How Government Grants are Scored

Most government grants go through a peer review process - meaning all grant applications are read by a panel of people who are in the same or similar field that the grant will be funding. During this process, readers will score submitted proposals based on a points scale and funding is determined by who received the highest score when all the scores are totaled together or when they are averaged together.

When you were in school yourself, teachers may have used rubrics to score your papers on many different points of the essay (grammar, content, voice, etc). Well, grant readers do the same. Using a rubric, you will be given points for certain categories and have them taken away for inadequate or missing information. If a grant is asking for something that you haven't provided, you are going to lose points.

At an informational grant writing session I attended a couple weeks ago, we received a sample reviewer scoring rubric that was actually used to score a grant for a Fair Housing Initiatives Program. Applicants were scored based on five categories (only five, for what was surely a 30 page proposal):

• Capacity of Applicant and Relevant Organization Experience (worth 25 points), based on
• number and expertise of staff 
• organization experience
• performance on past projects
• Demonstrated Need (20 points)
• Soundness of Approach (35 points), based on
• support of policy priorities
• info requirements
• budget form and narrative budget work plan
• Leveraging Resources (5 points)
• 1 point if less than 5% total project costs from non-Federal Housing Initiatives Program resources
• 2 points if 5-10%
• 3 points if 11-20%
• 4 points if 21-30%
• 5 points if at least 31%
• Achieving Results and Program Evaluation (15 points)

With the exception of "Leveraging Resources," all of these categorical points were determined base don opinion alone. For example, "number and expertise of staff" could receive up to ten points, but there was no explanation, such as "x number of staff have professional or paraprofessional degrees." This could have been someone's reasoning for the points they gave, but doesn't exactly provide an objective (read: idiot-proof) scoring guide.

Just like when you were in school, you probably did better on a paper if you saw the rubric beforehand, so if such materials are available, make sure you write to that scoring guide. You need to fulfill the grantmaker's guidelines, so ensure that you are referring to relevant (and correctly cited) material.

Finally, if you submit a government grant, you should request your scoring rubric, regardless of the outcome, so that you can see where you lost points and why. This could help you further refine your program. If the grantmaking organization gives you any trouble when you request this information, write a letter under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and they will be legally required to furnish the requested documents within seven days.