Last month, the Cadasta Foundation launched its first-ever grant program. Issuing grants was an idea long before I joined the team at Cadasta, but it was one of my main priorities when I arrived in May as the organization’s new Global Program Director.
Launching this grant was a team effort by many people in the organization—including the entire communications, technical, and program teams—but the special recognition goes to Anna Freestone who supported the early grant program design as a summer intern and to Siphie Komwa who supports grant administration as a Program Coordinator.
We also met with partner organizations that have launched small grant programs before and learned from their experiences. Colleagues at Namati, Habitat for Humanity International, and Cities Alliance all supported our grant program design process and I am grateful for their time and advice.
Ultimately, we developed a grant program with our partner needs and concerns in mind. We created an application from that is short and easy-to-complete. We prioritized grant activities supporting the purchase of equipment and paying for staffing costs associated with surveying—which were the two largest obstacles that prevented data collection project completion, according to what many Cadasta partners told us. We set evaluation criteria that is simple and fairly straightforward.
One item that some people have found confusing or frustrating is the requirement to be a current Cadasta partner with a signed Partnership Agreement or MOU in effect. Why did we require grant applicants to be a current cadasta partner?
1. We wanted to help the organizations we work with successfully complete their projects. Right now, more than half of Cadasta partners are unable to finish data collection in a period of six months because of inadequate funds for technology, equipment, data enumerators. We want to eliminate these specific obstacles.
2. We wanted to create incentives to work with Cadasta. With the Data Accelerator Grant there is a potential $10,000 benefit to becoming a Cadasta partner. This is good for existing and new partners.
3. We wanted to issue grants as easily as possible. This meant that grantmaking activities were added into Cadasta’s existing project implementation activities and processes (including the signing of an agreement or MOU). It makes the grant process easier for the partner and for Cadasta.
In just 30 days since announcing the Data Accelerator Grant opportunity, more than fifty organizations have expressed interest in the grant or in signing a Partnership Agreement to then access the grant. I consider this a tremendous response—one that the Cadasta team is responding to as quickly as we are able to—but the success of this grant program is not tied to mere interest.
Our success will be measured by the number of grantees (and percentage of Cadasta partners who become grantees) utilizing new equipment and expanded staffing capabilities to more quickly complete the data collection phase of their projects. After successfully completing the grant, we envision partners continuing to use the equipment for expanded data collection and/or advanced community engagement and advocacy activities using the community maps and visualizations generated by project data.