Grantee support

Ideas

An aggregation of "projects we love" a la Kickstarter
- Boston has a tumblr of awesome projects, could become a collaborative project between chapters
- People like this
- Erhardt will own looking into this
What if trustees could "like" projects on the AF site and go through periodically and highlight the top choices?

Sending out a template to winner and runners up with information and resources and connections to network
- If we take it upon ourselves, we may lapse

Not everyone is tech-savvy, we should think more about how to support people especially with more chapters starting in developing areas
Awesome Hours might be a really good solution to this
- Boston has these, just gets together and helps people workshop ideas
- Past winners have come as well, which is nice
- Seattle wants to start doing these
- Important to keep a friendly, open environment
Overall people think Awesome Hours has the potential to grow into something really big
This is community and helps ideas grow and spread, then we just have to be catalysts

Generally, chapters do not use contracts in the spirit of "no strings attached" giving
Prefer personal support of/enabling grantees to ensure that grantees follow-through or at least feel comfortable reaching out for help or guidance
- Halifax - "Our approach has been to offer as much support as possible (media/social media/manpower) to break down any barriers to a given activity happening, and in the process, almost ensuring it happens due to the number of folks involved. We also try to have the winner carry out the activity within two months of the grant cash being awarded."
- Boston - "For the most part, people who receive support and validation will do BACK FLIPS to deliver. I think that for most of us, the risk and mystery of it all is part what makes things so fun. (Will they? Won't they? What will the end result look like?) If you go into deliberation with a spirit of trust, the fun of the process takes over and the results produced are much better than any contract could define."
- Ottawa - "Like others who have weighed in, I believe the "no strings attached" is a core element of the model. We even go as far in Ottawa as to restrain ourselves from suggesting to recipients that their projects might be "even better if…" -- although we do offer whatever support we can to help them deliver." Only one of 24 grants has ever "run off into the sunset with the cash"

Whichever trustee is most excited about a chosen project becomes the point of contact for that grantee. They inform the grantee of their award, interview them and write a short blog post for the announcement and are generally helpful (but not overbearing) with mentorship and connections to other resources.

We believe this personal touch adds to the accountability one would want from a contract. I hope we will do post-project interviews in the future as a way to guage and share our impact. To be clear, this isn't the grantee reporting to us. Rather, we are taking the responsibility and making the effort to share their stories. In this way, what is "reporting" in traditional grantmaking becomes an additional service we are providing that helps build the relationship.

Most conversation fell into topics of: