When the foundation's board or the internal committee ultimately chooses one proposal over another, the basis for that choice is apt to be less a mass of data and more a matter of judgment or hunches based on experience, and sometimes it is even a leap of faith. There is no science of proposal review, but fortunately there are some reliable guideposts along the way.

The policies of the foundation employing you serve as your first guidepost. Some foundations, especially those in the peremptory range of the 4-P continuum, do not accept unsolicited proposals. They either choose their grantees without any proposal process at all or send requests for proposals to selected potential grantees, but in either case, they accept no unsolicited submissions. Most of the foundations that are open to receiving unsolicited proposals have deadlines for receiving them and deadlines for completing the review process so that the proposals may be recommended for funding to the board or to an internal committee. The discipline of the deadline is useful, for it promotes timely decision making. Nothing could be more frustrating for a grantseeker than to wait a year or so for a foundation to finally make a decision, only to have the proposal declined.

The preferred form of the initial submission serves as another key organizational guidepost. Many foundations insist that this first written proposal be truncated in some fashion. Short initial submissions spare the grantseeker the trouble of preparing a full-blown proposal “on spec” only to learn that the foundation has no interest in it. They also spare you the burden of reading long proposals that have no hope of being supported. Typically, a foundation will request that the initial submission be in the form of a three- to five-page letter that sketches out the opportunity to be seized, the work plan for seizing it, a strategy for continuation of the project after the foundation's funding would cease (if this is applicable), an evaluation plan, and a simplified line-item budget. Some foundations even require that all of this information be condensed into a single-page outline.

In justice to the grantseeker, it should be noted that requiring such abbreviated preliminary proposals is more of a time saver for the grantmaker than for anyone else. “I have made this letter longer than usual,” wrote Blaise Pascal, “because I lack the time to make it short.” This is more than a witticism. In many ways, it is easier to write a rambling proposal than it is to distill its essence into a few pages. Foreshortening does, however, force the grantseeker to concentrate on the essentials of the proposal and thereby saves you a world of time and effort.

There are some foundations that prefer a longer first submission, and even a few that wish to see a full-length proposal before they see anything else. Still others prefer the less formal option of the concept paper. With more narrative than an outline but less verbiage than a full proposal, a concept paper is a compromise between a long proposal and a short letter. Grantseekers tend to like concept papers because this format gives them extra pages in which to tell their stories. And because some foundations do not, as a matter of policy, decline informal concept papers, grantseekers also prize the flexibility the concept paper allows them to adjust and revise their presentation before submitting a formal request.

As always, there are trade-offs involved in whatever “first submissions” policy the foundation chooses to adopt. One-pagers are quick to read, but much of the richness of the idea is necessarily omitted along with the extraneous detail. The richness is amply found in full proposals, but these novellas take many times longer to read and consider than do one-pagers. Concept papers allow for a greater level of detail than one-pagers (although less than full proposals), but also take longer to consider (although not as long as full proposals). As one grantmaker puts it, a concept paper is “too short to contain meaningful detail, but still long enough to contain a filibuster.” No method is ideal, but unless a foundation has a very low proposal volume, it makes sense to require some type of foreshortened first submission. Reading full proposals as a preliminary step is simply too time-consuming for you—which means, in turn, that the decision process is slowed, thus hurting grantseekers.

The leeway to make decisions on proposals that is extended to program officers serves as another important guidepost. Some private foundations, especially smaller ones, make all decisions by committee. Nothing can get funded without that committee's approval, nor can any proposal be declined without the committee's say-so. In larger foundations with bigger proposal volumes, however, it simply is not practical to make all decisions regarding proposals in a corporate fashion.

For better or for worse, then, many foundations follow a policy that allows program officers to unilaterally decline proposals but not to unilaterally approve them. Approval usually requires a favorable decision first by the review team, then by an internal committee of officers, and often by the foundation's board of trustees. The theory is that bad ideas can thus be expeditiously declined, and good ideas can benefit from the “two heads are better than one” principle. This is an effective system for the most part, guarding well against arbitrary approvals. It does, however, place program officers in the rather peculiar position of being able, in theory at least, to say no to any request while being unable to say yes to any request. One grantmaker summed up the situation succinctly: “It's a weird job. I can decline a request from a prince, but I can't approve a request from a pauper.”

In practice, however, most foundations attempt to limit unilateral declines to only those proposals that are out of scope or clearly inferior in quality. The tougher calls are usually made by consensus of a committee. The word consensus is chosen advisedly; sometimes the decision is unanimous, and other times it is not. This means that there is always the potential for conflict between you and the internal committee. Inevitably, there will be times when the committee disagrees with your recommendation to fund a particular request. These disagreements are to be expected; as long as everyone handles them openly and professionally, they should not outweigh the benefits of bringing a team of talent to bear on the opportunities presented by proposals.