Grant Screening Board

The Grant Screening Board offers members an opportunity to work with other intelligent, philanthropically-inclined women in a challenging, educational, and collegial environment. Its members act as Foundation staff, performing the essential function of analyzing each applicant agency and its project for our members. Its goal is to narrow the applicant pool to the two candidates whose projects best address the critical unmet needs of children in that grant year.

The GSB is open to all members and generally has a maximum of 20 spaces in addition to Executive Board officers.

The GSB has created a database for its members containing frequently used documents, prior years’ grant proposals, and news or academic articles of interest. To access the database, click here.

Grant Screening Board Responsibilities and Timeline

We estimate that participation on the Grant Screening Board (GSB) requires a serious commitment of between 80 and 105 hours for the year, depending on how far the agency you review progresses in the selection process. To help you decide if you would like to join this essential board, we offer the following description of what we do and when we do it.

All of the routine 2010 GSB meetings will be held at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. The exceptions are the vote counting meeting which is usually at someone’s house, and the site visits which occur throughout the Los Angeles area. Most meetings and site visits start at 10AM. A few site visits occur in the afternoon so that we can see children in an after school program. Hours in red indicate additional time required if the applicant agency assigned to the member for review becomes a finalist.

1. January – At our first meeting we teach our grant making process to our new members and review with our experienced members. We distribute the year’s schedule, go over our eligibility criteria, conduct a few practice analyses of hypothetical proposals, and talk about our upcoming meetings to review the Letters of Inquiry we have received. We also set our calendar and are generally able to work around school holidays and other commitments.
Estimated Commitment: 4 hours

2. February – Letters of Inquiry submitted by our applicants (usually between 20 and 25) are mailed to GSB members in early February; members review them before our 2 meetings in late February. At these meetings we eliminate proposals or agencies that do not meet our eligibility criteria and analyze which proposals seem to address the most critical unmet needs of local children.
Estimated Commitment: 12 hours

3. March – Our Grant Consultant, Lisa Cleri Reale will use documents from previous agency submittals to teach GSB members how to conduct document review.  Documents reviewed include: agency history, financial and tax data, strategic plans, donor bases, grant history, and other information we need to evaluate them as a candidate. We hold a meeting at which we review how to analyze these documents. The women on the GSB are then assigned to a team of two or three. Each team is generally assigned one project to review, and they receive their agency documents at the end of the meeting.
Estimated Commitment: 3 hours

4. March/April – Each team skims their documents, then has a conference call with our Grant Consultant, during which she helps them identify the “big picture” issues and answers general questions. After reviewing the documents, each team formulates in-depth questions for the agencies. We meet in April to hear each team’s recommendation about whether to go forward with the agency and prepare for our site visits at the continuing agencies.
Estimated Commitment: 15 hours

5. May/Early June - GSB members, led by reviewing teams, visit each agency under consideration for our grant and interview the agency executives, board members, and staff to get a sense of the agency and the project. Our members then generally share their views by email (we call this our “e-forum”)after each visit.
Estimated Commitment: 30 hours

6. June – GSB members review e-forum comments about site visits in preparation for vote on finalists. Then we meet to discuss the site visits and to vote on the two agencies we will invite to submit final proposals. Teams assigned to finalist agencies work on final proposal questions for agencies.
Estimated Commitment: 4 hours/+5

7. August - In mid August, the reviewing teams whose agencies have become finalists, along with Lisa, review the draft of their agency’s final proposal and provide comments to agencies. This document will form the basis for our Grant Agreement for the agency that succeeds in winning our grant.
Estimated Commitment: 0 hours/+8

8. September/October – We meet to prepare for the October Grant Hearing and to review our policies for the year and vote on any changes that are proposed. GSB Members are given a list of members to call to encourage attendance at the Grant Hearing. The reviewing teams responsible for our two finalists assist their agencies in their preparations for their presentation at the Grant Hearing.
Estimated Commitment: 4 hours/ +8

10. October - Our members attend the annual Everychild Grant Hearing. Our members vote on the year’s grant recipient by mail.
Estimated Commitment: 4 hours/ +4

11. November- GSB members meet to count the Everychild members’ votes and notify the winning agency and the members.
Estimated Commitment: 4 hours

II. Ethics Policy

The Everychild Foundation is committedto the highest ethical practices in its conduct in general and in itsgrantmaking procedures in particular. Accordingly, the Grant ScreeningBoard has adopted the following policies to govern its considerationand resolution of members’ real and potential conflicts of interestsas they may arise from time to time. In creating these policies, wehave kept in mind the unique character and structure of our organization.Members of the Grant Screening Board are valuable to us for the expertiseand experience they bring to our decision making. That expertise isoften the result of relationships, personal or professional, that mightamount to a real or perceived conflict of interest. We feel that thesetypes of conflicts are inevitable, and that the relationships leadingto them are desirable; accordingly, our goal is to manage them in away that is acceptable to our membership and the nonprofit communityat large. We do not want to create a policy that cuts us off from thevery women who give our organization its strength and depth.

_______________________________________

The Everychild Foundation

Grant Screening Board Ethics Policy

1. DisclosureOur conflicts policy is premised on knowledgeof each Grant Screening Board member’s relationships to agencies thatmay be applying for our annual grant. Accordingly, each Grant ScreeningBoard member will disclose to the Grant Screening Board any relationshipin which either:

(i) the member is in a position to influencepolicy at an applicant agency (for example, as a director, member ofsenior management, or consultant), or a family member (or other personwith comparable influence) is in such a position. These “otherpersons” might include a spouse, a partner, a parent or child,a sibling, in-laws or step-families, or any other person (not necessarilylimited to family) that the member thinks would influence her decisionmaking; or

(ii) the member has a more informal ornon-policy making relationship with the applicant agency, such as avolunteer or donor.This disclosure will be made at leastannually to the Grant Screening Board, with the timing of the disclosureto be determined by the chair. It is each member’s responsibilityto advise the Grant Screening Board of any material changes that occurduring the year. Everychild’s membership will be advised of any GrantScreening Board member’s relevant disclosed relationship with a finalistagency when summaries of the agencies’ proposals are circulated tothe membership.

2. DiscussionIn order to promote free discussion ofan applicant agency and its proposal, each member who has discloseda relationship with an agency under paragraph

(i) of section 1 abovemay participate in the discussion of the agency but, beginning withthe document review stage, will be asked leave the room for a briefperiod during every subsequent discussion of the agency.

3. VotingEach Grant Screening Board member mayvote on any issue affecting any applicant agency, including an agencywith which she has a disclosed relationship.

4. IneligibilityAn Everychild member is ineligible toserve on the Grant Screening Board if she or a member of her immediatefamily, including adult children:

(i) is a paid employee of an applicantagency, or

(ii) provides professional services tothe agency, unless the amount of compensation is immaterial to her orher family’s income.If either a member or her spouse receivesindirect compensation from an applicant agency (for example, if themember or her spouse is an equity participant in an entity that providespaid services to an applicant agency), she remains eligible to serveon the Grant Screening Board. If the member becomes ineligible to serveduring her term on the Grant Screening Board, she must resign.

5. Policies Governing Grant ScreeningBoard Leadership

(i) A member is ineligible to serve asvice chair or chair of the Grant Screening Board (a “leadershipposition”) if she or her spouse would receive direct or indirectcompensation from an applicant agency during the period of her term,provided, however, that this rule would not apply if sucha payment, or the member’s share of such a payment, is insignificant(such as when the agency is one of many clients of a large firm of whichthe member is a part).

(ii) If a member serving in a leadershipposition also holds a position that influences policy at an applicantagency at any time during her term, she must resign that position ifthe agency has been invited to proceed after Letter of Inquiry review.This will mean the member and her agency must acknowledge at thetime the member assumes a leadership position that either the agencycould not apply for a grant during the period of her term or that themember would resign from her position with the agency during that period.

(iii) If a member’s spouse is in akey leadership position with an applicant agency (such as a board presidencyor chair of a fundraising committee targeting our grant), the GrantScreening Board will consider whether the chair should resign if theagency proceeds to the document review stage of consideration for ourgrant.

6. CompensationNo member shall accept direct or indirectcompensation from any applicant agency from which a Letter of Inquiryhas been accepted for consideration by the Grant Screening Board, norshall she solicit directly or indirectly compensated work for futureperformance, while she is serving on the Grant Screening Board. No memberwho serves in a leadership position shall be directly or indirectlycompensated by any finalist agency during the year following the expirationof her term.