Maximizing the Impact of a Grant Transition Supplements

Some foundations provide special resources to help grantees document and share lessons and accomplishments. At one large foundation, for example, program staff can propose “transition supplements” for grantees within a year of closing out their projects to support communication and dissemination. The foundation awarded roughly 25 such grants annually in the first few years of the program, then studied the projects to establish a “typology” of transition activities that serve the needs of exiting grantees. The types are not always clearly differentiated from one another, a grantmaker noted, but the list has been helpful in enabling program staff to imagine the possibilities.

• Dissemination, “which includes methods that inform others about strategies, methods, results, or research findings or products from the original project”

• Replication, which “goes beyond disseminating information to a more intensive hands-on way of helping other organizations replicate the model or methods”

• Planning for sustainability, or work that’s “aimed at sustaining, not necessarily the project itself but learning from the project model, either within the organization or by developing a new spin-off organization”

• Research, which includes “data collection, along with analysis and interpretation to implement research that was recommended as a result of the project”

• Continuation, or “continuing some activities or strategies over a longer time to help the grantee disseminate, replicate, or sustain their work — for example, if a policy action is timely where it wasn’t before”

• Miscellaneous, for projects that “don’t really fit into any of the other categories”