Rethinking RFPs and Grant Management for Real Impact
By Carla Sinclair, Senior Communications Associate, Nathalie Lebron, Senior Policy Associate, and Patrick Hart, Policy Program Director
We’ve worked as an intermediary between community organizations and their governmental and philanthropic funders for over a decade. In this time, we’ve learned that the Request-for-Proposal (RFP) and other parts of grantmaking often leave out smaller, grassroots community organizations who are closest to those they serve. Using our Community-Based Restorative Justice Program and Grassroots Policy Incubator as examples, we dig into ways that funders and grant managers can create a more inclusive process that uplifts new ideas without sacrificing program quality and accountability.
Grassroots organizations are named as such because they are grounded in the communities they serve, growing from and taking root in the same neighborhoods as the people they work with. They embody the cultures of the neighborhood, represent the community, and have a commitment to providing services to them. This means they have a distinct and thoughtful perspective on pressing challenges, but it also means they can face challenges accessing opportunities and resources to design, implement, and evaluate real solutions.
These nonprofit, community-based organizations often operate with a small staff, and without the dedicated time or resources to invest into grant applications, fundraising, staffing, data collection, and other types of capacity that organizations often need to operate successfully. Many rely on short-term grants, which lack sustainability, making it difficult to maintain programs over time.
Philanthropic organizations and grant-making government agencies have, in recent years, begun to address these financial and infrastructural gaps, but the gap is large. Take New York City: it takes technical knowledge of the City Requests for Proposal (RFP) system, a number of hours to prepare detailed and formulaic proposals, and the ability to compete with larger, more experienced nonprofits; combined with a well-established pattern of delays in City contract payments, a turbulent federal funding landscape, and other obstacles, opportunities are limited for small nonprofits whose design may be the best fit for the community.
CUNY ISLG has over a decade of experience partnering with state and local governments, foundations, and other grantmakers to develop, manage, and evaluate impactful programs and services. We have managed request-for-proposal (RFP) development, solicitation, selection, and contracting for dozens of initiatives. From this experience working with grassroots grantees to produce successful programs, we’ve begun to rethink the RFP and grantmaking process. What barriers make these processes unnecessarily prohibitive, and what could be broken down without compromising program quality? How can we get the policy conversation to involve grassroots organizations, bringing these community-based changemakers’ ideas to policymakers, funders, and other people with the resources to make them happen?
What barriers make these processes unnecessarily prohibitive, and what could be broken down without compromising program quality?
How can we get the policy conversation to involve grassroots organizations, bringing these community-based changemakers’ ideas to policymakers, funders, and other people with the resources to make them happen?
In the past year, ISLG has applied these questions to two new initiatives in New York City, taking an intentional, inclusive approach to funding community-based organizations. From participatory grantmaking to imbuing capacity-building into policy design to minimizing the RFP response and/or grant reporting burden, this approach is proving effective in a range of fields and services.
Community-Based Restorative Justice (CBRJ) Initiative: Building Capacity to Provide Innovative Programming
When the New York City government announced its plan to close the jails on Rikers Island, the de Blasio mayoral administration worked with the City Council to engage community members in the creation of a better, more equitable system, and to solicit concerns and ideas for potential investments to make it happen. In October 2019, this process culminated in several Points of Agreement (POA). The POA guided the City’s commitment to fund several initiatives to enhance community-driven safety and re-envision justice. One of those initiatives was the Community-Based Restorative Justice (CBRJ) Initiative.
A convened Advisory Committee, in collaboration with the Restorative Justice Initiative, released a report for city agencies and the City Council outlining recommendations to help organizations strengthen or implement restorative justice (RJ) services and activities. The primary focus was investing in small and grassroots organizations that have historically faced barriers in accessing public funding, as well as specific neighborhoods disproportionately impacted by a lack of resources and high incarceration rates. Recommendations ranged from investing in wraparound services that include restorative justice, uplifting the various models of RJ (i.e., going beyond circles), and restructuring the city’s grant procurement and management process.
The report emphasized that the procurement process should have a participatory grantmaking approach, meaning that those closest to impacted communities play a key role in decision-making during the procurement process. The report stressed that grant management should not place undue burden on organizations—especially grassroots ones—by expecting them to meet targets without adequate capacity building support.
Grant management should not place undue burden on organizations—especially grassroots ones—by expecting them to meet targets without adequate capacity building support.
With this report in mind, the NYC Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice (MOCJ) engaged CUNY ISLG to design and implement the CBRJ solicitation, as well as to support grantees in developing their capacity by offering operational, strategic, and programmatic training and technical assistance.
Grant Procurement
As part of the grant procurement process, CUNY ISLG, with the guidance from the original Advisory Committee, created an advisory group of community members, organizations, government representatives, and philanthropic organizations. The advisory group helped design and implement the solicitation, supported outreach efforts, as well as reviewed and selected proposals. In line with participatory grantmaking principles, ISLG released prompts to the broader RJ community to help shape the development of the solicitation and overall initiative.
These prompts included:
What best practices in community restorative justice and restorative approaches should be considered for this initiative?
What is the range of sectors where restorative work is being applied and should be considered for this initiative?
In addition to programmatic support, are there capacity-building supports needed across organizations? Can you describe what capacity-building needs exist?
What are the barriers to designing, implementing, and scaling restorative justice and restorative approaches that should be considered for this initiative?
Are there other gaps in support that should be considered for this initiative?
Do you have any other feedback you’d like to share?
Community feedback included insights on RJ best practices, capacity-building needs, and barriers that organizations face when implementing and sustaining programs. Community feedback, along with the guidance of the advisory group led to a streamlined and straightforward solicitation process, which offered free application support, and additional resources to assist organizations applying for the grant.
CBRJ grantees are now almost a year into their multiyear grants. Besides their work on RJ programs, fellowships, and trainings, they meet biweekly with ISLG staff to strengthen their organizational infrastructure, with workshops on data, board engagement, AI, and more. These capacity-building skills then translate to more successful RJ programming and general sustainability long term.
Read more about the Community-Based Restorative Justice Program in its Case Study.
Grassroots Policy Incubator: Building Capacity to Solve Community Problems
As we see with CBRJ, the ground-level perspective grassroots organizations have of their communities means they know the challenges its people face, and have unique ideas on how to fix them. But developing the capacity to move from policy idea to reality requires the funding, staffing, data, and other infrastructural planning that can be next to impossible without support.
In partnership with the NYC Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYCO), ISLG conducted a systematic consultation and surveyed grassroots nonprofits across New York City to identify what they needed to be able to take on that critical planning and position themselves for growth. This led to the creation of the Grassroots Policy Incubator (GPI) in summer 2024. Tailored specifically for grassroots organizations to address the reality of limited resources, the Incubator aims to give organizations the funding and capacity-building support to meet the needs in their communities.
Tailored specifically for grassroots organizations to address the reality of limited resources, the Incubator aims to give organizations the funding and capacity-building support to meet the needs in their communities.
The GPI immerses grantees into a six-month incubation process (see Figure 1 for a breakdown of these steps) that helps leaders identify ideas to solve thorny policy gaps, connect with ISLG and NYCO’s extensive network of experts, and access resources to support the development of the policy proposal to solve that gap.
Figure 1: Steps in the Policymaking Process
The selection process for the GPI included specific guidelines around organizational size to ensure small organizations were prioritized. Many qualified organizations applied, which confirmed the need for this type of investment. The process also required a shorter/lighter lift response than typical City RFPs, which made it more likely that a small organization with substantial demands on its staff would be able to find time to apply.
After reviewing a number of proposals across fields, three grassroots organizations were chosen to participate. The funding will be used to build and strengthen infrastructure tailored to each organization’s policy goals, ranging from data collection to communications to court-based services.
Read more about the Grassroots Policy Incubator and the grantees chosen for the inaugural round.
While both these programs offer a new take on RFP solicitation and grantmaking overall, they are not one-size-fits-all. Rethinking these processes is complicated, with many existing processes and procedures rightfully in place to ensure quality service delivery, financial reporting, data collection, and more. However, we’re excited to keep moving forward and carefully evaluate the successes and challenges of these approaches so the field at large can start tapping into the boundless insight and innovation that lies yet untilled at the roots.
Photo of a Restorative Justice event provided by the Center for Justice Innovation.