How Equitable Is Your Grant Program?

Are your grants really accessible to all applicants? According to historical data, minority-led organizations receive disproportionately less grant funding than white-led organizations.

Much of this inequality is accidental. Funding organizations often don’t notice the flaws in their grant awarding process until they invest in diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. But once you know what problems you have to tackle, you’re on your way to creating a truly equitable program.

If you want to know how to get more equity in your grant program, the answer is simple — you have to make it a priority.

What Is Grant Management Equity?

It’s important to define exactly what equity means in grant management and how it differs from equality, as these terms are easy to confuse.

Equality means providing the same opportunities to all, regardless of their background. For example, everyone in a classroom receives the same standardized test, with the same questions and scoring criteria.

Equity recognizes that not all people begin at the same place. To compensate for these differences, equity often involves giving disadvantaged groups and individuals additional resources and assistance to ensure they have the same level of access as everyone else. In the standardized test example, a teacher would give students with learning disabilities, vision impairment, or other disadvantages special accommodations to ensure they can perform at their best.

That concept carries over to grantmaking. Equitable grantmaking and management requires funders to be aware of the barriers disadvantaged groups face when applying for grants — and to eliminate those barriers so all applicants have the same level of opportunity.

How to Increase Equity in Grant Management

Prioritizing equity in your grant program expands access to funding for a broader, more diverse pool of applicants. When more people can apply for funding, you have the potential to make a greater impact on communities you might previously have overlooked.

Fortunately, there are steps you can take to make your grant program more accessible to all. Here are some tips and best practices your organization can use to increase equity in every stage of the grant management process.

1. Start With Your Internal Processes

You have to ensure your organization is committed to DEI before you apply these practices to your next grant cycle:

• Recruiting and hiring: Consider how your organization recruits and screens staff and volunteers. For example, do you advertise job postings in places where many different groups of people will see them? How can you expand your reach?
• Training: Diversity, empathy and unconscious bias training can help your staff and volunteers recognize biases and oversights that could impact your ability to provide truly equal treatment to all applicants.
• Communication: Do leaders within your organization ensure important messages reach everyone, or are there any communication gaps that prevent certain groups and employees from receiving information?

2. Streamline the Application Process

Simplifying your application helps ensure everyone has a fair chance, especially for any first-time funding applicants who might need some extra guidance.

Some key tips include:

• Keep language simple: Cut or define any acronyms and internal jargon you use to make it easily understandable for all potential applicants.
• Stick to the essential questions: Finding the balance between a long, complex application that provides more information than you need and a short, easy one that leaves information gaps is essential for creating the fairest possible application process.
• Provide assistance when needed: Select a dedicated point of contact who can answer any questions applicants have about the process. Providing personal support can help increase submission rates, especially for underserved groups.
• Establish clear evaluation criteria: Define the criteria your reviewers will use to evaluate applications upfront, so applicants have a strong understanding of what standards they need to meet.

To ensure your materials are clear and accessible to as many people as possible, assemble a diverse group of reviewers to provide a final once-over.

3. Promote Equitable Data-Driven Decision Making

Many small organizations encounter significant barriers to receiving grant funding, especially in unserved and underserved areas:

• Not knowing about the grant: Failure to promote your grant in certain areas can cause worthy groups to miss out on funding simply because they were not aware it existed.
• Lack of resources: Organizations in underserved regions often lack the financial and human resources to put forward a competitive application, which significantly harms their chances of receiving the funding they need.
• Administrative burden: Managing the application and grant management process is complex, and it’s especially challenging for smaller organizations that lack the time or resources to handle a major administrative burden.

Applying a lens of equity to the processes you use to attract and evaluate applicants can help you break down these barriers. Focus on data points that indicate inequities that may be present in your grantmaking processes. For example, are you awarding grants equally among all groups, or are you mostly awarding funds to specific types of organizations?

A grant management software solution with advanced analytics and reporting capabilities can help you target specific aspects of your grantmaking process so you can identify clear areas for improvement.

4. Commit to Continuous Improvement

Although continuous improvement emerged first as a business concept, it’s expanded into various other industries as a key priority for remaining competitive in the digital age and beyond. You can easily apply it to your grant program.

After each grant cycle, take some time to reflect on the success of your equity efforts. Some helpful reflection questions include:

• How many applications did you receive for the grant? How many of those applications were from parties who had previously received funding from you?
• What was your objective for this grant cycle? Did you achieve it?
• What organization or organizations ended up receiving the award? Is there clear diversity in this group?
• What is the impact of your award? Are your grantees delivering on their promises, or do they need additional assistance from your agency to manage their funding?
• Where did you run into bottlenecks and inefficiencies during the evaluation process? How can you eliminate these issues in future cycles?

Document your insights and use them as a starting point for the next iteration of your grant cycle.

5. Be Transparent With Applicants

Transparency is key for improving your grant award equity because it shows your organization is both trustworthy and willing to hold itself accountable. This signals to potential applicants that your grant is legitimate and worth applying to.

As a grantmaker, your organization must be completely open with all applicants about:

• Evaluation criteria: Understanding the specific standards applicants must meet gives them a clear goal to aim for, which can increase the number of submitted applications from underserved groups.
• Review committee members: Revealing who is behind award decisions helps engage applicants on a human level and gives them a clear point of contact if and when they need extra assistance.
• Timelines: When do you expect applicants to complete each step of the application, and how soon should they expect a response from you? Providing automated updates can help you keep applicants engaged and ensure timely submission of all required materials.

A solution that enables automated notifications is a great way to keep applicants and grantees updated on important deadlines and changes, which can make it easier for some groups to meet your deadlines.

6. Build a Culture of Equity

Applying equitable principles to the application process is difficult when your organization doesn’t have a strong foundation of DEI. Equity should be at the heart of everything your organization does, from internal staffing policies to managing relationships with grantees after disbursement.

That said, making change via top-down action rarely produces lasting results. You need to ensure your staff understands the rationale behind the changes you’re proposing to get their buy-in.

Here are some tips for building a robust equity culture within your agency:

• Establish a definition of equity: While you and your team may already have a solid understanding of equity as a concept, defining what it means for your organization makes it more tangible. Creating a clear mission statement is an excellent starting place.
• Support individual employee needs: Hiring and retaining a diverse team are key to promoting true diversity and inclusion. It’s essential to ensure everyone has the resources and opportunities they need to thrive in their role so they can focus on core grantmaking tasks.
• Track your progress: Using metrics like representation percentages, retention rate and professional development access can help you determine whether your team members truly feel included and supported in their roles. You can source this data in many different ways, from anonymous workplace surveys to focus group discussions.

7. Identify and Invite More Diverse Applicants

Researching grants to apply for takes valuable time and effort, which already puts smaller organizations at a disadvantage. Conducting outreach to your local area can help you find and connect with these organizations to enable a more equitable application process.

You can find potential applicants by:

• Conducting polls: Poll local communities to find smaller, more diverse organizations that may not have come across your grant application without an invitation.
• Asking for recommendations: Ask former and current grantees to recommend other organizations they think would benefit from the grant and invite them to apply. 
• Hold an open application call: While open applications are likely to bring in more applications than your team can review in a standard grant cycle, a grant management software program can help you process and organize these applications without falling behind. 
• Engage directly with communities: Expand your networks beyond the contacts you already have and directly engage with the communities affected by your area of impact.

8. Use a Robust Grant Management Software

Relying on manual processes or legacy systems can lead to data silos, inaccuracies and other bottlenecks that impact your ability to efficiently evaluate and award grants.

A streamlined, web-based grant management software solution like IntelliGrants® IGX can help your organization support equitable grantmaking without adding extra complexity to the grant life cycle.

• Greater efficiency: Manual and legacy systems often lead to miscommunication and data silos within your organization, which can cause bottlenecks in application processing and grant management. A unified, web-based platform provides complete visibility into every stage of the grant cycle, saving valuable time and effort on minor tasks.
• Easier organization: While legacy and manual systems can easily become disorganized and reduce visibility for individual team members, a centralized grant management platform consolidates all your documents and data under one roof for easy access and greater visibility.
• Progress tracking: An advanced software solution can help you home in on the specific metrics you need to measure your impact, streamlining your post-award management processes with in-depth reporting and artificial intelligence-powered analytics tools.
• Simplified compliance: Your organization collects a lot of sensitive data from applicants and grantees, and complying with data security regulations like the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act is essential for keeping that information safe.

When you can leave these tasks to your software, you free up your team to focus on more complex activities, like communicating with grantees and sourcing applicants.

How IntelliGrants IGX Can Help You Improve Grantmaking Equity

At IGX Solutions, we know investing in equity improvements can be a challenge — especially if you only have a short turnaround time between grant cycles. That’s why we developed IntelliGrants IGX.

IntelliGrants IGX is a comprehensive grant management software solution that’s purpose-built to overcome the challenges associated with managing an efficient grant cycle. 

We developed our solution with efficiency-boosting features like:

• Flexible configurations: IntelliGrants IGX is highly configurable, with personalized tracking and reporting capabilities you can use to reduce application abandonment and track vital applicant metrics.
• Automated workflows: Save valuable time and reduce human errors with automated data flows that keep your reviewers on schedule.
• Analytics and reporting: Create detailed, granular reports to determine whether your organization is meeting your goals for applicant and grantee diversity.
• Compliance management: Easily structure your system to meet legal requirements, such as the federal Uniform Grant Guidance.
• Seamless integrations: Our solution is fully compatible with many other software programs, so you can create a seamless data flow across your organization and break down data silos.

Use Grant Management to Increase Equity With IntelliGrants IGX

Equitable grant management processes are key to helping more organizations help their communities. With our fully integrated grant management solution, you can make a stronger impact on the people in your area.

If your organization is short on time, IntelliGrants IGXpress comes with preconfigured workflows, roles, forms and more so you can get up and running right out of the box. From the federal level to local organizations, we offer solutions for every grantmaking agency and program.

If you’re ready to build more equitable grant programs, we’re here to help. Book your free demo today to get started.