THE IMPACT LEAK – A little something that tech can do

- What impacts the good we do?

Logo by Polina Berneva

For a while now, ANSWER.it has been working on finding solutions to the problem of the high cost and negative impact of failed proposals on the nonprofit sector. And it is the sector, with the cumulative loss of hundreds of millions of dollars, that we are trying to fix because these are not the failings of a single charity, nor a group of charities, but of the entire sector: government, foundations AND nonprofits.

So today, we announce the Grant Gauge, technology to help improve the proposal process for the nonprofit sector. The Grant Gauge has two main benefits. It can assess grant concepts (finds technical errors, compare sectors and project ideas) at an early stage and give an indication if the project idea is worth turning into a full proposal. If the concept is going to fail, it uses behaviour science to nudge organizations towards pursuing better suited alternatives. The second main benefit of the Grant Gauge is that it allows funders to suggest improvements before nonprofits commit to writing the full proposal, thus increasing proposal quality for funding review members.

As funders, government and foundations need charities to offer services. In order to provide services, charities need funding. The process sounds simple but it is fraught with inefficiencies, a lack of transparency, over-subscription and sometimes, poorly matched submissions. And yet, we must do it because the world of nonprofits has changed since the 80’s when organizations had core funding, consistent programming and long-time major donors. Today, nonprofits must seek funding, continuously, in a churn the likes of which no SAAS company has ever seen and funders at all levels of government and both private and public foundations, must use proposal submissions to assess what activities and services need to be undertaken to benefit society. We’re all in this together.

And so, with a little fanfare and a lot of hope, the Grant Gauge is launched. We would love to see it in use by every funder some day, so that matching ideas to funding becomes less time consuming and more efficient and when great projects are quickly funded. We believe that funders and nonprofits will be less frustrated and more satisfied and that time spent will be equal to the investment. When that is achieved, we’ll know that the nonprofit sector has been strengthened and our mission, accomplished. Aspirational thinking to be sure but we know we can do it. Just like the 70’s tv show, “We have the technology.”