Program Overview: Getting the Big Picture

By Kate Caldecott

Are you funding the same organisations year after year? Are some of your administrative practices overly cumbersome for applicants and grantees? Have your programs become stagnant?

Periodically getting an overview of each of your grant programs is a good way to monitor these issues. It can reveal the strengths and limitations of your program design to ensure that your program is doing what it’s intended to do.

Note that a program overview report is not a replacement for program evaluation . Program evaluation entails collecting data via your grantees to measure program outcomes. In contrast, a program overview is a high level look at your grant program. It provides insight into program uptake, accessibility, budget policy, highlights and challenges. You can use the results of your report to make needed adjustments to your program guidelines.

Overview

Put together an overview of the grants awarded under each program category. Include metrics such as:

• Funds available vs funds awarded
• Application success rate (percentage)
• Length of grant term
• Number of participants
• Geographic area covered
• Percentage of grants that were successfully acquitted (final report received, no breaches, etc.)
• Length of time between application submission and application decision.

This information will answer the most basic questions as to how you are doing at getting the money out the door and into the community, as well as highlighting any major administrative problems that need to be addressed. You may want to assemble this information in a graph or table to show trends over time.

Availability

You will also want to check in on who your grantees are. It’s very easy to fall into a pattern of funding the same organisations over and over again. This isn’t necessarily bad provided they do good work. However, repeatedly funding the same people can stifle innovation and lead to the impression of a closed loop that’s difficult for new comers to break into. Research by AIGM indicates that even the small grants are being swooped up by large organisations

• Measurements you can use to see how well you’re doing at making sure your grants are accessible include:
• Grantee organisation size (number of employees/members, size of annual budget)
• Number of new versus repeat applicants
• Percent of unincorporated applicants/grantees. If you’re program doesn’t accept unincorporated applicants do you allow auspicing?
• Number/amount of grants targeting diversity or a particular demographic (gender, elders, refugees, etc.)

Budget



Taking a closer look at budget and financial information can shed light on the demand for funding, as well as the impact your funds have on leveraging other resources. Collect information on:


• Total amount of funding applied for versus total amount awarded
• Total project cost vs total amount funded
• Most common, unfunded budget categories
• Matching funds, in-kind contributions and volunteer hours

Highlights, Challenges and Lessons Learnt

Finally, include some qualitative information about what’s working, what’s not and what lessons have been learned over the past program year. You can collect this information from your grant program officers as well as from applicant. Surveying applicants to discover their insights, challenges and pain points in the application or grant management process can lead to process improvements, better communication and improved targeting of your grant programs.

If you would like assistance developing a program overview report, please contact me at Kate@katecaldecott.com.au or 0447 227 598.