Позитивные изменения, Том 3 №1, 2023. Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 1 (2023)

• продолжение внедрения доказательного подхода к социальному проектированию для грантополучателей (усиление логической связанности проектов, формирование доказательной базы проекта, регламентирование процедур работы со специалистами – членами проектных команд).

СОВЕТЫ И РЕКОМЕНДАЦИИ

Исходя из опыта фонда «Дорога к дому», составлен список рекомендаций, которые помогут улучшить подобные конкурсы. Эти советы могут быть полезны в работе грантодающих организаций.

1. Времени для всех этапов конкурса должно быть достаточно: и период приема заявок, и период экспертизы, и период публикации результатов. Лучше заранее объявить победителей, чем переносить сроки объявления.

2. Регламентировать все конкурсные процедуры[53]: положение о конкурсе, положение о конкурсной комиссии и конкурсном совете, карточки экспертов и заявителей, подробные актуальные методические рекомендации для экспертов и заявителей, инструкции по работе на платформе конкурса, согласия на обработку персональных данных, примеры заполнения различных разделов заявки (в том числе бюджета проекта).

3. Проводить целенаправленную работу с будущими и настоящими заявителями: семинары и консультации по широкому спектру вопросов разработки, реализации, управления, мониторинга, оценки, завершения проектов; аудит заявок-победителей и заявок, не получивших гранты; дни открытых дверей грантодающей организации и проектов-победителей.

4. Повышать прозрачность конкурсных процедур: предварительное планирование информационной кампании по продвижению конкурса и его результатов, мероприятия для вовлечения грантополучателей (как минимум за 3 месяца до старта приема заявок или на постоянной основе, если грантовый конкурс проводится регулярно), информирование о том, какие проекты ожидает грантополучатель от заявителей.

5. Проводить мониторинг/оценку вклада грантового конкурса в достижение стратегических задач грантодателя.

How the Best Social Projects Grant Competition 2022 Works. The Road Home Foundation’s Case

Alena Bogomolova

DOI 10.55140/2782–5817–2023–3–1–66–79

In 2022, the Road Home Charitable Foundation’s grant competition was recognized as the best program that promotes sustainable development through competitive mechanisms. It won the Donors Forum’s Leaders in Corporate Philanthropy project. Twelve applications were competing in the Best Grant Competition category. In this article, we want to show you how the social projects contest takes place, and what helped it gain the recognition in the professional community.

Alena Bogomolova

Head of the Resource and Methodology Center of the Road Home Charitable Foundation, member of the Management Board of Association of Program and Policy Evaluators

FROM A ONE-OFF PROJECT TO SYSTEMIC ASSISTANCE

The Road Home Charitable Foundation was founded in 2005 as a CSR fund of Severstal, a company based in Cherepovets, Vologda Region. It started work with a single project promoting family placement of orphans and children left without parental care. Gradually, the Foundation expanded its range of activities, including projects preventing newborn abandonment, working with troubled teens and families at risk, where parents can be restricted or deprived of parental rights for reasons of family dysfunction.

On February 18, 2023, The Road Home Foundation celebrated its 18th anniversary. Over the years, the organization has completed dozens of projects, helping 15–20 thousand people annually receive specialist help. The number of children abandoned in Cherepovets has decreased 7-fold; about 200 babies have remained in their birth families; the number of families in a socially dangerous situation in the Vologda Region has decreased 3-fold in the past four years, and the teenage crime rate has decreased 2.4-fold. Today, the Foundation is the largest non-profit organization in the Vologda Region and a resource center for NGO specialists from all over Russia.

The Foundation is engaged in the development of systemic philanthropy. The aim of its work is to effectively address social problems faced by families with children. The organization conducts applied research, to discover what issues such families are most concerned about and to identify the key areas of focus. A further goal is to support best practices, tools, and technologies for helping families and children. To this end, the Foundation holds a grant competition for social projects. Non-profit organizations and social institutions are eligible to participate. Project ideas are evaluated by independent experts. The key criteria are: no overlap with the current activities of the applicant organization, achievable goals and objectives, relevance to the target group and the community, and a logical coherence of the projects.

The social projects competition has become a tool for improving the quality of life in areas. Severstal considers its funding to be a social investment and a contribution to the UN Sustainable Development Goals: SDG 3: Good Health and Well-Being, SDG 10: Reducing Inequality, SDG 4: Quality Education, SDG 17: Partnerships for Sustainable Development, etc.

The contest promotes the goals of the company’s sustainable development strategy[54] and corporate charity, as well as the state policy in the field of family, motherhood and childhood.

TERRITORIAL COVERAGE

From 2008 to 2011, the grant competition was held in Cherepovets. Today the geographical coverage of the competition corresponds to the territories of Severstal’s operation.

In 2012, the following cities were included for the first time:

• Vorkuta (Komi Republic);

• Veliky Ustyug (Vologda Region);

• Balakovo (Saratov Region);

• Kostomuksha (Republic of Karelia).

In 2022, the geography of the contest was further expanded to the following territories:

• Cherepovets and/or Cherepovets District (Vologda Region);

• Vologda and/or Vologda district (Vologda Region);

• Totma and/or Totemsky District (Vologda Region);

• Sheksna village and/or Sheksninsky district (Vologda Region);

• Veliky Ustyug (Vologda Region);

• Krasavino (Vologda Region);

• Olenegorsk (Murmansk Region);

• Stroitel (Yakovlevsky district, Belgorod Region).

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

The goal of the contest is to identify and support local initiatives that address the urgent social problems faced by families and children and offer solutions consistent with the activities of the Foundation.

Objectives of the grant competition:

• Identifying active specialists, setting up and developing partner communications in the field of childhood.

• Improving the competencies of social design, project management and project evaluation specialists.

• Developing technologies to improve the well-being of children, families with children, and specialists in the field of childhood.

RELEVANCE OF THE GRANT COMPETITION

Different stakeholders find the contest relevant for different reasons. For example, winning the competition is a growth driver for the grantee organizations, as well as for the overall development of the culture of philanthropy, evaluation and involvement of service recipients in management processes.

Specialists involved in the projects get new opportunities for self-realization, career growth, development of competencies and network of professional contacts. Winning projects enable them to test hypotheses and practice innovative social mechanisms.

The significance of the contest for The Road Home Foundation grows each year.

The contest has a serious impact on the non-profit sector in the regions where the company operates. First, the winners find new ways to address pressing social problems, thereby adding to the Foundation’s portfolio of practices. Second, participating in the competition requires embracing the Foundation’s principles and values, which promotes evaluation, evidence-based approach, subject-to-subject approach, and a culture of philanthropy in the social sphere. Third, participating in the project implementation creates a unified approach and allows professionals to act in concert in providing assistance to beneficiaries (primarily families with children). Fourth, the competition program helps build the proper image of the Foundation and the company, raising the awareness among key stakeholders.

The Foundation conducts applied research, to discover what issues such families are most concerned about and to identify the key areas of focus and supports best practices for helping families and children.

The stakeholders of the competition are:

• The donor (Severstal): allocates funds for organizing and conducting the contest and implementing the winning projects; a company representative is a member of the jury for the contest. High influence.

• The Foundation team: organizes and conducts the contest; supports the winning projects. High influence.

• Winning project teams: develop and implement projects. Low influence.

• Beneficiaries: participate directly in the projects, evaluate the projects. Medium influence.

• Partner organizations: support the implementation of winning projects, provide human and material resources. Medium influence.

WHO MAKES THE ROAD HOME FOUNDATION GRANT COMPETITION

The competition team can be divided into three groups, each participant having a different role and function.

1. Administrative team:

• the director of the Foundation is the decision-maker;

• the deputy director of the Foundation organizes expert review of the applications;

• the head of the resource and methodological center of the Foundation manages the competition, consults all participants;

• the head of the media department of the Foundation provides information support;

• the economist and methodologists of the Foundation provide consultations on drafting the budget and applications.

The winners find new ways to address pressing social problems, thereby adding to the Foundation’s portfolio of practices. Participating in the competition requires embracing the Foundation’s principles and values, which promotes evaluation, evidence-based approach.

2. Joint implementing team:

• the competition committee – in-house and third-party experts in the Foundation’s areas of activity, experts in the field of social design, applied and evaluative research, following evidence-based approach in evaluating the results of social practices;

• the competition council – a collective body created specifically to make the final decision determining the competition winners;

• programmers – maintenance of the contest website[55].

3. Partners:

• media in the territories covered by the competition – information coverage of the competition and its results;

• city administrations and specialized departments in the contest territories – engaging grantees, developing a pool of urgent problems that require project ideas, and providing partner support to the winning projects;

• NGO resource centers in the contest territories – engaging grantees, assisting in executing applications and implementing the winning projects.

WHO EVALUATES APPLICATIONS AND HOW

The projects eligible for the competition last from 6 to 36 months. Regardless of the topic, duration, amount of funding, territory of implementation and size of the project team, each winning project must produce measurable positive change for the stated target groups. This is the key condition for obtaining funding.

The competition committee evaluates all applications received by the following criteria:

1. The project’s compliance with the goals and conditions of the competition.

2. The project’s relevance and significance for solving the problems of the target group.

3. Feasibility, logical coherence and the ability of the planned actions to achieve a progress towards the project goal.

4. Specific and achievable results planned.

5. Replicability of the project (the possibility of applying the technologies of the project in other organizations, in other territories).

6. The ability of the project team to achieve the project goal.

7. Feasibility of the project budget and alignment of the planned costs with the expected results.

SOCIAL RESULTS OF THE ROAD HOME FOUNDATION’S GRANT COMPETITION

Implementing the projects supported by the Foundation helps improve the quality of life for the project beneficiaries (children, families with children, and child welfare specialists) and increases the number of organizations and specialists providing quality services to beneficiaries. Project specialists help create safe living and developmentally favorable conditions for children in families, to form or strengthen positive personal and socially significant changes in minors, to improve the socio-psychological and parental competences in child-rearing and building harmonious parent-child relationships, and to improve the professionalism of child welfare specialists.

In 2022, more than 1,700 people received assistance from the winning projects; in 2021, the number of beneficiaries was 3,800; and in 2020 – more than 1,700 people.

EFFECTS OF THE GRANT COMPETITION ON THE IMAGE OF THE ROAD HOME CHARITY FOUNDATION

Regular grant competitions help raise awareness about, The Road Home, within the professional community, while also building the Foundation’s expertise, including invitations to share experience and implement partnership projects.

As it follows from the report “Assessment of Interaction with the Key Stakeholders of The Road Home Charitable Foundation’s programs in 2021”, “eight out of ten partners of the Charity Foundation, the Foundation’s specialists and program specialists say that they are well informed about the activities of the Foundation, are engaged in these activities (the foundation has a total of 18 employees, with more than 250 specialists implementing projects in the 7 regions covered by its programs. The sentence above refers to these specialists, who are not directly employed by the Foundation – ed.) 97 % of the Foundation’s partners approve of its activities. More than 80 % of the partners say that since they began working with the Foundation’s program specialists, there have been positive changes in the partners’ work (institutions and other NGOs working with families and children), and the Foundation’s specialists are providing them with exactly the help they need.

EXTERNAL EVALUATION OF THE FOUNDATION’S GRANT COMPETITION

The contest is improved every year, so as to make it as objective, transparent, understandable and interesting for the participants as possible.

In September 2018, the Foundation’s team decided that an external evaluation was needed, which was conducted a year later. Two independent experts were engaged in the evaluation. The evaluation report was received in November 2019. It took 6 months to generate the scope of work, set up the questions for the evaluation and select the specialists. This period was the most productive for the Foundation’s staff in terms of obtaining information about its activities, analyzing the data accumulated over the years, determining the priorities, structure and logic of the activities, strategic development objectives, etc.

The decision to conduct the evaluation was not originally related to the grant competition. The choice to evaluate the competition rather than the programs/projects being implemented, approaches to management, monitoring and evaluation of results was made during the development of the scope of work, after communication with prospective evaluators and a series of internal discussions, including a conversation with the donor’s representatives.

The decision was made because the competition allowed the Foundation to address multiple problems. For example:

1) evaluate the needs and social problems faced by different target groups;

2) identify the readiness/maturity of various organizations, including in the non-profit sector, to address social problems and to develop social projects;

3) analyze these organizations’ readiness to establish partnership and interdepartmental interaction;

4) build mechanisms for interdepartmental interaction and partnership;

5) affect the positioning of the company and its CSR fund.

Thus, the competition has proven to be an important procedure affecting programs, the Foundation itself, inter-departmental collaboration, and the progress towards the strategic goals of The Road Home Program and the Foundation.

The following questions were asked during the evaluation: To what extent does the grant competition contribute to the program effectiveness? To what extent do the competition regulations, the format of the applications and the expert review system of applications allow you to evaluate the effectiveness of the project and the adequacy of the declared costs? What changes should be made to the grant competition regulations, application, and the project evaluation system?

Trying to build a tentative ranking of the usefulness of various stages of assessment, that is, the saturation with practical information for development, we arrive at the following:

1) Preparing the scope of work, choosing evaluators.

2) Evaluation process; communication with evaluators; feedback from evaluation participants.

3) Discussion, implementation of results, recommendations.

4) Evaluation report.

As a result of the evaluation, the Foundation team received a report with a list of suggestions and recommendations for further development of the grant competition, and the evaluation process created an image of the changes that need to be implemented.

Expert quotes from the evaluation report:

• “The mechanism of the competition is clear and well-established. The open competition format is convenient and should be retained as a form of selecting projects for funding. The calendar schedule of the competitions is also convenient.”

• “According to the interviewees’ opinions, the influence of the Foundation’s activities on positive social changes in the beneficiaries’ situation and on solving the city’s social problems (within the priority areas of operation) is estimated at 40 %. This score is very high.

• “A supported project, after several years of successful work, can get the status of the Foundation’s “service”. The methodology has been extensively elaborated, algorithms have been developed, and strong interdepartmental interaction has been established.”

TRANSFORMATION OF ACTIVITIES

The 2019–2020 evaluation resulted in a major transformation of all competitive procedures. The following key changes took place:

1. The competition is now part of the Foundation, not of its separate Road Home program.

The Foundation is implementing two special-purpose programs, but its activities are wider than the two Programs. In light of this, a separate target group was added: (child welfare specialists), and the grant competition has been expanded to accept projects aimed at crisis prevention work (media projects, public opinion-forming projects, projects to develop safe behavior skills).

2. The geography was also extended, first to the neighboring districts of the Vologda region, whose residents often commute to work in Cherepovets and whose children attend the educational institutions in the city. Second, a large regional center (Vologda) was also covered by the project. The third city added to the competition was Veliky Ustyug in Vologda Region, where Sveza company (an active supporter of The Road Home Program) has its office. Finally, Yakovlevo settlement in Belgorod Region.

3. Purposeful collection of feedback from applicants and experts has started, in order to make the necessary changes to the competitive procedures promptly. After the competition, we hold consultations and meetings with those applicants whose projects did not receive funding. Unsuccessful applications may be reworked together with the specialists from the Foundation’s Resource and Methodology Center and submitted to grant competitions by other grantmaking organizations.

4. The principle of variability of contest mechanisms was introduced: projects can be selected through an open competition, initiated by Foundation employees after analyzing the problems and the current situation in their territories, or the Foundation’s specialists can participate in partners’ projects.

5. The competition has received its own website: https://socialprojects.dorogakdomu.ru/. Applications are accepted only through the applicant’s personal account; experts also have to log in to review the applications.

6. The process of building the evidence base of the project starts during the preparation of the grant application (new sections have been added to the document).

7. The Foundation has defined the support functions for the competition (administrators, thematic consultants, programmers).

8. A three-tiered application review system has been tested and approved.

9. Independent experts are involved in the evaluation, which eliminates the conflict of interest for applications submitted by experts themselves.

10. A new body, the Competition Council was introduced.

Thus, as we can see, the evaluation has significantly increased the maturity of the competition, which also improved other processes of the Foundation: inter-departmental interaction mechanisms, positioning of the Foundation, planning of activities, project management (see Table 1).

Table 1. Immediate results of the Foundation’s grant competition after implementing the independent evaluation results

INTERNAL EVALUATION AND SELF-EVALUATION OF THE COMPETITION

These types of evaluations are conducted annually, following the principle of triangulation by data source. That is, information about the competition is collected from at least three data sources, to enable independent validation of the results and examine the evidence of social outcome from different perspectives.

1. Every year since 2008, discussions are held before and after the competition with the team of organizers. The analysis focuses on the following issues: directions and target groups of the competition, geography, and the contribution of grantees’ projects to the achievement of the Foundation’s strategic goals.

2. Since 2020, feedback has been collected annually from applicants and members of the competition committee. The data collection method is a blanket survey. An online questionnaire is used. In 2021, 66 % of the applicants and 81 % of the members of the competition committee participated in the survey. Here are some insights from the 2021 report on the feedback from the applicants and experts of the competition:

• “For the convenience of applicants and experts in 2020, reference materials were developed: a manual for the experts and a manual for the applicants. Almost all applicants and experts, with the exception of 7 % and 5 %, respectively, took advantage of the manual. All of them noted that the reference material was helpful when working with the competition site.”

• “60 % of the applicants received advice from the Foundation specialists by phone or email while preparing their applications. Communication with specialists was highly appreciated by the applicants and experts of the competition. Commenting on their evaluation, experts and applicants noted that consultations were received promptly, and the specialists were able to answer all questions of interest. Applicants who did not seek counseling say they were able to complete the application on their own, thanks to detailed instructions in the applicant’s manual. The experts thanked the entire competition team for their quick feedback, attentive and friendly attitude.”

3. Beginning in 2019, the professional community (evaluators, specialists of grantmaking organizations, and attendees of the evaluation conferences conducted by the Association of Program and Policy Evaluators) are involved in the discussions of competitive procedures.