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Your Feedback Is Shaping Our Grant Application Process

In recent years, Interact for Health has moved towards a trust-based philanthropy approach to reduce the time and resource burdens for applicants and recipients of our grants.

As part of this philosophy, all applicants have the option to give feedback on our application process. From the moment an RFP is released, to receiving feedback after award decisions have been made, we want to hear what is working and what is not.

In 2025, we received feedback from over 40% of our applicants, with many noting the specifics of what is and isn’t working well. We hear you, and we appreciate our partners giving us their time to help improve our process.

Areas of improvement that you identified:

• Increasing character counts and text formatting for responses
• Allowing for more accessibility in submissions
• Providing scoring rubrics and opportunities to talk to Interact staff before applying
• Clarifying information around fiscal sponsors
• Providing resources for filling out applications/navigating the grants portal (Foundant)

What we’re changing:

• Improving consistency in our RFP webinars, including resource walkthroughs, information regarding fiscal sponsors, and scoring rubrics for all grants
• Increasing visibility of our PDF/Word version of application questions to help applicants draft responses offline by including it not only on our open funding page, but also at the beginning of each application in the grants portal (Foundant)
• Expand awareness on our website and external communications of our virtual and in-person community office hours for each RFP
• Make our applicant tutorial page more visible

We’ve received feedback around character limits and text formatting in our application and have made adjustments where possible. We value brevity in applications because we want to respect our applicants’ time. Character limits allow organizations to allocate more time to their programs doing the work that truly catalyzes positive change in our communities. Moving forward, character limits will also be addressed in the RFP webinar to help address issues before applicants begin drafting their submission.

In addition, we want to note that if modifications are needed to make this application accessible, please reach out to the RFP’s program manager or Kristine Niergarth, Director of Grants Management, at kniergarth@interactforhealth.org for accessibility accommodations.

As we continue our work toward centering relationships with our grantee partners, we welcome your thoughts. What could we do better in our application process or our work? What changes—big or small—would make our partnership with you feel more transparent, accessible, or rooted in trust? Where do you still experience friction, confusion, or unnecessary burden when applying for funding from us?

Feel free to share your thoughts with us at healthwatch@interactforhealth.org or directly with our staff.

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