Fight Grant Application Fraud
Given the stiff competition for grant funding and the amount of money at stake, the field of grant proposal writing is, unfortunately, fertile ground for fraud. When someone blows the whistle and the lawsuit flies, the person who wrote the grant proposal is in the line of fire. And the organization that submitted the proposal is likewise in hot water.
Two Harvard University-affiliated teaching hospitals and a prominent Alzheimer’s disease researcher were accused of using falsified data to obtain a $12 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, resulting in a lawsuit in 2002.
In June 2011, a California jury found a grant proposal consultant guilty of fraud, forgery, and making false statements. The charges involved a 2007 grant proposal she wrote and submitted for a consortium of schools to the 21st Century Community Learning Center grant program. After the $35 million grant was awarded, one of the participating schools found that the proposal submitted was “materially different” from the copy it had received from the school that served as the consortium’s applicant. Among other things, memos of understanding had been altered and signatures had been forged.
Stories such as these appear in the news several times a year — falsification of data, forgery, plagiarism, lies. The time and money involved on both sides of the lawsuits are substantial, and the work to rebuild confidence in an organization and its professionals is time-consuming and not always successful. While funders must find more effective ways of spotting grant fraud, grant-seeking organizations must also step up. When your organization submits a grant proposal for consideration, the organization’s credibility and well-being are on the line.
Being accused of fraud will do long-term damage to your organization’s ability to secure grants and contributions.
While policies and procedures aren’t an ironclad defense against fraud, they’re definitely a starting point. Procedures explain and illustrate how policies will be implemented. If your organization hasn’t tackled this in a well-considered, systematic way, now is the time.
To guard against fraudulent grant proposals, here are some ideas to consider when developing or reviewing your organization’s policies and procedures.
* Appoint someone to lead each grant development project: The leader should keep the work on track, oversee data gathering, verify documentation, and communicate with partner organizations and administrators. Make the imperative of enforcing ethical practices unequivocal and ensure that the leader has immediate access to top-level administrators.
* Verify Data: Almost all grant proposals include source citations, and some include extensive footnotes, a bibliography, or complicated scientific data. Require people working on proposals to provide full citations and documentation notes to the project leader.
Require the project leader to review and verify citations and information sources. If the proposal includes data the project leader isn’t qualified to verify (i.e., scientific data), the lead administrator should be alerted and arrange for a competent review.
This is not as difficult as it might sound. When collecting data and documentation, staff members simply need to keep decent records. Information from an interview should be backed up by notes, for example. The results of a data analysis should be backed up by working papers. When citations and documentation are sufficient, verifying can often be done quickly.
* Internal, Arm’s-Length Ethics Review: Before the lead administrator signs government grant application documents, or before a grant is submitted to a foundation or corporation, require an internal organizational review that focuses on accuracy and ethics. This check can be quickly accomplished for most proposals. However, for those that are especially complicated, or for research proposals that include dense scientific data, the reviews won’t be so simple. Working this type of review into the proposal development timeline, however, can save a lot of trouble in the long run.
* Monitor Consultants: Get the consultant’s work in time to review it thoroughly and address questions. Then submit the proposal yourself. If you do allow a consultant to submit a proposal on behalf of your organization, always read the work and check the facts first.
Whether your organization is a large, multifaceted university or a small family service center, guarding against fraud in grant proposals is a responsibility of good management. Take it seriously and avoid an “it can’t happen to us” approach–because it can.
Learn more about writing winning grants by attending the REVENUE: Grant Writing & Evaluation class on Monday, May 22 at 5:30 pm as part of the Sunshine Certificate in Nonprofit Management.
Source: The NonProfit Times. The NonProfit Times has been a preferred partner since 1996 when John Mcllagquhan, publisher, was a keynote speaker at the Fifth Annual Nonprofit Conference. The NonProfit Times has published information about the Florida Association of Nonprofits in its monthly national publication.
https://thenonprofittimes.com/npt_articles/grants-guarding-against-application-fraud/
by Maria Semple on December 31st, 2012
Barbara Floersch, director of The Grantsmanship Center in Los Angeles, Calif., has more than 35 years of experience in nonprofit management, proposal writing, grants administration, and nonprofit consulting. Her email is Barbara@tgci.com and the website is www.tgci.com