Effective grantmaking is key to producing the product line of unique and timely information that enables the foundation to stimulate efforts toward a high performance health system. Maintaining a high quality grants portfolio —selecting able grantees capable of carrying out complicated and often risky projects —is therefore the sine qua non for the foundation's strategy. Annual reviews of completed Board-level grants demonstrate the Fund's strong and consistent record of generating successful grants portfolios: cumulatively, 85 percent of Board-level projects have met or exceeded expectations, compared with the goal of 80 percent.
(17)Staff's function of adding value to the work of grantees is expected to have large payoffs, especially in ensuring effective project design and communication of results. Confidential surveys of grantees in 2002 and 2006 show that the Fund's staff is achieving its value-added function; with a significant boost in professional staff resources in the early 2000s and with these individuals' growing adeptness at the art of grantmaking, this should continue to be the case. Of recently surveyed grantees, 86 percent described Fund staff contributions to their work as "useful" to "extremely useful."
Almost as important as selecting able grantees and assisting them in producing high quality work accessible to policy audiences is ensuring timely completion of commissioned work. Fund program officers and grants management staff work with grantees to achieve ambitious schedules for project deliverables, but given the number of contingencies that can impinge on the execution of projects (e.g., data availability, Institutional Review Board approvals, the pace of study and control group enrollments, government cooperation, and unanticipated methodological hurdles), delays often occur. The project on-time completion metric indicates a need for continuing staff vigilance regarding the progress of many projects.
