Позитивные изменения, Том 3 №1, 2023. Positive changes. Volume 3, Issue 1 (2023)

The goal of the contest is to identify and support local initiatives that address the urgent social problems faced by families and children and offer solutions consistent with the activities of the Foundation.

Objectives of the grant competition:

• Identifying active specialists, setting up and developing partner communications in the field of childhood.

• Improving the competencies of social design, project management and project evaluation specialists.

• Developing technologies to improve the well-being of children, families with children, and specialists in the field of childhood.

RELEVANCE OF THE GRANT COMPETITION

Different stakeholders find the contest relevant for different reasons. For example, winning the competition is a growth driver for the grantee organizations, as well as for the overall development of the culture of philanthropy, evaluation and involvement of service recipients in management processes.

Specialists involved in the projects get new opportunities for self-realization, career growth, development of competencies and network of professional contacts. Winning projects enable them to test hypotheses and practice innovative social mechanisms.

The significance of the contest for The Road Home Foundation grows each year.

The contest has a serious impact on the non-profit sector in the regions where the company operates. First, the winners find new ways to address pressing social problems, thereby adding to the Foundation’s portfolio of practices. Second, participating in the competition requires embracing the Foundation’s principles and values, which promotes evaluation, evidence-based approach, subject-to-subject approach, and a culture of philanthropy in the social sphere. Third, participating in the project implementation creates a unified approach and allows professionals to act in concert in providing assistance to beneficiaries (primarily families with children). Fourth, the competition program helps build the proper image of the Foundation and the company, raising the awareness among key stakeholders.

The Foundation conducts applied research, to discover what issues such families are most concerned about and to identify the key areas of focus and supports best practices for helping families and children.

The stakeholders of the competition are:

• The donor (Severstal): allocates funds for organizing and conducting the contest and implementing the winning projects; a company representative is a member of the jury for the contest. High influence.

• The Foundation team: organizes and conducts the contest; supports the winning projects. High influence.

• Winning project teams: develop and implement projects. Low influence.

• Beneficiaries: participate directly in the projects, evaluate the projects. Medium influence.

• Partner organizations: support the implementation of winning projects, provide human and material resources. Medium influence.

WHO MAKES THE ROAD HOME FOUNDATION GRANT COMPETITION

The competition team can be divided into three groups, each participant having a different role and function.

1. Administrative team:

• the director of the Foundation is the decision-maker;

• the deputy director of the Foundation organizes expert review of the applications;

• the head of the resource and methodological center of the Foundation manages the competition, consults all participants;

• the head of the media department of the Foundation provides information support;

• the economist and methodologists of the Foundation provide consultations on drafting the budget and applications.

The winners find new ways to address pressing social problems, thereby adding to the Foundation’s portfolio of practices. Participating in the competition requires embracing the Foundation’s principles and values, which promotes evaluation, evidence-based approach.

2. Joint implementing team:

• the competition committee – in-house and third-party experts in the Foundation’s areas of activity, experts in the field of social design, applied and evaluative research, following evidence-based approach in evaluating the results of social practices;

• the competition council – a collective body created specifically to make the final decision determining the competition winners;

• programmers – maintenance of the contest website[55 - The Road Home Charitable Foundation. (2023). 2023 social projects competition of the Road Home Charitable Foundation. Retrieved from: https://socialprojects.dorogakdomu.ru/. (accessed: 06.03.2023).].

3. Partners:

• media in the territories covered by the competition – information coverage of the competition and its results;

• city administrations and specialized departments in the contest territories – engaging grantees, developing a pool of urgent problems that require project ideas, and providing partner support to the winning projects;

• NGO resource centers in the contest territories – engaging grantees, assisting in executing applications and implementing the winning projects.

WHO EVALUATES APPLICATIONS AND HOW

The projects eligible for the competition last from 6 to 36 months. Regardless of the topic, duration, amount of funding, territory of implementation and size of the project team, each winning project must produce measurable positive change for the stated target groups. This is the key condition for obtaining funding.

The competition committee evaluates all applications received by the following criteria:

1. The project’s compliance with the goals and conditions of the competition.

2. The project’s relevance and significance for solving the problems of the target group.

3. Feasibility, logical coherence and the ability of the planned actions to achieve a progress towards the project goal.

4. Specific and achievable results planned.

5. Replicability of the project (the possibility of applying the technologies of the project in other organizations, in other territories).

6. The ability of the project team to achieve the project goal.

7. Feasibility of the project budget and alignment of the planned costs with the expected results.

SOCIAL RESULTS OF THE ROAD HOME FOUNDATION’S GRANT COMPETITION

Implementing the projects supported by the Foundation helps improve the quality of life for the project beneficiaries (children, families with children, and child welfare specialists) and increases the number of organizations and specialists providing quality services to beneficiaries. Project specialists help create safe living and developmentally favorable conditions for children in families, to form or strengthen positive personal and socially significant changes in minors, to improve the socio-psychological and parental competences in child-rearing and building harmonious parent-child relationships, and to improve the professionalism of child welfare specialists.

In 2022, more than 1,700 people received assistance from the winning projects; in 2021, the number of beneficiaries was 3,800; and in 2020 – more than 1,700 people.

EFFECTS OF THE GRANT COMPETITION ON THE IMAGE OF THE ROAD HOME CHARITY FOUNDATION

Regular grant competitions help raise awareness about, The Road Home, within the professional community, while also building the Foundation’s expertise, including invitations to share experience and implement partnership projects.

As it follows from the report “Assessment of Interaction with the Key Stakeholders of The Road Home Charitable Foundation’s programs in 2021”, “eight out of ten partners of the Charity Foundation, the Foundation’s specialists and program specialists say that they are well informed about the activities of the Foundation, are engaged in these activities (the foundation has a total of 18 employees, with more than 250 specialists implementing projects in the 7 regions covered by its programs. The sentence above refers to these specialists, who are not directly employed by the Foundation – ed.) 97 % of the Foundation’s partners approve of its activities. More than 80 % of the partners say that since they began working with the Foundation’s program specialists, there have been positive changes in the partners’ work (institutions and other NGOs working with families and children), and the Foundation’s specialists are providing them with exactly the help they need.