Development of a Rating Form to Evaluate Grant Applications to the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health

Abstract

Reliance on subjective grant proposal review methods leads private philanthropies to underfund mental health programs, even when foundations have mental health focuses. This article describes a private mental health foundation’s efforts to increase the objectivity of its proposal review process by developing a reliable, valid proposal rating form. Staff from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, an administrative unit of The University of Texas at Austin, developed the items for the grant proposal rating form (GPRF). Four interns, who had educational backgrounds equivalent to the foundation’s grant-making staff, used the GPRF to independently rate 20 grant proposals previously reviewed by the foundation. Internal consistency and interrater reliability were very good. It had good face and construct validity and moderate criterion validity. The GPRF’s psychometric properties are sufficient to recommend its use in the foundation’s review process and suggest private philanthropies’ grant proposal review processes can be made more objective and reliable without compromising validity.