Funding bid haiku or magnus opus? Bloghead thinks less might be more.

What do the following numbers have in common? 9,000 and 36.

The answer is a recent research application, about which a colleague has just sent bad news: their bid for a research project has turned out to be unsuccessful. 9,000 words for the application: forensic detail required about the project, its outcomes, dissemination, risk, and so on. Six months later, 36 words of rejection: "We decided not to offer you a grant because, although your application has good qualities, we considered that other applications better matched the aims of the programme." Computer says no.

What does the 250:1 application/rejection word ratio reveal about such processes? It has not been uncommon for voluntary organisations to be caricatured as unprofessional, inefficient and complacent. Even in 2009 the trade press still carries stories in which organisations are exhorted to become smarter (strategically, not sartorially) and ‘modernised’. Leaving aside possible misgivings about the often punitive tone of such broadsides, to say little of the risks of generalising across a landscape as complex as the voluntary sector, what might it look like if we turned our attention elsewhere?

"Feedback or face sanction: funding councils warned of need to become more open in their communication." or "Sector calls for ‘Dear John’ panel to provide details of rejection."

Jenny Harrow, co-Director of the Centre for Charitable Giving and Philanthropy, has written before about "’grant rage’" among grant-seekers, on receiving news of refusal" and the general tendency to suffer in silence. In the context of the 250:1 experience, is such rage so surprising? Perhaps, in the age of tweets and texts, the allocation should be reversed, with a less time-consuming and emotionally exhausting word limit of just 36 for a four year research project: "We are applying for £250k to work alongside 15 community-based organisations in England to develop new frameworks for measuring the ‘social value of their work’. The results will be disseminated collaboratively through a national training programme." Lol.