Buncombe County committee forwards recommended grant slate, approves staff to adjust partial awards
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Summary
The Buncombe County Strategic Partnerships grant review committee approved a recommended funding slate and asked staff to work with applicants on partial-award budgets where necessary; members debated whether organizational reserves should affect scoring, flagging one mobile health unit as an outlier.
The Buncombe County Strategic Partnerships grant review committee voted unanimously to forward its recommended slate of grant awards to the county manager’s budget office after a lengthy discussion over scoring rules and whether some large organizations should receive full awards.
The committee chair, Bridal Machandra, opened the meeting’s substantive session by asking staff to display the scoring spreadsheet and walk members through the recommended portfolio. Angeline Dachman, the committee’s grants manager, explained the table shows each applicant’s requested amount, overall reviewer score and the staff recommended funding level and said the on-screen slate represented a model the committee could accept or adjust.
Why it matters: the committee’s recommendation will be incorporated into the county manager’s recommended budget. The allocation choices determine which local nonprofits receive Buncombe County funds for the coming fiscal year and which projects—ranging from food programs to mobile health services—move forward.
Committee members spent the bulk of the meeting debating how to treat applications from organizations with substantial organizational reserves. “I voted no for them because there’s so many other worthy projects that I felt… you can do a lot of good with a lot less,” said Anne Flynn, who identified herself as a committee member and raised specific concerns about a recommended award for an Appalachian-area mobile health unit. Flynn cited the applicant’s publicly posted financial figures—“they’ve got over $4,000,000 in cash on hand,” she said—and argued the committee should scrutinize whether that applicant needed the full award when smaller groups serve more people per dollar.
Other reviewers pushed back that the scoring rubric was meant to evaluate the proposed project, not an organization’s entire balance sheet; several members said past-year surpluses can be misleading if a nonprofit’s finances changed in the current year. Members discussed requiring clearer, bottoms-up budgets in future rounds and improving application guidance—such as avoiding unexplained abbreviations and asking applicants to list recent accomplishments—to reduce a bias toward professionally produced proposals.
After considering options, including trimming the mobile unit award by an amount discussed in the meeting to make room for several projects close to the funding line, the committee adopted a motion to forward the staff-recommended slate and directed staff to work with applicants to revise budgets if the committee’s partial-award approach required it. “I move that we bring this back,” said Angeline Dachman before members seconded the motion and approved it without dissent.
Staff said the committee’s recommendation will be presented to the county budget office and incorporated into the county manager’s recommended budget; that manager’s budget will be presented to the Buncombe County Board of Commissioners in May. Committee members also asked staff to return in June with a short package of process-improvement recommendations and to manage onboarding for incoming members when terms expire on June 30.
The committee adjourned and set its next meeting for June 4.
