Coaching the Applicant

A well-crafted Q&C will elicit the information you need and will also help the grantseeker strengthen the proposal. It will not, however, rewrite the proposal for the grantseeker. Unless you work for an unabashedly peremptory foundation, you should subscribe to the belief that a proposal should ultimately reflect the will of the applicant or, at any rate, the joint will of the applicant and the foundation. If the proposal is merely a series of statements signed by the grantseeker but dictated by the grantmaker, then it loses its legitimacy with the applicant. You must therefore be a coach without becoming the author of the proposal.

The questions in the Q&C become the cornerstone of the coaching process. They raise issues without prescribing answers and give applicants a chance to craft solutions (as opposed to your foisting solutions on them). In fact, as one grantmaker says, “Program officers are often better at analyzing shortcomings in a proposal than at suggesting improvements. I find that, once I have identified the problems, the grantseekers usually come up with better solutions than I would have.”

The concerns, in contrast, raise issues and prescribe answers. They tell the grantseeker what to do or not to do. Generally speaking, then, the goal of the Q&C should be to maximize the Q and minimize the C. The exact proportion will vary from proposal to proposal, but it is safe to say that if the number of concerns ever exceeds the number of questions, then you are actually writing the proposal.

Another of the key considerations around coaching the applicant has, due to its crucial importance, already been mentioned: the management of expectations. We have covered only one side of that task, however: that of preventing optimism from running away with the applicant. Although much rarer, the opposite reaction can also occur: the grantseeker can become unduly discouraged upon receiving a Q&C. Typically this happens after the applicant receives a long letter of questions and concerns. The number and complexity of the queries seem overwhelming, and the applicant concludes that it would be too big a job to respond or, worse, that the foundation has concocted such a complicated letter specifically to talk the proposal to death. It is useful when sending along a Q&C to reassure the applicant that there is real interest, all the while remembering to continue to manage expectations. This is a neat trick, something akin to telling a date that you are deeply in love but not at all sure about making a commitment.

Language something along these lines may be helpful: “My colleagues and I recognize that the number of questions and concerns raised in this letter may seem overwhelming. We would not have gone to the trouble of reading your proposal so carefully, or of analyzing it so thoroughly, if we were not serious about considering it as a candidate for funding. However, we must make it very clear that this does not mean necessarily that the proposal will be funded. Even if you satisfactorily answer all of our questions and concerns, it is entirely possible that the foundation will decide not to fund the request.” This statement will, with luck, guard against the applicant becoming unduly pessimistic or unrealistically optimistic upon receiving the Q&C.

In a related vein, you can inadvertently do a poor job of coaching by creating a Q&C letter that is technically accurate in its queries but so negative in its tone that the grantseeker becomes too offended or too frustrated to respond. You need to strike a delicate balance in coaching, making problem areas clear without descending into nastiness or irritation. It can be handy to have a colleague read a draft Q&C specifically for a “tone check” before sending the letter to the applicant.

The final coaching consideration centers on management of timeline expectations. Unless a foundation has specific deadlines for making decisions, it is likely that the applicant will assume that a decision will be made sooner than is actually the case. Grantseekers are often operating under tight deadlines themselves, and they hope that foundadons will quickly give them a thumbs up or a thumbs down. Given such hopes, it is better to let them know sooner rather than later that the decision is likely to come later than they want.