When program officers evaluate their funding portfolios, it’s natural to focus on grantee performance: Did organizations meet their goals? What outcomes did they achieve? Which approaches showed the most promise?
These are important questions, yet they tell only part of the story.
Sometimes the biggest barriers to impact have nothing to do with grantee organizations. Instead, the biggest barriers may be embedded in the structures surrounding the funding itself.
From application requirements and reporting expectations to payment terms and assumptions about what “capacity” should look like, If funders want to build stronger investment portfolios, they should identify not only how grantees perform, but how funding practices shape who can access resources and succeed.
Structural Funding Barriers Often Hide in Plain Sight
Most funders don’t set out to intentionally create barriers.
Yet, even the most well-intentioned funding practices can place disproportionate burdens on grantees with smaller staffs, less unrestricted funding, or stronger community roots than administrative infrastructure.
Common examples include:
- Lengthy applications that require significant unpaid labor
- Reimbursement-based grants that strain cash flow
- Reporting requirements that prioritize funder curiosity over grantee learning
- Short grant periods that limit long-term planning
- Strict deliverables that leave little room for adaptation
- Expectations that organizations have robust evaluation systems before receiving support
Individually, these practices may seem reasonable. Together, they can determine which organizations are able to participate fully.
Look Beyond Who Received Funding
For a maternal health project, I interviewed a subject matter expert regarding what funders should consider when investing in maternal health initiatives. The expert, a nonprofit executive director, mentioned that they abandoned a funding application because they didn’t have documents the funder required. In response, the funder sent a survey to the executive director, asking what influenced the executive director to not submit their application.
The number of applications that are abandoned is just as insightful as the number of submissions received.
Beyond asking “Who did we fund?“, a useful portfolio questions:
- Who applied and did not advance?
- Who decided not to apply?
- Who struggled to meet our requirements?
- Which organizations repeatedly receive support?
- Which communities remain underrepresented?
These questions help funders identify patterns that may not be visible when looking only at funded grantees.
Examine the Assumptions Embedded in Your Process
Every grantmaking process reflects assumptions about what organizations should be able to do.
For example:
- How much time should applicants have to complete an application?
- What level of financial reserves is considered “healthy”?
- What types of evidence count as credible?
- How quickly should outcomes emerge?
These assumptions often favor organizations with more administrative capacity, longer funding histories, and closer alignment with traditional philanthropic norms.
That doesn’t mean these expectations are wrong. It does mean they deserve scrutiny.
Distinguish Between Capacity Gaps and Structural Constraints
When a grantee struggles, it can be tempting to attribute challenges to organizational weakness.
However, a broader view asks whether the funding structure itself contributed to those challenges.
For example:
- Was the timeline realistic?
- Were reporting demands proportional to the grant size?
- Did the organization have enough unrestricted support?
- Did the grant allow room to adapt?
These questions move the conversation from “What’s wrong with this organization?” to “What conditions did we create?”
Use Evaluation to Identify Opportunities for Improvement
Portfolio evaluation should help funders identify where their own processes create unnecessary burdens for grantees.
That might include gathering feedback on:
- Application burden
- Reporting usefulness
- Communication quality
- Payment timelines
- Flexibility and responsiveness
These insights can reveal practical opportunities to strengthen both relationships and results.
What This Means for Program Officers
Program officers are often working within institutional constraints they did not create.
Even so, they are uniquely positioned to surface patterns, advocate for improvements, and help their organizations align funding practices with strategic goals.
Examining structural barriers helps program officers recognize whether funding designs influence performance just as much as grantee capacity does.
Key Takeaway
Sometimes the most meaningful insights come from asking not whether organizations succeeded despite the funding process, but how the funding process itself helped or hindered their success.
To build a strong funding portfolio, look beyond grantee outcomes and identify the structural barriers embedded in their own processes. When funders identify and address these barriers, they create stronger portfolios, better partnerships, and more equitable outcomes.
Raise Your Voice: What aspects of the grantmaking process are creating barriers for the organizations you most want to support? Share in the comments section below.
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