The 2022-2023 Public Submission Window (PSW) is officially closed! A record number of nonprofits applied to be considered by student grantmakers. 183 organizations submitted 974 applications, a 35% increase from the previous school year.
So, what happens after an application is submitted? Great question! Each student group has different needs, depending on the number of participants and the setting. When CommuniCare staff visits in the fall to help with some of the starting tasks, they also assess how many applications a group has the bandwidth to thoughtfully review.
Once all the apps are in and the totals are tallied, we look at how many orgs applied to each group. Fortunately, many groups are right in the sweet spot and no action is required. If a group receives a very low number of applications (because they selected a service area less frequently addressed by the nonprofit community) our team does some additional outreach to wrangle a few last-minute applications. For groups that receive too many applications, the support process is more involved.
What is this process? Glad you asked! We create a “short list” of applications based on mission statement alignment and the total number of applications an organization has submitted overall. If a nonprofit submits more than five applications, one or more may not end up on a short list. We always tell students about this process, provide the names of all the orgs that applied to them, and offer to make any or all of the additional applications available to them.
We do our best to make sure that no org has a runaway advantage over any others when making our short lists. We also pay special attention to orgs that have submitted tailored applications for specific programs so that each program will get equal attention.