I am
disappointed when I read in a grant maker’s guidance that they do not provide
feedback to unsuccessful applicants. I don’t think it is good enough for these three
reasons:
1. I think it is impolite not to.
Seeking funding is hard work. The
environment is particularly competitive at the moment and success rates are
falling. Fundraisers have to bear the weight of the charity’s future and their
colleagues’ livelihoods on their shoulders. In the light of this, I think it is
impolite not to acknowledge their efforts and let them know why their request
was declined.
And yes, I know smaller funders and those with no paid staff say
this is difficult given the administration costs. But I have seen it done well
and cheaply using a polite email template with details of the most common
reasons applications were unsuccessful (lack of financial sustainability, poor
project planning, outside criteria etc.) with the relevant ones highlighted.
2. It
wastes everyone’s time if you don’t.
If the funder doesn’t let an applicant know
why they were unsuccessful then they may well keep applying. Funders will
therefore continue to get applications with little chance of success that they
will have to process and make decisions on. If the fundraiser is not told to
stop or to do something differently, the funder will just have to keep
responding. This wastes time for both the fundraiser and the funder. In the long run giving feedback improves the
quality of applications.
3. You owe it to the service users.
If a funder is turning
an application down because the charity falls short on an area of good practice
or quality compared to others then there is a duty on the funder to be open
about this. Otherwise the charity won’t know to improve and their service users
won’t benefit from this knowledge. And surely our whole point as a funder is to
support quality work that makes a difference?
Giving feedback is not always
easy. When you do it in person or on the phone you can get a very defensive reaction
or upset someone. Sometimes it feels that you don’t have anything useful to say
particularly if it was declined due to “insufficient funds”. But it is still a
worthwhile activity. Even just saying there was not enough funding available
means the fundraiser knows it wasn’t anything they did that let the charity
down. And at least they know that it would be worth applying again.
It is not
good enough to say “we don’t give feedback”. There are ways to manage the
process to keep the time taken and costs down. And the fundraisers and service
users deserve our openness and respect.
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