I am working with a client to evaluate a grant project that has multiple implementation sites. This is not unusual. In fact, it is extremely common with grants awarded to school districts for multiple school sites to be involved. There are other, non-school situations in which multiple sites are also common.

The problem with this current client is that some of the sites are not implementing the grant as they should. You might think that this is not much of problem, except for the fact that those sites are putting all of the participating sites at risk. In this case, there is a required assessment (required by the funding source, not by this friendly evaluator) that some of the sites have not administered. Their lack of compliance could very well cause all of the participating sites to lose their funding.

So why don’t they just do it?

Who knows? It could be that they are too busy. It could be that they really do not understand the importance of it. It could be that they never really wanted to be involved with this project to begin with so they aren’t going to inconvenience themselves to comply.

Here’s the real problem – In an effort to save a buck and reserve as much of the budget as possible for direct services, the grantee chose not to hire a grant coordinator. As a result, there is no one pulling all the pieces together, no one riding herd on the sites to comply with grant requirements, no one “coordinating” the effort.

This is a common grant implementation error. An effort to save a buck may result in all the money being lost.

It seems a little short-sighted, doesn’t it?