Meet the BC funder who’ll pay you for time you spend applying for a grant

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For Rebecca Hurwitz, the idea just made sense. 

On November 15, the executive director of the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust, a west coast community foundation, gathered with about a dozen of her organization’s past grantees in a meeting room at a resort in Tofino, on the traditional territory of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation. 

The group’s task was straightforward: suggesting improvements for the foundation’s “Vital Grants” program, which had run from 2018 to 2021 and provided local community organizations with funds to support sustainability-oriented projects. 

There were flip charts, colourful sharpies and sticky notes. Participants sat around banquet tables covered with black table cloths, laptops and notebooks. 

Through the conversation, and interviews with participants that preceded it, Hurwitz and her team heard that much about the program had worked well — that it had supported important initiatives, like research on wild salmon and Nuu-Chah-Nulth language curriculum development. 

In tandem, however, they also heard there were inequities baked into the program’s application process. Vital Grant funding was only offered to organizations who applied with partners, and developing those partnerships took time.

Moreover, the grant application itself was extensive, requiring upwards of three days for some organizations to complete — precious time for some organizations with limited resources. 

To reduce these barriers, a past grantee proposed a simple solution: compensate applicants for the time and expenses they incur in completing their application. 

The idea is similar to the growing trend of companies compensating job applicants for interview time; but it upends a long-held philanthropic sector norm, which near-universally asks grantees to incur the costs of grantwriting for the chance at a grantmaker’s funds. 

Nonetheless, Hurwitz and her team liked it: “To me, it seems like a ‘no brainer’ once you say it.” 

In thinking the idea through further, Hurwitz realized that without compensating applicants, the organization was really just “taking from people” — an approach misaligned with the spirit they were trying to bring to their work of engaging in a “reciprocal practice” with grantees.  

Later this month, when Clayoquot Biosphere Trust launches their Vital Grants program, organizations who complete the full application will receive $500 — funds that can be used to compensate an elder who participates in the process, to pay volunteers or staff who write the application, or any other way applicants see fit. 

In using such a practice, CBT has joined a tiny, but growing contingent of grantmakers, who, within the last two years, have compensated applicants for time spent grantwriting, as part of a broader shift toward greater equity and relationality in their giving. 

Among four grantmakers using this practice who spoke with Future of Good, their approaches vary with respect to compensation levels, compensation eligibility and overall grant processes, but nonetheless, are widely popular with the organization’s grantees. 

Some grantmakers and grantees alike say, however, the rise of the practice prompts important questions about the approach to implementation and the trade-offs, namely: if funders send more money out the door to compensate the application process, will they have less to give to go around to fund projects? 

‘We don’t want to waste charities’ time’: Motivations for application compensation

Some grantmakers who are choosing to compensate organizations for the time they spend grantwriting are doing so informed by their own experiences as fundraisers. 

Prior to serving as the chair of the board of his family’s foundation, the Acorn Seed Foundation, Michael Prosserman was the founder and executive director of Unity Charity, an organization focused on supporting youth mental health through hip hop. 

In his previous role, Prosserman helped to raise over $7 million to support the initiative over 15 years. But, he says, fundraising was incredibly time-intensive and often frustrating; and he frequently felt grantmakers had no sense of the time investment required to complete their applications. 

Funders would ask his organization and other applicants to come up with new ideas specifically for them, he says. Or, they’d give him a false sense of hope about his organization’s grant prospects, only to turn down his application year after year. 

These sorts of things cost his organization real money, he says. Unlike what a funder might imagine, it wasn’t just one staff person who rattled off an application and sent it in. Rather, it was often: one person to write it, one to review it, a finance staff member to pull financials for it, and sometimes even board members to approve the whole thing. 

It was these experiences that led Prosserman to want to do things differently when Acorn Seed developed their inaugural grant application process in 2021: “We don’t want to waste charities’ time,” he says.  

In developing their grantee selection process, Acorn Seed relied on the input of three advisors, each of whom has experience in philanthropy, housing or food justice — the intended areas of the foundation’s work. During a meeting, one of them suggested the foundation could compensate grantees for their application time, and Prosserman was keen. 

“We took every part of the process and said, ‘What is broken about it?’ [And] we just made changes on the fly,” he says. “We were like ‘Oh, we could pay grantees? That’s a cool idea. Let’s just do it.’”

For Kat Cadungog, whose organization has also offered applicants some compensation for the grantwriting process, the motivation was similar. 

Cadungog is the executive director of the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, an organization that fundraises from other, larger foundations, to be able to offer grants to youth-led environmental projects. In this way, she says, FES is both a funder and a fundee. 

“I’ve had a long history of applying for grants and getting rejected and feeling like the value of the grantwriting was not taken into account,” says Cadungog, whose organization has received funds from the McConnell Family Foundation, the Ivey Foundation and the Trottier Family Foundation, among others. 

“We found that a lot of [funders] were asking for a lot of data and that’s really for the funder to understand the organization — not for the organization to understand the funder,” she says. “So if it’s labour that we’re doing for the funder, it makes sense that we would be compensated for that — [because] we’re making their job easier.” 

Doing things differently: Application compensation ranges between $50 – $2,500

Across the four organizations who spoke with Future of Good about their application compensation practices, approaches vary with respect to the amount of compensation offered, the organizations eligible to receive funding, and the grantmaker’s broader application process. 

Generally, the amount of money offered for application compensation correlates to the level of effort required to complete the application and by whether the grant application is “open” or “closed” in some way — meaning, whether any organization could be eligible for application compensation, or whether the grantmaker is using a multi-stage or invite-only application process. 

The Foundation for Environmental Stewardship, for instance, which offered the lowest amount of compensation among the four grantmakers, used an “open” process with just one application step. Any organization who met basic eligibility criteria could apply for funds through the organization’s “Youth Harbour” grant stream, which supports youth taking action on the climate. 

Any applicant who did not receive a grant from FES was then eligible to receive $50 to help cover the cost of the time spent writing the application. 

Before launching this process, Cadungog discussed with members of the organization’s youth steering committee, the possibility of organizations abusing the potential for $50 compensation, by, say, submitting an unserious application. But this has never come to pass, she says. So far, FES has received 65 applications for Youth Harbour funds across multiple rounds of granting and they’ve never had a problem. 

On the other end of the application compensation spectrum, the Lawson Foundation, a Toronto-based family foundation, offered the highest amount of four grantmakers for their 2021 grant stream focused on children’s outdoor play. However, in contrast to FES, the application process Lawson used was three-stage, limiting the potential number of applicants, and was comparatively time-intensive. 

After completing an initial letter of interest and an interview, both of which were uncompensated, eight organizations were invited to complete a full, final application for the foundation’s outdoor play project funds, which was compensated. 

Uniquely, at this final stage, the foundation gave these eight organizations the option of working with strategic planning consultants, Colbeck Strategic Advisors, whose assistance could help inform both the organization’s broader work and their Lawson grant application. 

Seven applicants chose to work with the consultants and were provided with $2,500 by the foundation to compensate for their efforts. The one organization who chose not to work with the consultants was provided with $1,500. (Ultimately, all eight organizations were selected by Lawson for grant funding.) 

Prior to this grant process, the foundation hadn’t ever compensated grant applicants; and the decision to do so arose, Lawson program director Christine Alden says, based on a recognition of how much work they were inviting applicants to put into the process. “When we were adding the…work with Colbeck, I think it raised the consciousness of how much time people were giving to something they didn’t have funding for,” she says.   

Like Lawson, Clayoquot Biosphere Trust, too, will use a two-step process for their Vital Grant application: a letter of interest (which will be uncompensated) and a longer, more detailed second-stage application, which will be compensated at a rate of $500 for all applicants, regardless of which are selected for a Vital grant. 

Hurwitz says in the past they’ve received anywhere from three to 12 applications for Vital Grants, but expects they might see more this year, owing to the increased accessibility of the application process, including application compensation. That outcome would be “awesome,” she says, and a positive testament to the effectiveness of the changes. 

Further, Hurwitz adds that making the change to compensate applicants was straight-forward. They budgeted $3,000 for the extra expense, assuming providing compensation to six organizations or so. Given the small intended outlay, board approval wasn’t required, but board members were supportive of the change as one part of a broader shift toward more equitable grantmaking. 

Acorn Seed Foundation, for their part, was the only foundation among the group of four that had an invitation-only process for their 2021 funding round. Further, only organizations who were unsuccessful in their grant application received application compensation. 

In 2021, ASF invited nine organizations to apply for two-year, $50,000 grants, focused on food and housing security, based on the recommendations of the foundation’s three grant advisors. Of the nine groups, five organizations, including Black Creek Community Farm and Thunder Woman Healing Lodge Society, were selected for grants. The other four, Prosserman says, were provided with honoraria of $500 to help cover the costs incurred in writing the application. 

Beyond the specifics of this practice, however, ask any four of these foundations about their work in this area and they’ll tell you it’s not really a big deal — just one piece of a much broader shift toward equitable grantmaking. 

Acorn Seed Foundation’s grant application, for instance, was just a few questions long, Prosserman says. In addition, applicants had the option of simply submitting an application they’d prepared for another foundation. 

“Ideally it would take you very little time — less than an hour was our goal,” he says. “So in some ways, we’d actually be paying them more than hopefully what that [time] was worth.” 

CBT, too, has adapted their granting process over the years to try to reduce barriers. For their Vital Grant application, they plan to post the matrix against which grant applications are evaluated, provide applicants with information about who is on their grant review committee, and offer multi-year funding, in addition to providing application compensation. 

Prosserman adds that the practice of compensating applicants for their grantwriting is as much about the dollars involved as it is about fostering good relationships with grantees.  

“I think this payment thing is a very small thing. It’s more of a gesture of respect than it is a big deal, but the fact that people don’t do it is shocking, because they just expect people to compete,” he says. “If you’re going to encourage people to jump through hoops, then you’ve got to compensate them for that.”

It’s that difference in orientation, of valuing applicant time, that is getting high praise from foundation’s grant applicants who have received such compensation. 

‘This is incredible, but I don’t understand’

Five grantees who spoke with Future of Good who have received, or expect to receive application compensation funds, were supportive of the practice, feeling that it signals funders’ understanding of the real challenges applicants face, that it helps cover organizational costs, and that it creates new space to engage program participants in the grantwriting process. 

Dr. Louise de Lannoy, a research manager with Outdoor Play Canada, an organization that received a grant from the Lawson Foundation, says the chance to work with consultants on her organization’s application and be compensated for it came as a shock. 

“Typically, as a researcher, you look for funding opportunities. You find something that’s typically not perfectly aligned and then you mold your vision to suit other people’s visions,” she says, describing her experience as both a PhD student and fundraiser. “And so I didn’t understand,” she says, with a laugh, of the Lawson process. “You’re going to fund us to actually apply? This is incredible.” 

Dr. De Lannoy says the experience of working with the consultants and of being compensated for it was valuable for her organization. The work with the consultants helped to develop a strategic plan that’s proven useful, she says, both in communicating the value of the project to the Lawson foundation, and in the project’s implementation. The $2,500, she adds, was also a nice gesture because it signaled Lawson understood the value of her time. 

For Dr. Ricardo Manmohan, whose organization has received funds from the Clayoquot Biosphere Trust, the main benefit of the application compensation, is that it will create an opportunity for the young leaders he works with to be more involved in the grantwriting process — an approach that aligns with his organization’s mission. 

Dr. Manmohan is the coordinator of the Nuu-chah-nulth Warriors program, an initiative he established in 2015 with the young men and broader community of the Ucluelet First Nation on the west coast of Vancouver Island. Through the program, young Nuu-chah-nulth men gather one night per week and one weekend each month, helping out their elders with yard and housework; learning skills, like snorkel harvesting of fish, trail making, and archery; and building their capacity as leaders. 

The program has been a success, growing to support young men in upwards of 10 separate Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations, but with that success, Dr. Manmohan says, has come the additional burden of fundraising, which now takes up half of his time. 

“My absolute main effort is teaching the youth how to…create a sandbox of safety out on the land — how to get their people back to where their medicine is,” he says. “That’s what I want to be doing 100 per cent of my work, but then I have to do all this stupidness of convincing people we’re doing the work.” 

The Warriors’ program will apply for a CBT Vital Grant this spring, and Dr. Manmohan says the foundation’s decision to offer application compensation will mean he’s able to use the grant process, too, as a learning opportunity for youth leaders. 

At 19 years old, he says, the program’s eldest participants have the skills necessary for grantwriting — and compensating them for this work both makes it more possible and ensures it’s true to the organization’s mission. The program, he says, is “led by the youth…It’s for the people and it’s rooted in their teachings and their words.” 

Still, despite the value that both grantees and grantmakers see in the process, some say that not all compensation is of equal value and that offering application compensation could come with trade-offs. 

‘$50 does not equate to the amount of work we put in’

For Lauren Castelino, $50 was underwhelming. 

Castelino is the co-executive director of Regenesis, a youth-led environmental non-profit that applied for the Foundation for Environmental Stewardship’s Youth Harbour grants in 2021. They were unsuccessful in their application, and after a debrief call with foundation staff, they received $50 to help compensate for the time they spent. 

Castelino says she appreciated the foundation’s effort to compensate unsuccessful applicants, but says she felt that $50 wasn’t enough to compensate for three days of grantwriting: “$50 doesn’t really match up to the amount of effort we put in and monetarily doesn’t recognize our value.” 

Castelino says she understands the foundation has limited resources and says offering some money was better than offering no money, but adds the amount is particularly inadequate for organizations who did not receive a grant, who, unlike her own, leveraged the labour of volunteers in writing their grant applications. 

She suggests foundations who offer this practice in the future be particularly mindful of the inequities among organizations and perhaps consider only compensating, or offering additional compensation to organizations whose applications are written by volunteers. 

Lawson’s Christine Alden, too, acknowledges that $2,500 likely didn’t cover the full cost of each applicants’ work with the consultants (who were themselves paid by Lawson about $25,000 for their work with each applicant organization). 

“Coming from having never compensated grantees, [$2,500] seems relatively generous,” Alden says. “But when we looked back on it, that was about a three-month period where one person from each project was engaged quite regularly in meetings with the Colbeck team and doing a lot of work. So in retrospect, we might offer more in the future.”

Alden says the payment was framed as an “honoraria” — as was the case, too, with FES and CBT. This was an acknowledgement, Alden says, that the foundation wasn’t aiming to cover the full costs applicants incurred. 

She says trying to do so would be tricky, as staff at applicant organizations each make different salaries and might each work on a grant application for a different number of hours. 

Cadungog adds that compensating for each hour could be costly, resulting in less money available for grants. If FES provided each applicant who did not get a grant with $200, for instance, she says, that could quite quickly add up to mean less grants for organizations the organization did select for funding. 

“If we want to provide really substantial grants that can actually change an organization,” she asks. “Is it really effective to provide that [extra] $150?” 

Cadungog adds that focusing on the exact amount FES gave is misplaced. 

“In a perfect world, we could compensate more, but we don’t have that much to give out in comparison to big institutional family foundations,” she says. “Yet, even then we’re still giving compensation, even if it’s modest — because we’re trying to signal something to funders that have the capacity. 

“If [we], a small, little philanthropic pool can do it, then certainly they can do more,” she says. 

Rebecca Hurwitz, too, is hopeful her foundation’s example might also serve as inspiration for other foundations to adopt a similar practice. 

In describing her aspirations, she says a willingness to do things differently has strong roots in the region. 

Though not comparing the two efforts, she calls to mind, for instance, the anti-industrial logging protests of the 80s’ and 90s’, led by Nuu-chah-nulth people and local environmentalists, which led to more stringent logging standards and helped to protect the forests, waterways, and life in the region. 

“Clayoquot Sound has often been a beacon of hope for folks across Canada of the change that can be,” she says. “So we’re always, I hope, leading, or pushing the edge of what can be possible.” 

Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly reported that FoodShare Toronto was selected for a grant from the Acorn Seed Foundation. The story has been updated to remove that reference.

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