Crappy Funding Practices

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

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

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Well, here’s one we haven’t seen before. In order to apply for a grant from CHIK FIL A (https://lnkd.in/gGy-Syt) you have to share photos, and of course the accompanying photo releases. But wait, not the photo releases that you already have from your participants…. You have to use Chik-fil-A’s specific form. So your choices are 1. Take new photos and collect photo releases specific to this grant, or 2. Track down everybody appearing in older photos and get them to sign new photo releases specific to this grant. Just to apply. What a pain in the chicken sandwich! Come on, CHIK FIL A, is this really necessary? We’ve already talked about the problems with requiring video footage of service recipients. Photos are not much better. And really, if you must have photos, surely you can find a way to accept what applicants already have. Tell us all about your own Crappy Funder right here! 📢 https://lnkd.in/gStX7dBd Or tell us about your Courageous Funder here! ⭐ http://bit.ly/3OOobRf

Foundations - take note of what this amazing foundation is doing for their grant application! I love the thoughtfulness they show to nonprofits and the reasoning behind the concept of the application submission process. And Gen Ops funding to boot!! #unicorngrant #makethisthestandard

This is amazing! More of this please.

Imagine a world where funders trust that stand-up nonprofit organizations already doing great work thru proven funding mechanisms can get funded for a grant already written to another funder, allowing nonprofits to do what they are supposed to do with limited resources. Not hosting events, re-writing the same grant 67 different ways, and recreating the wheel at every whim. What a world we would have if these efforts could catch on in the funding world to allow both parties to say, “look what we accomplished effectively AND efficiently, thus saving resources and making the collective dollar have more ‘bang’ for the buck”.

Thank you to everyone who got Crappy Funding Practices to 20,000 followers! We're honored and proud of your resilience, humor in the face of adversity, and relentless efforts to do well for your organizations! Thank you to all the funders paying attention, and to every one of our gnomes behind the scenes!

I find it amazing that so many philanthropic funders want non-profits to have low overhead yet have such arduous processes to apply for what is really not very much funding as outlined on Crappy Funding Practices. I find it even more unbelievable that these same funders don't realise that their ridiculous requirements just add to the cost of - yep, you guessed it - OVERHEAD!!! Reframe Overhead, I don't suppose this is something we can talk about at some stage?