What Does a Program Officer Do?
In this philanthropy job series I’ll cover that a program officer does. When I was a fundraiser and wanted to work in philanthropy, I thought that program officer’s had 5-10 organizations that they worked with over a number of years. I thought I’d learn about organizations inside and out and help them make the world a better place. What really happened is that I had more than a hundred organizations (current grantees, applicants, former organizations, and organizations doing similar work) that I needed to understand on the most basic level. Most of my time was spent telling great people and organizations that we would not be funding them and managing the avalanche of paperwork that followed those that we could fund. All of that being said, I think being a program officer is one of the most exciting and fulfilling jobs in the social sector. There are three main phases of work for the program officer: Eyes & Ears, Brain & Heart, and Hands & Feet.
Eyes & Ears: This phase of work is filled with spending time in your community to develop relationships, doing informational calls with prospective grantees, and identifying organizations to encourage to apply during the grant process. The amount of time that you spend doing these things varies widely depending on your foundation. Some foundations are so understaffed that they don’t do this type of outreach. Other foundations may spend years on this type of work as they develop a grantmaking program.
Brain & Heart: This phase is where the big paperwork and analysis begins. In this phase you receive letters of inquiry and applications (depending on the foundation and the narrowness of its guidelines this could be a few dozen or hundreds of applications). Your role is to determine if the applications fit the guidelines and if the organization has the capacity to undertake the work that they have described. Later in the process you might do site visits, outside research, or interviews with community stakeholders. You will then write up a summary of the applications to the foundation’s board. In this phase you will give a lot of bad news. Many organizations won’t get funding and a good program officer learns how to give that bad news in a way that honors the work of the nonprofit and offers suggestion to improve the program or find a foundation where the work is a better fit.
Hands & Feet: This part of the work is about being an ambassador for that organization to your board and in the community. You are their voice in the board room (either verbally or written) and you are the person that needs to be able to answer any questions that the board has. If the organization is funded, you communicate any expectations that your foundation has (reports, outcomes, publicity) and help the organization navigate grant agreements, evaluation frameworks, or required convenings that your foundation hosts. You can also connect those grantees with colleagues at other foundations that may be interested in their work.
I lay out this description of a program officer’s job not because I feel like this is how the grantee/grantor relationship should be but because I want you to know what you are getting into if you pursue a career in philanthropy. There is a lot of work to be done to reduce the amount of paperwork in foundations, increase foundation’s transparency and better train program officers and if you become a foundation staff member, I hope that you will take on those causes as seriously as you take on evaluating the work of nonprofits.
If you work as a program officer, what parts of your job do you love, which do you hate?
January 9th, 2012 at 7:34 am
I love your categorization of the Program Officer’s job, Trista. Another note about how those roles play out, which might be assumed, but still bears mentioning I think: in my role as Program Director at a communitiy foundation, I could find myself filling all three roles in a single day. I manage 20-25 grant programs, many of which are running simultaneously, so in the morning I might attend a community planning meeting and share input about the Foundation’s priorities, over lunch I might do a site visit, in the afternoon I might process a couple of stacks of applications and follow-up reports, and at the end of the day, we may have a Board meeting where I present our current slate of recommended grantees. So in my world, the roles overlap more often than not. It’s a constant shuffle of the “hats”. Community foundations are different from private foundations in that their focus is much broader, and, except for the really large CF’s, usually mostly reactive.
The role I love most is Eyes & Ears. One of our few proactive grantmaking initiatives a Neighborhood Capacity Building program. It’s really gratifying for me to meet with neighborhood associations and community members to help explain our goals and find ways that we can help them meet their own.
Not surprisingly, the most tedious part of a program officer’s job (in my opinion) is the mountain of paperwork…but it’s of our own making! We’re transitioning to an all-online system this year, which will undoubtedly reduce the paperwork, and it is also forcing us to examine all of our requirements (i.e. we no longer need to ask applicants to supply their IRS Determination Letter because Guidestar verifies their status for us automatically), which is a very good thing. No more paper!
Finally- I’d like to comment on the idea of a program officer’s role in terms of helping grantees… I believe there is a very fine line between offering support & insight and being inappropriately overbearing. Program officers and other foundation staff must remember the realities of the power dynamic in every grantee relationship, and be conscious of their influence. They should acknowledge their privilege, and make sure they don’t take advantage of the willingness of the grantee to do whatever they suggest. In my experience, one of a program officer’s most important attributes is humility.
Keep up the great work, Trista!
January 12th, 2012 at 7:43 am
Trista, Great post! Thanks for this insight. As someone who may aspire to become a program officer or as someone who works along site an officer, your post offers a thorough account which can help anyone understand the “full body” of work. And as Carolynn points out, the many hats s/he adorns every day!
I’m curious if you have (or anyone you have come across in your travels has) taken the phases of work you described and overlayed web 2.0 philosophies to connect a few dots. To demonstrate how technology has evolved these roles in the past five to 10 years.
Thanks again for sharing this post.