Grants offer funding for individuals, groups, and enterprises that otherwise can’t reach certain personal or professional heights without generosity and intervention. What are the underlying reasons that organizations give grants, other than the ones we immediately think of?
At the core of awarding grants are three underlying principles detailed below:
1. Equity
Equity is the quality of being fair and impartial. Equity is not a built-in aspect of society or in economics specifically, which results in the concerted efforts of everyone from individuals to foundations to non-profit entities and more investing in grant creation to offer opportunities for people at an economic disadvantage to participate in things ranging from education to the arts, and more.
Often, you may hear a reductive question that puts equality of opportunity and equality of outcome against each other along political party lines, but chances are you won’t hear the great things that happen when a grant has given someone an equitable opportunity to participate in something that otherwise was out of their reach.
2. Encouragement
Being awarded a grant is a lot like the adjacent success of being awarded a scholarship or fellowship in higher education. Receiving the grant instills a sense of confidence and functions as a stepping-stone to achievement, in addition to the financial stepping-later that it ultimately is.
Because of the nature of our society and its economic structure that largely excludes certain financial classes from things like education and participation in arts and research, when someone invests in you financially, it holds a unique power as a catalyst for further development.
3. Innovation
Sometimes the person who is least expected to come up with a solution to a problem is the precise person for the job, and this is oftentimes the case when it comes to people and organizations who receive grants, whether it be for education, research, art, media, or something entirely different.
There is a stagnancy that is often best addressed by giving people the funding and tools to enter into an arena they otherwise were unable to access, in order to offer an alternative perspective that quite often results in the precise innovation needed to solve a problem.
While awarding grants is a widely practiced act of professional generosity, it should go without saying that it isn’t simply the result of a generous organization writing a check and handing it to someone. A great deal of time, effort, organization, and planning goes into not only the awarding of grants, but into their creation and management.
With new technology, including the investment in a grants management system that can help organizations streamline their rewarding process, there is the potential for even more grant awarding to result, which means that those looking to apply for grants have a better chance at receiving one.
When organizations award grants, it means that they believe in what you are doing and that it is important enough for them to put their own time, effort, and money into your future endeavors.
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