Dan is taking a holiday break, and so Mr. Crankypants is taking over this blog today.
Mr. Crankypants has learned a new term, and he’s just dying to share it with you. Carol, who is the partner of stupid alter ego Dan, has been talking about “grant vultures.” You may well ask what a “grant vulture” is, and Mr. Crankypants will tell you.
Apparently, there are people who come to open hearings and other meetings in New Bedford, even though they’re not residents of the city. Why do they come to these meetings when they live in other towns? Could it be that they are planning to move to New Bedford, and want to know how the political process works? Well, no, when you talk to them it becomes obvious that they have no desire to live in the city. Could it be that they are political process junkies, and there just aren’t enough open hearings and political meetings in their home towns, so they feel compelled to attend political meetings in nearby municipalities? Well, no, when you talk to them it becomes obvious that they do not participate in the political process in any meaningful way in their home town.
Could it be that they are hooping to tap into the grant money that comes to New Bedford? Could it be that they’re hoping to tap into funding to help support their own non-profit organizations (which, by the way, are generally based in the suburbs, and do not directly serve city residents)? For example, it could be that they hope to tap into some of the money that comes from the Environmental Protection Agency to help New Bedford harbor’s toxic waste problems. It could be that they are grant vultures — critters that hover around a city, hoping that some grant money stays still long enough that they can flap down and grab a piece, and then fly back with it to feed their own nestlings.
But Mr. Crankypants doesn’t believe that there are actual grant vultures out there. And Mr. Crankypants knows that most of the people in the non-profit world are not grant vultures, they have pure motives, and they really do serious work at facilitating the fair flow of grant money. Mr. Crankypants hopes that the grant vulture is just a mythical beast, like unicorns and dragons. And he hopes everyone in the non-profit world truly is pure of heart, with only the highest of motives.
I’ve never worked for a nonprofit, so maybe that’s why I don’t understand this.
If all the grant money is being used, how is it available to snatch?
If the money is not being used, isn’t cleaning up suburban toxic waste preferable to explaining to the EPA why all the grant money isn’t being used and/or having to give it back?
Doesn’t the nature of groundwater/air indicate that the effects of pollution do run across city lines?
E.g. according to this: http://www.ci.new-bedford.ma.us/Nav1.htm
there is significant overlap between the water systems of New Bedford and its suburbs.
CC
who understands that grant vultures suck for some reason, but thinks she would want them fighting for the issues she cares about.
OK, it won’t let me link directly to the water system’s page.
If you want to see my source, follow the link, then click “Public works” in the frame. On the resulting page, click “Wastewater division.” On THAT resulting page, click “The wastewater system.”
CC
Oui! C’est vrai. In the Midwest the grant vultures here write grants that allow themselves to travel to far away places. Like the China, for instance. Le grand poobah, how do you say, Super-In-Tendent, of the school system, oui! He makes the trip to China and comes back with the idea of the uniforms for all the children in the school system the one with the 54% high school graduation rate.
M. Merde-Merde, he is not an educator, but he wonders: what is wrong with le picture?
CC — Here in New Bedford, there continue to be significant problems with toxics, most obviously toxic waste in the Superfund site in New Bedford harbor. The EPA money (as I understand it) comes to the city because we’re living on a Superfund site. There are a number of non-profits who deal directly with the problems of toxic PCBs and other toxic wastes in New Bedford — “Hands Across the Water” is one — and it would make sense for the EPA money to go to them; or to research projects directly connected with toxics, related health issues, etc. However, it appears that a number of non-profits are creating programs (which have only a tangential relationship to the Superfund site) simply in order to get a piece of the EPA money. Couple that with the fact that while suburban Fairhaven borders directly on the harbor (and should, by rights, get some of the money), so far the suburban communities that seem to be in line for grant money are nowhere near the Superfund site.
Additionally, the process for giving out the grant money was, shall we say, less than transparent. Thus, when you ask “If all the grant money is being used, how is it available to snatch?” — part of the answer is that the grant money may not actually be available equally to all non-profits. In addition, there are non-profits that try to function as “grant buckets,” where they funnel grant money through their organization to another organization, taking a piece of the money on the way. Sometimes grant buckets serve a useful function (e.g., they may help get funding to fledgling non-profits which do not yet have 503c status and which would otherwise be unable to accept grant money from some sources; e.g., they may provide administrative and bookkeeping support; etc.) — but less scrupulous grant buckets just want a piece of the money.
The sad truth is that many non-profits seem to exist solely in order tog et more grant money — rather than being mission-driven, their programs are driven primarily by where the money is coming from. “Grant vultures,” in the sense that Mr. Crankypants is using the term, are the functionaries that are looking for money, not to drive the mission of their non-profit, but simply to make sure their employer is well-funded. It is an understandable attitude to take (we all want to keep our jobs), but it can give the non-profit sector a bad name.
M. Merde-Merde brings up another kind of grant vulture — the grant vultures that try to tap into money to fund fun trips and other junkets.
CC, I hope this clears up the confusion — and makes the point that not everyone is nice in the non-profit world.
I’ve worked for three non-profits (an Indian school, an Indian education non-profit, and an arts in education non-profit). I’d say that the Indian school was the least vulture-like and it’s now extinct, but so is the most vulture-like, the arts in education non-profit.
…and to add to Ms. Theologian’s comments, it drives me up the wall when grant vultures swoop down on a town to “bring more opportunity to the children of the hovel while creating employment for young people just starting out,” when what they really mean is “create a desk job for myself so that I can hire new college graduates with no training and pay them minimum wage to do crafts projects with these poor ignoratnt backwater children.” I work for a non-profit, and so am a bit biased against some of the do-good-for-me grant writing that goes on in the rest of the non-profits, and I see a fair amount of self-serving masked as philanthropy.