Tracking Grants

Guatemala

After ending a funding relationship, many grantmakers lose contact with their former grantees. As a result, these funding agencies remain unaware of the progress of organizations that have benefited from their support.

In response, GFC offers tracking grants as a means to systematically review the developments of its former grantees as well as to assess its grantmaking achievements. These $1,000 general-support grants are made available to former grantee partners every two years, establishing a regular and long-term process of follow-up and reporting.

The knowledge resulting from this process has been instructive, providing a snapshot of the organizational development, program growth, challenges, and accomplishments of grassroots organizations around the world. Over the next several years, these tracking grants will provide essential knowledge about organizational and program development at the community level.

Below are a few examples of information acquired from tracking grants in 2005:

• Established in 2002 in Kabul, Afghanistan, Aïna has since increased its budget to nearly $3 million; attracted large funders, including USAID and the International Organization for Migration; and by the end of 2005 will fund about half its budget from its own for-profit initiatives. In the year that Aïna started its work in Afghanistan, GFC provided a grant to help the organization develop Parvaz, an independent magazine targeting street boys and other underserved children, which now has a readership of over five hundred thousand.
• A film depicting the experiences and work of Grupo Cultural Afro Reggae, which offers cultural programming to youth living in Rio de Janeiro’s favelas, won the Best New Documentary Filmmaker award at the 2005 Tribeca Film Festival. When GFC awarded Afro Reggae a general-support grant in 1999, the organization’s budget was around $23,000; by 2003, its budget had grown to nearly $600,000.
• In less than three years, the organizational budget of National Council of Women of Kenya (NCWK) has more than tripled, and the organization has expanded its donor base to include well-known international funders such as the United Nations Voluntary Fund for the International Decade of the World’s Indigenous People. In 2002, NCWK received a grant from GFC in support of its awareness-raising work about the hazards of female circumcision.
• The National Society for Earthquake Technology—Nepal (NSET) received a 2004 Tech Museum Award for its approach to educating communities, local craftsmen, and engineers about the importance of earthquake-resistant construction in Nepal. NSET has also partnered with Room to Read, another former GFC grantee partner, to expand its School Earthquake Safety Program, which received support from GFC in 2003.