Gripes and Grievances: How An Applicant and Grantee “Complaint” Policy Improves Relationships

(Rebecca H. Donham is senior program officer at the MetroWest Health Foundation, an independent health philanthropy addressing the unmet health needs of the 25-town MetroWest region of Massachusetts.)

The MetroWest Health Foundation was created from the sale of a community asset – a two-campus suburban hospital.  As such, we feel a tremendous responsibility to the residents of the 25 towns we serve.  We’ve been entrusted with funds and seek to invest them wisely, both in terms of revenue generation as well as the grant distribution side.

We also embrace best practices. As a health funder, we understand there are programs and interventions that are evidence based, and therefore known to work. Since our founding 15 years ago, we’ve worked to encourage applicants to embrace best practices.

There are best practices for funders in terms of transparency and we have incorporated those into our work. We have a searchable grant database that allows anyone to see all the grants we’ve made and for what purposes. We post our financials, board and committee members, performance dashboards, strategic plans and other information on our website. We welcome potential applicants and community members to meet with staff at any time, either before or after grant decisions. Our board meetings are even open to the public, including free dinner!

Given the organization’s historical commitment to transparency, it makes sense that in 2007 the foundation’s board of trustees adopted a policy for handling complaints by applicants and grantees. The trustees viewed it as a way of walking the walk and fostering good community relations. The policy makes clear that grant and scholarship decisions are final and not subject to appeal, but that if there are complaints about the foundation’s grant process or work, we have a formal procedure to address them.

We post this policy on our website (http://www.mwhealth.org/Portals/0/Uploads/Documents/Public/Key_Policies/Complaints.pdf), along with ones addressing conflicts of interest, compensation, whistle blowing, site visits and sustainability. The last two go even further than what Glasspockets recommends and they speak to our strong commitment to transparency. Foundations can be seen as secretive and arbitrary, and we frequently are praised for being so up-front about how we do our work.

The foundation recently completed its third iteration of the Grantee Perception Report, the results of which (not surprisingly) are published on our web site. I think it is no coincidence that the foundation was rated higher than 90% of foundations in terms of our relationship with grantees. The results were similar in terms of how fairly grantees felt we treated them (>92%) and how comfortable they felt approaching us if a problem arose (>97%).

I would argue that there is zero downside to having a complaint policy. We’ve never had a complaint filed and having the policy publicly available on our website sends a message to the community that we care about fairness and transparency. Some might think this means grantee complaint and response mechanisms are not worth the investment, but quite to the contrary we find it supports and complements our organizational culture that prizes treating everyone respectfully and professionally. Maybe it’s because we’re a health funder, but we think it holds true that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

-- Rebecca H. Donham