Electronic Submissions
by Meg Sheridan
These days it’s hardly unusual for a foundation to request that a grant proposal be submitted electronically. Some grant seekers find this reduces their workload substantially: with just a push of a button, a grant seeker can submit a ten-page proposal and a full set of attachments, without going to the trouble and expense of making duplicate copies and paying for postage. But the less tech-savvy grant seeker may cringe at the prospect of scanning financial documents and may worry that their proposal will never reach the program officer’s desk.
Although electronic submissions are a step forward into technology, the industry has not completely moved to a paperless system. No matter how the proposal is submitted, the grant making committee may review it in hard copy format. Some foundations make hard copies and put them in binders for the committee to review. Another sends the grant writer an email confirmation of the application and request that the applicants print it out, make 10 copies and mail them back to the foundation.
David Walters of the Granting Committee at Disney Cast Community Fund said that electronic submissions standardize the information that is submitted from a wide range of nonprofits. It makes the information easier to analyze for the granting committee. “This isn’t necessarily their job,” said Walters, and a standardized format makes it easier for the committee to compare and contrast information from each non-profit. Walters can also direct his committee to certain areas of the application to pick up data that may be critical to their decision.
The electronic submission forces the applicant to conform and eliminates the possibility that the grant writer will go off and create his own format, using information that benefits the applicant over the recipient. But grant writers can get frustrated when they must describe the benefits of a multi-faceted program in 500 or 900 words. “We need to engage our haiku gene,” grumbled one.
“We all have to get over the notion that the entire process is electronic,” said John Hicks, President and CEO of J. C. Geever and Associates. “An electronic submission is usually just the beginning of the process.” He went on to describe the communication between grant maker and grant seeker as a fluid process of discovery, saying that the proposal is usually the beginning of the foundation’s due diligence. Hopefully, personal interaction follows, with a phone call or a site visit.
Grant makers themselves have mixed feelings about the electronic submissions and worry that it may cut off accessibility for those who are techno-phobic, or that it may result in a flood of applications. One program officer, who has not moved to electronic submissions, said “On the phone, if the program is clearly not within our guidelines, I can head them off at the pass. With electronic submissions, I can see being inundated with applications, most of which were not vetted beforehand.”
Sometimes the applicant is wary if the electronic submission will be received in its entirety or will disappear into a black hole. Although most foundations and corporations that request an electronic submission will follow up with a confirming email, some applicants miss that human contact. “Just pick up the phone,” said one program officer. “We’re here.”
Meg Sheridan is the principal of Crossroads, which provides research, grant writing, and strategic planning services to non-profit organizations.
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