[Kujalink Team]

Hi members😃

I came across this interesting article on The art of giving bad news

In this field, we receive bad news from funders and donors as often. Despite the ubiquity of rejection notices, people are awful at giving bad news. No one wants to do it, especially when it concerns huge grants. But how is one supposed to give bad news? Let me know your thoughts…

https://nonprofitaf.com/2013/01/the-art-of-giving-bad-news/

download-5.jpg 5 KB Image File — Click to view

• Copy Download Link

Discussion

[Lexi Mairone]

Thank you for sharing this! I believe delivering bad news is the most difficult part of being a funder. On my team at Humanity United, we have discussed how we give bad news as part of our commitment to transparent communication. When saying “no” or “no for now” to a grant seeker we try our best to be direct, communicating clearly that funding is not available and also communicating whether it might be a good fit in the future. We also give feedback about what we’d want to see in a future proposal that would make it a better fit. Sometimes, we are able to make introductions to other funders but that is not always easy.

Other bad news we may need to communicate include the end of a funding relationship, or a decrease in grant size from previous. These can be even more challenging.

I’d be really interested to hear how other funders deliver bad news, and what grant-seeking organizations value most when receiving bad news.