Richmond to pilot competitive grantmaking partners, aims to shorten contract cycle and add oversight

The Richmond City Council Organizational Development Standing Committee heard on Oct. 6 from Amy Popovich, deputy chief innovation officer for human services, about a proposed shift to a competitive grantmaking model that would engage external grantmaking partners to administer city-funded nonprofit contracts.

Popovich said the current internal process manages about 70 contracts across multiple departments and can take “a nearly eleventh month process from the time of the initial application to executing the contract and receiving those funds.” She said the city lacks a single full-time staff person dedicated to the grants function and that an external partner model would be more cost-effective than hiring the staff needed in-house.

The proposed framework would competitively select up to four subject-matter grantmaking organizations to administer awards in four focus areas — children and families, health, economic mobility, and arts and culture — while the mayor and Council would retain final budget authority. Popovich said the model would embed equity frameworks and technical assistance and would shorten the application-to-contract timeline from about 11 months to roughly three months (July–September) for the…