Zenex Foundation grant-making guidelines


Learning from ten years of practice
The Zenex Foundation’s approach to grant-making has changed and evolved over the past ten years. In examining the success with which the Foundation has managed its role as a grant-maker, the professional standards for good grant-making – as adopted by the Southern African Grantmakers’ Association (SAGA) – have provided a useful analytic framework. These principles of grant-making (developed by SAGA members and adapted from international codes of good practice) are applied to the work of the Zenex Foundation in the analysis below.

Principles of good grant-making
Contribute to positive social change
The Zenex Foundation’s vision has always been to contribute to positive social change through the provision of quality education and training for historically disadvantaged communities. The Foundation’s new strategy proves its commitment to become more proactive by developing project ideas in partnership with key stakeholders, including the Department of Education. The Zenex Foundation then asks providers to bid to offer services in line with a pre-determined project design.

Work in partnership with grantees/project partners
One of the challenges is to manage an inherently unequal relationship between donor and recipient organisations. In addition to seeing grantees as partner organisations, the Zenex Foundation characterises the relationship between organisations as one where it procures services from implementing organisations to effect its development agenda.

Cultivate mutual respect
The cultivation of mutual respect works in tandem with the idea of partnership and the equalisation of power differentials. A range of approaches is used to cultivate mutual respect, including dialogue about project designs and implementation; having a joint process for commissioning evaluators; and providing regular feedback on the content and format of reports submitted by grantees.

Be open and accessible
Good communication is one of the keys to successful grant-making. The Zenex Foundation seeks to achieve this by appointing project managers to maintain regular communication; providing feedback on reports submitted by projects; and encouraging negotiation and discussion.

Champion accountability
One of the main forms for ensuring accountability is through regular project evaluations and having effective project monitoring systems in place. In 1997, the Zenex Foundation’s Trustees took a decision that all large projects would be subject to an external evaluation. The Foundation’s commitment to regular, high-quality evaluation reflects a clear commitment to accountability. The Zenex Foundation has also become increasingly committed to discussing and debating evaluation findings with project partners and beneficiaries and looking for ways to address weaknesses in project design or delivery.

Foster internal monitoring systems
The Zenex Foundation has instituted comprehensive monitoring systems which enable project managers to remain in regular contact with project implementers and beneficiary groups through site visits and regular progress reports from partner organisations.

Practise consistency
Among the Zenex Foundation’s very first policies was a clear declaration of criteria for funding projects and organisations. Over the years, the Foundation has continued to develop policies and protocols for funding applications and structuring relationships with project partners. It also holds training workshops for grantees to explain how reporting (financial and activity reporting) is to be submitted.

Adopt professional and effective approaches
The Zenex Foundation’s approach has become increasingly professional with the introduction of procedures and templates for reporting and feedback to grantees. The organisation offers training on the use and completion of templates. The Foundation is committed to the continuous improvement of its internal systems and draws on feedback from grantees to improve its template design.

Features of the Zenex Foundation grant-making relationships
Four characteristics stand out in the Zenex Foundation’s grant-making relationships:

1. The Foundation funds the full cost of programmes, including administrative costs.
2. It is committed to a capacity-building programme for service providers to ensure delivery of quality programmes.
3. It enters into multi-year funding agreements with three-year funding cycles.
4. It is committed to monitoring and evaluation.

Examining project sustainability
Promoting the sustainability of project effects
The issue of project sustainability often attracts a great deal of donor attention. Most donors want to be assured that the project activities will be maintained once the grant period has ended, or that the benefits of the project will continue.
In the past, the Zenex Foundation used two models to promote the maintenance of project effects:

• training a key teacher who continues to provide professional support to teachers (from the same school) who participated in the project
• training a group of individuals (usually district officials) who are able to assume the role of external providers of teacher support.

The ‘training of a key teacher’ model has been unsuccessful, largely for two reasons: many teachers lacked the confidence to hold workshops for other teachers; alternatively they did not have access to their colleagues’ classrooms, because they did not have sufficient authority to conduct oversight or monitoring activities.
As the work of the district officials does not depend on external funding, the assumption is that this is the most cost-effective model to ensure project sustainability. Only one Zenex Foundation project explicitly followed this model, but it found that there was little real involvement of district officials in the project other than through the provision of administrative support and facilitation of access to the schools. It can be concluded that there was therefore very little likelihood that this would lead to maintenance of project effects.

Understanding the failure of project sustainability
Funders and grantees (or project implementers) tend to focus on service delivery within the grant period, but pay little attention to the period immediately following the end of the grant.
In examining the general failure of project sustainability, it is necessary to re-examine some of the assumptions on which either the maintenance or expansion of effects are based. Sustainability assumes that:

• sufficient change has taken place to be sustained
• human capacity exists to assume the role of a change agent
• there is a willingness to assume the role of promoting and maintaining change
• there is sufficient capacity to continue the change process in the absence of external pressure or encouragement
• material support is available to sustain the change process.

The assumption that teachers have the spare capacity to take on additional roles as supporters of change and providers of professional development activities – over and above their normal teaching loads – has proved to be somewhat faulty.
The assumption that district officials will take over the role of support providers is premised on the idea that their existing job descriptions require that they monitor, support and train teachers. Unfortunately, this approach has not proved particularly successful. This has largely been attributed to the fact that donor-funded projects are conceptualised as special activities that fall outside of normal activities and are tied to specific time-frames. The ‘add-on’ nature of these projects results in them enjoying a low priority among district officials in relation to other activities.

New attempts to foster sustainability
Based on the relatively disappointing results of earlier efforts to ensure project sustainability, the Zenex Foundation has embarked on new strategies to promote greater sustainability. These approaches include:

• Increasing the number of teachers in a school participating in a project. This has been introduced to bring about a ‘critical mass’ of those that are exposed to new methods, with the hope that even if only a small percentage of teachers continue promoting the project’s efforts and ideas, the change will be sustained.
• Promoting project buy-in by beneficiaries. Greater self-selection to participate in developmental activities has been identified as a success factor in some projects. Participants must volunteer and be committed to participate in the programme.
• Brokering and sustaining partnerships with the Department of Education. This approach promotes an understanding of the project’s design and approach, as well as creating joint ownership of the project from its inception. As long as projects are seen as parallel activities to normal teaching and learning, their effects will remain marginal. By aligning new projects with the Department of Education’s strategic agenda, it is hoped that they can be linked more explicitly with the normal activities of the schools.
• Promoting organisational capacity of project implementers. This is done on the understanding that it will improve the delivery of services during the grant period, and will also contribute to the ongoing work of the Zenex Foundation and its ability to source funding in future.

Code of good practice
Guiding the Zenex Foundation’s approach to development funding
The Zenex Foundation has developed a code of good practice, which is a set of principles to guide its approach to development funding.
1. Transformation (social change)
We aim to direct our funding and development efforts towards working with disadvantaged communities through:

• developing our funding policy to include clear statement of purpose and an appreciation of the problems we hope to address
• ensuring that development objectives shape our funding policy
• making funding decisions against criteria that include sustainability, participation and relevant impact on existing conditions
• ensuring that our management processes facilitate the social change agenda
• seeking regular input from relevant stakeholders on current developments in the sectors in which we work
• valuing and promoting diversity and striving to reflect this in all our practices.

2. Partnership building
We aim to work cooperatively with our partners to build a shared development vision, through:

• creating partnerships with other donors, projects and key stakeholders
• building regular interaction, dialogue and collaboration with project partners
• facilitating interaction between government, schools and service providers to enhance the change process
• developing funding methods that enable project partners to seek appropriate development solutions
• recognising and acknowledging the needs of our project partners
• contributing to initiatives that build on the existing strengths and knowledge of partners
• ensuring mutual understanding and acceptance of project purpose, indicators of progress, outcomes, monitoring and evaluation mechanisms.

3. Empowerment
We aim to empower our project partners and beneficiaries through:

• supporting initiatives for improved effectiveness and accountability of project partners
• encouraging and supporting good governance and management practices among project partners
• being sensitive to the power relationship embedded in our mandate
• promoting and ensuring an empowered relationship between project partners and beneficiaries.

4. Integrity
We demonstrate high levels of integrity by:

• providing accurate, accessible, relevant, user-friendly information
• being honest and sincere in our behaviour
• complying with ethical standards in the way in which we work
• dealing sensitively and responsibly with information
• being consistent in the administration of our Policy
• respecting our relationships with all external stakeholders.

5. Professional service delivery
We aim to be professional in our approach and to achieve maximum effectiveness in our work by:

• meeting the expected standards and objectives of our work, demonstrating organisational competence
• ensuring that our daily interactions with all stakeholders reflect the spirit of our values
• being accountable for all consequences of programmes: positive, negative or unintended
• researching and analysing new ideas
• keeping abreast of trends and developments in the sector
• actively striving to be at the forefront of new thinking and approaches being lateral, creative and innovative in our thinking and willing to consider new ways of doing things.