Crappy Funding Practices’ Post

Submit your Crappy Funding Practice here! 📢 https://lnkd.in/gStX7dBd #crappyfundingpractices

#CrappyFundingPractices alert! Idaho Women's Charitable Foundation, your application process needs some urgent revisions. Requiring organizations to endure numerous rounds of consideration that include written submissions, in-person meetings, follow-up requests, and videotaped interviews without compensating for time, knowledge, and labor are prime examples of #CrappyFundingPractices. Adding a surprise $5 fee to apply is adding insult to injury. Let's be real – nonprofits have enough on their plates without having to jump through these unnecessary hoops. It’s time to shift these outdated practices for a fairer, more equitable process. 🛠️ Are you not at all fine with #CrappyFundingPractices? We’re listening! 📢 https://lnkd.in/eMaXk6ZS

Challenge: Can you solve housing insecurity in 500 characters?  🏘️🤔🏡🤔🏠 In their most recent cycle, The Citi Foundation asked nonprofits to describe their strategy to address homelessness in 500 characters. Do you know how short 500 characters is? Let’s put it this way: 500 characters can create about 100 words. It takes less than one minute to say 100 words out loud. 🫥🤷♀️🤷🏽🤷🏻♂️ Say it with us: #CrappyFundingPractices! The Citi Foundation’s request for proposals to address homelessness contains 670 words and 4,500 characters. 🤨 They think we need 11% of the characters to describe our strategy as they need to ask us to submit one? So far, you’ve read more than 500 characters in this post. 😒 C’mon Citi Foundation - you want innovative solutions? Give us a little more room to describe ours. No more miniscule character counts, please! 🤓 Are you a sad city mouse just trying to apply for funding without needless barriers? Tell us all about it:  📢 https://lnkd.in/eMaXk6ZS

*OOPS. Thank you to our community for steering us right when we went off track! It looks like we did a crappy job of verifying the claim we received this time, and for this we apologize. We’ve updated our post below to remove what we got wrong and focus on the items that still concern us.* Today's #CrappyFundingPractices features marketing masquerading as philanthropy, courtesy of the Benefact Group/Movement for Good.  Benefact Group operates a multi-round process of selecting organizations to receive grants of £1,000-£5,000. While yes, as pointed out in the comments, winners are selected at random, it appears that they are selected raffle-style, so the more nominations you get, the better chance you have of winning. Any process where multiple nominations increase your chances of funding is a poor use of a charity’s time. It forces charities to spend time mobilizing their supporters - or at minimum they have to rely on their number of fans - in order to increase their nominations. This process also drives nonprofit supporters to Benefact Group's website. And we've verified that every nominator has to share personal and contact information, and that every nominated charity “may be contacted” about Benefact Group’s services. This looks like marketing-as-funding to us. Benefact Group, if you really want to serve the nonprofit sector without reviewing applications, you could just give out your grants at random and stop dragging the charities and their supporters into a popularity contest. Are there #CrappyFundingPractices that upset you and your Corgi? Tell us all about it at https://lnkd.in/epwEMUdb.

We need to have a #CrappyFundingPractices conversation about the P4G Partnerships' multi-step “Call for Partnerships” grant application process. While we salute bringing nonprofits and businesses together for sustainable climate solutions, the effort required to move forward after the initial Concept Note phase feels akin to planting an entire forest of trees. We've heard from a nonprofit applicant who reported spending hundreds of hours on multiple submissions that were not invited to the next stage. Each rejection must have felt like another tree getting chopped down. Some of the 7 pages of questions are “Indicate the specific expected (short, medium, and long-term) impacts in terms of climate adaptation and mitigation, the relevant food/energy/water sector, inclusive economic growth, poverty reduction, and gender equity…” and “summarize the partnership’s climate solution and main expected goals during the P4G partnership grant period….” And that’s just the initial stage. While detailed information *may* be crucial to request of those that advance, asking nonprofits for such extensive details at the Concept Note stage is unreasonable. Organizations should be able to focus on creating meaningful impact, not getting bogged down by an overcomplicated application process. P4G, it’s time to streamline the initial screening:  reduce the burden on nonprofit partners and allow them to spend more time on the climate impact work that truly matters. Are you equally exhausted? Let us know about other #CrappyFundingPractices here: https://lnkd.in/eMaXk6ZS

🚨 General operating support funds are critical, necessary, and non-negotiable! 🚨 Hey, Frances L. & Edwin L. Cummings Memorial Fund (cummingsfund.org), not funding general operations is one of the top #CrappyFundingPractices. It's like trying to run a marathon without shoes and water—uncomfortable and almost impossible! 👟🚫 Let's shift this and support organizations as if we actually want them to succeed and win. 🎉 How? By giving grants for general operating costs, which give nonprofits the flexibility to spend funds on the areas they identify as most in need. Organizations have been waving this flag for ages, and it's time for a change. If you’re not sure how to get this done, check out this video from almost a decade ago—it’s still relevant today: https://lnkd.in/eQRsEJ6X. We’re looking forward to a crap-free philanthropy future…. Until then, submit your #CrappyFundingPractices nominations here: https://lnkd.in/eMaXk6ZS Image description: Colorful background with a gold toilet trophy that says: No general operating support. The header of the image says: #CrappyFundingPractices Award.

Today’s #CrappyFundingPractice call-out goes to Broadway Cares/Equity Fights Aids! Requiring 20 hard copies of the application mailed every year? Not only is that a #CrappyFundingPractice, it's also a real bummer for a nonprofit’s time and the trees. 🌳📄 Funders can create application processes that are concise and efficient (might we suggest a few questions via email) to ensure organizations can focus on the work rather than printing and mailing copies. The less work you require, the more attention can go to your awesome mission: providing “groceries and medication, health care and hope to those … affected by HIV/AIDS, COVID-19 and other life-threatening illnesses.” Let's save paper, postage, and precious time 🌱✉️⏰ Until there’s no more crap, you can submit your #CrappyFundingPractices nominations here: https://lnkd.in/eMaXk6ZS Image description: Colorful background with exhausted dog and text that says: Mail 20 hard copies. The dog is saying “Wait…this is a joke, right?”

Hey, Wells Fargo Philanthropic Services (Wells Fargo), for a company “known for creating innovative solutions,” why is your funding portal a Sisyphean chore? Wells Fargo Philanthropic Services administers funding from various private and family foundations and manages applications through a single portal. (So far, so good.) They use a universal application that’s identical for each funder. (Promising!) BUT, you can’t send one application to multiple funders. (D’oh!) That means if you apply to multiple foundations, even though they have identical applications, you have to set up a NEW application for each foundation AND  Manually Re-enter  Each Question’s  Response. Not sure how this process is an “innovative solution,” but from where we’re sitting, the math isn’t mathing. Instead of trapping nonprofits in a nightmare of your own creation, why not simplify your application process and stop wasting nonprofits’ time and labor? We’ll take a logical solution over an “innovative” one. Have you or your loved ones been subject to mind-numbingly repetitive applications or other #CrappyFundingPractices? Tell us about them here: https://lnkd.in/gStX7dBd. https://lnkd.in/gtcppNA8

Weeoo, weeoo! 🚨 Here’s a dumpster fire of a funding practice we wish we could extinguish: Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation’s equipment inventory requirement. What does that mean? Yeah, we don’t know either. According to the funder’s website, applicants must submit a list of the department or organization inventory that they already have on hand. “For example, include items such as vehicles, extrication equipment, breathing devices, and personal protective equipment (PPE).” We’re at a loss for why Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation would need this level of detail. Many of their applicants are first responder organizations, and as our submitter pointed out, many of these organizations are volunteer-run. Is that where they’re supposed to put their time: counting PPE? Oh, and if this fire wasn’t already hot enough, we didn’t even mention their 13-bullet list of vendor quote requirements or the fact that their application portal closes after 600 applications are received. Firehouse Subs Public Safety Foundation, if you really want to support “lifesaving capabilities” and the lives of local heroes, maybe your first response should be to stop asking your grantees for such unnecessary, time-wasting details. Keep them coming, everyone. If you’d like to call out a @CrappyFundingPractice, send it our way:  https://lnkd.in/gStX7dBd  📢

✋📢 Stop the presses! We had to interrupt regularly scheduled programming to have a public chat with Chase Philanthropies. [Interestingly, their LinkedIn page has vanished. They can be found here: https://lnkd.in/g8i7wHW7 or on F'book at ChaseConsultingLLC.] Why? We received an unprecedented five (5) submissions at once justifiably dragging them for charging applicants to apply for a grant. Yes, you read that right. Chase Philanthropies requires that each submission include a $20 fee along with your printed application that must be submitted in an envelope, through a mailbox. And to top it off, they want your payment by check – Who uses checks?? – in the snail mail package. But wait, there’s more! Their process has two rounds of consideration, and the $20 fee applies to the initial LOI stage, *not* the later round in which fewer organizations are invited to submit full applications. (There may actually be a theme here: They also conveniently link their consulting business and $2,000 grant workshops on the same page.) For the record, asking under-resourced nonprofits to pay for the privilege of requesting a grant is one of the crappiest of #CrappyFundingPractices. Chase Philanthropies, is this really where you need to make your money? 🤨 If you’re equally dismayed by an example of philanthropic misbehavior, please let us know:  https://lnkd.in/gStX7dBd