• Familiarize yourself with the various types of technologies and grants software your foundation uses for applications, evaluation, etc. 

• Ask your co-workers where they find the greatest and least efficiencies in their work

1 A grant applicant emails you to say if funded, they have a surprise for you.  You pay little attention to the email and the foundation approves the grant.  3 months later, you get a personalized cutting board with your name on it with a note that says “Thank you for the grant.  We didn’t need all of it for programming, so we bought this gift for you.”  Do you:

• Not say or do anything and keep the gift

• Send the gift back

• It depends

2 Your foundation’s annual meeting is in NY.  Your spouse is going with you and you plan to stay over for the weekend.  How much of the trip can be billed to the foundation?

• All expenses, including plane tickets, hotel and meals for both you and your spouse

• Just your plane ticket and hotel room

• No expenses can be billed to the foundation

• It depends

3 A grantee sends you free tickets to her organization’s annual charity event that is an art show.  Can you keep them and go?  

• Yes

• No

• It depends

  
  

Ethical Dilemmas - Right vs. Right Examples

A Truth vs. Loyalty.   You are a grants officer and have presented Nonprofit A to your Foundation’s board for approval.  Early feedback is that everyone likes Nonprofit A, particularly because of the leadership there. The Executive Director of Nonprofit A happens to be a good friend of yours, and she discloses to you the night before your Foundation board meeting that she is going to be leaving the organization in a month, but makes you promise not to tell anyone. What do you do? 

• Don’t say anything and trust the Nonprofit A board to select a good successor

• Disclose this revelation to the Foundation board before they make their final grant decision

B Individual vs. Community.  You have $50k left in your grant budget and you have to choose between two grant applications.  Your focus is on education and Nonprofit A has a wonderful after school program for a select group of 5 disadvantaged but high performing students.  Nonprofit B will use the $50k to invest in needed teacher training ($1m budget) for the school system at large.  What do you choose?

• Fully fund the impactful after school program

• Support the school system to provide broader support to the entire community.

C Short-term vs. long-term.  A safety net hospital in your city is in significant trouble and will have to shut down if it doesn’t receive 1 million within a couple of days.  Your foundation has 500k to allocate this year (5% of your corpus).  Your foundation is focused on supporting healthcare for all.  Do you:

• Deny the application until more donors or better management can come in to support the hospital

• Dig into your corpus and increase your grant to $1 million to keep the doors open today.

D Justice vs. Mercy.  You have a very strict grant application deadline on October 1st.  A nonprofit that submitted the best grant application, and also needs the money the most, sent it in on October 3rd.  Do you:

• Reject the application because rules are rules

• Show mercy this one time, despite having rejected previously tardy applications

•  Internal check lists/requirements for grants completion
• Grant Application/Letter of Inquiry/RFP formats, guidelines and timelines
• Criteria sheets
• Foundation priorities, program areas, focus areas, etc. 

1. How do you communicate with grantees throughout the grant cycle?
2. How do you communicate funding decisions?
3. What communication channels do you use (grant portal, website, social media)?

1. How do you identify grantees and develop understanding of community needs?
2. How do staff work with the board to connect with grantees and make decisions?
3. What perspectives shape your work? Are any perspectives missing?
4. Do you offer support beyond the check?

Sharing this resource discussed in our breakout session.

Listen4Good is an independent capacity-building program launched by Fund for Shared Insight that trains organizations to listen and respond to their clients through an equity-informed feedback program.