Setting the Agenda

Once you have decided to make a site visit, you must create an agenda for the visit. This process will reveal both parties' common—and divergent—interests. You have in common the desire to come to an agreement so that the project can go forward. Your interests diverge, however, in one crucial way. It is in the grant-seeker's interest to impress you, and it is in your interest to uncover any hidden problems that may potentially hinder the project. This urge to shine versus the urge to investigate makes for potential conflict and underscores the need—from the foundation's point of view—for you to control the site visit's agenda.

Your first imperative is to investigate any concerns that may linger after the initial review. The second is to conduct a general due diligence review, double-checking to ensure that the applicant is competent, honest, and financially sound. The third is to gather information needed to write and defend the funding document. (In most foundations, the funding document is the summary of the project that is sent to the internal committee or the board for discussion and, one hopes, approval.) All of these needs will come into some degree of conflict with the grantseeking organization's desire to impress you by putting its best foot forward. To avoid conflict, you should make it clear from the outset that there is certain information that you must gather in order to make a final decision on the request and that therefore the agenda must be designed to serve this purpose. In practice, this means that you should create a list of issues to cover and of people to meet, and share that list with the grantseeker early in the process. It will be normal for the applicant to resist this agenda to some extent, because it will not be completely compatible with the grantseeker's desire to roll out the red carpet. Strenuous resistance, however, could be a sign of problems. If, for example, you wish to see community leaders involved with the project, and the applicant strongly objects, it may well be that the applicant wishes to disguise the fact that there is not a real partnership in place.

You must recognize, too, that there may be people who are not on your list but with whom you must hold a meeting for reasons of protocol or politics. The key consideration is to completely satisfy the needs of program first; you can then deal with protocol and political issues as a secondary priority. Realistically, however, protocol needs cannot be ignored completely.