The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Citation

Oud, J. (2001), "The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs", The Bottom Line, Vol. 14 No. 4. https://doi.org/10.1108/bl.2001.17014dae.002

The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking: How Foundations Find, Fund, and Manage Effective Programs

Orosz, J.J.Jossey-BassSan Francisco, CA2000Keywords: Grants, Fund-raising

The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking gives readers a unique overview of the process of giving grants. Grantmaking is a field with no formal qualifications, little available training, and author Joel Orosz, a program director at the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, has written this book to assist new foundation and grants officers with his practical advice on basic skills, principles and daily tasks.

The beginning and end sections set the rest of the book into the larger context of how issues in society affect foundations and giving. However, most of the 15 chapters are devoted to more concrete advice. Chapter 2 talks about the skills required by the successful grants officer. The emphasis here is put on human relations skills, since the major challenge in the job is to create successful relationships with clients and colleagues. Other chapters go into detail on how to approach tasks like client meetings, site visits, writing and presenting documents and proposals, maintaining files and managing grant projects, dealing with grants applicants on sensitive issues, project evaluation, and lobbying for public policy changes. Chapters 4 and 5 discuss how to evaluate and decline grant applications, and will be the most interesting sections for grant writers wanting inside information. Characteristics of good and bad proposals are discussed in detail from a grantmaking point of view, as well as how to assess proposal budgets and the capability of applicants. Orosz emphasizes the role of project and outcome assessment in successful grant proposals, since evaluation and accountability have become key factors with all funding agencies in recent years.

There are many other books and articles on foundations, but very few contain this kind of practical information on their day-to-day workings. The Insider's Guide to Grantmaking is clear and readable and, although it is meant to be an overview rather than a comprehensive guide or a checklist, it will be useful as a manual for grants officers to refer to when sensitive issues like complaints about declined proposals arise. It will also give an interesting picture of the internal functioning of foundations at the turn of this century for people researching the history of giving, and an inside view of the grant-giving process for grant seekers.

Joanne OudCollection Manager, Wilfrid Laurier University Library, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada