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,
