Gaining valuable insight into a grant program

Optimising Grant Program Evaluation for Faster and More Effective Delivery

Grosvenor partnered with a NSW Government clean energy agency to optimise the evaluation and application process for a $20 million grant program. We delivered a rapid eight-week assessment and identified key improvements. Additionally, we produced actionable recommendations to streamline future grant rounds and improve program effectiveness across the agency.

Situation

Our client is a NSW Government agency responsible for administering clean energy programs. They had just conducted an application round for one of their $20 million grant programs. With a potential second round of applications opening imminently, our client was seeking to optimise the application and assessment process for this program. They also wanted to understand what lessons learned could be applied across other grants which they manage.

Task

Through delays outside of our client’s control, the first application round was conducted significantly behind schedule. This meant that there was a very short turn around to conduct the second grant round. It was also necessary to ensure the projects could deliver on the program outcomes before the end of the program. As a result, the evaluation needed to be completed in less than eight weeks.

Approach

We developed an efficient but collaborative methodology which sought to maximise available resources. This was enabled through our depth of program evaluation experience in both process evaluations and in the grant administration context.

Four Key Evaluation Questions (KEQs) were developed for the evaluation:

• KEQ1: To what extent has program communication and promotion effectively built awareness of the program and supported the application process?
• KEQ2: To what extent is the application process expected to support the achievement of program priority objectives?
• KEQ3: To what extent was the application process aligned with the capacity and capability of regional stakeholders? [the targeted stakeholders for this grant program]
• KEQ4: What lessons learned from the application process could be used to enhance potential future rounds of the program and/or other grant program’s application processes?

The evaluation was informed by a desktop review of key grant application materials as well as consultation with stakeholders internal and external to the agency.

Result

The client received an accessible and timely report which is expected to enhance the process for managing grant applications. We identified 15 recommendations including those specific to this grant program. We also provided recommendations that can be applied more broadly to grant programs administered by our client.

We received a Net Promoter Score of 9 and 10 respectively from our key client contacts. The feedback showed they appreciated our reliability, timeliness, and the way in which we kept them informed.

Explore this for your organisation.
Start a conversation with Dana Cross, Program Evaluation Lead