Inquiry Team Guide

Overview

Inquiry Teams drive the process of grant project identification and selection. In the course of this work, they drive significant learning for Full Circle members. Inquiry Teams operate autonomously and have great freedom to define their own way of working, but they are accountable for deliverables at several points in the process. This helps to ensure that the process moves forward at a suitable pace and provides the organization with an opportunity to evaluate the effectiveness of each team's work.

The key organizational function of Inquiry Teams is to identify the grantees (and, more specifically, the grant projects) that Full Circle Fund supports. Such support is not automatic; Inquiry Teams' recommendations are reviewed by the membership of the Impact Circle at large, which votes on them. In the end, grants endorsed by a vote of the Impact Circle are approved or rejected by the Board of Full Circle Fund.

Goals for each Grant Cycle Inquiry Team

• Successfully drive learning about an impact area of interest to the team.
• At the conclusion of the process, successfully form a grant project team that meets Full Circle Fund grant criteria and that secures the support of the full Impact Circle.
• Team members are appropriately engaged and learning throughout the process.
• All team members feel encouraged to participate without feeling pressured beyond their personal motivation (balance "no guilt" with "no flaking"). Specifically, respect the principle that a timely "no" is better for all concerned than a passive-aggressive "yes"
• Meetings are well-prepared and high-productivity, featuring defined agendas and written notes esp. for the benefit of those not present.
• Potential grantees are treated in a manner consistent with our values of professionalism and focus.
• Risks and issues that could interfere with accomplishment of these goals are identified and addressed.

Summary of grant cycle roles:

Grant Inquiry Team Leader:
Inquiry Team Leaders drive the Inquiry process for their team. These individuals lead a team through a learning process that involves identifying options for driving change, identifying potential partner organizations and developing viable grant project options. The Inquiry Team Leader is also the conduit between his or her team and the Grant Cycle Director.

Grant Cycle Director:
Your go-to person for all your needs during the Inquiry process. The Grant Cycle Director will drive the overall inquiry process through the successful selection of grant projects and formation of grant project teams. The Grant Cycle Director also identifies risks during the process and identifies options to address them.

Circle Chair:
The guru of the process and a safe keeper of Full Circle's good name.

Grant Cycle Advisors:
Experienced Full Circle Fund members or alums who can provide advice and assistance (but who cannot actively engage in the work of the inquiry team). Our intent is for each inquiry team to have an Advisor. This position is to be recruited by the Grant Cycle Director and communicated to Inquiry Team Leads

Advice for Inquiry Teams

The General Flow...

In general, most Inquiry Teams tend to approach their work by narrowing in on it:

• Choose a general area of impact (utilizing the framework in the Impact Guide)
• Narrow the inquiry field, paying close attention to the interests and gut instincts of the team members. (This is a volunteer-driven group. It only works if members are motivated.)
• Formulate questions - What do you want to know in order to make good decisions about forming grant projects?
• Divide up the work of seeking answers to the questions. Utilize both web resources (e.g. research) and human resources (e.g. phone or in-person interviews with experts) to develop team knowledge.
• Identify organizations of interest (nominees). Develop a list of organizations a Full Circle project team might work with to have a suitable impact in the area of the Inquiry Team's focus. (This is easier than it sounds, if you start asking around.)
• Narrow the nomination field, choosing at most two organizations to present as finalists with well-scoped and defined project concepts. Each finalist must be helped through the process in a hands-on way by a member of your Inquiry Team.
• For each finalist recommended to the circle at large, define a project team that could successfully drive the identified work.

Some Specific Best Practices

• Meet weekly, at least at first.
  If you are organized about your process and clear about your expectations of one another, many of these meetings can be done by phone and can be brief.
• Create a Google Group for team communication.
  Send all emails to the group alias rather than to individuals. This becomes an ad-hoc team history, and it helps enormously for people who join a team mid-process. See the Full Circle Fund Members Only Section for instructions.
• Keep an eye on your deliverables.
  The grant cycle is intentionally compressed. The main meetings are completion milestones for your inquiry team work. If your team is progressing on schedule, it will be obvious in these meetings. Members' eventual willingness to back the investments you recommend will be influenced by their confidence in your team's work.
• Document your work.
  If possible, it helps for one member of the team to sign up as team historian / documentarian / secretary. This role is not always played by the team lead.
• Get help when you need it.
  Need advice (or a sounding board)? Call your Advisor, or the Grant Cycle Director. Need more team members to get your work done successfully? Recruit them! Tell the Impact Circle Chair what skills your team is lacking; this can help spur productive recruiting.
• Use Full Circle Fund Templates
  It is to your advantage for Impact Circle members to imagine your ideas as fitting in with Full Circle's work; adopting the look and feel of Full Circle Fund, helps get you there. It also cuts down on formatting problems when we have to combine documents or presentations! Find templates here.

Grant Cycle Meetings (Milestones!)

These meetings an important part of the inquiry process for Inquiry Teams and an important part of the decision process for the Impact Circle at large. It is in the interest of every inquiry team to be well-presented at these meetings, because ultimately the Education Circle will choose grant projects in part based on its assessment of the capabilities of the team making the proposal.

Kickoff Meeting - Form Inquiry Teams

At this meeting, Inquiry Teams will be defined based on clusters of interest and energy among the members present. The new inquiry teams will make some minor progress "live" at this meeting, but mostly will set the stage for the work ahead.

Preliminary Findings and Refined Focus

Each inquiry group will present initial findings to the group at this meeting. By this meeting it is expected that Inquiry Teams will have refined their focus and will be able to present a lucid description of the questions they are pursuing (and how they are already doing so.) What are you reading to develop team knowledge? Where are you getting advice? It is not expected that each group will have a well-baked list of potential grantees at this point. Part of the purpose of the meeting will be for the group at large to provide feedback and advice in this area.

Nominations Meeting

Each Inquiry Team presents its final list of possible grantees for feedback from the Impact Circle at large. At this point it is not expected that projects have been defined. It is expected that there be no more than four finalists at this point. This is a working meeting.

Proposals by Finalists

All the finalist candidate organizations present their proposals on one evening (along with the Full Circle sponsor/advocate, which will be a member of the Inquiry Team). It is expected that the Full Circle Fund members will work with final candidate organizations to prepare these proposals, including a lot of the "heavy lifting" of preparing the documents. Due to highly diligent and effective haranguing by the Grant Cycle Director, a document with a specified structure and format detailing each proposal is sent out at least a full weekend before the meeting for pre-reading. (The Grant Cycle Director may determine that a web-based solution for document presentation is preferable.) At the meeting, there will not be time for Q&A, so we will utilize the "question blast" format - questions from the Impact Circle will be asked and recorded, but not answered. Answers to the questions will be developed after the meeting and shared either in written form or in a recorded voice conference. Members are encouraged to take notes, specifically considering each grant project candidate with Full Circle Fund's grant criteria in mind.

Decision Meeting

At this meeting, Full Circle member advocates will recap the proposals, identifying the leads and team members that have committed to work on the project if approved. (A member leader and at least two additional committed members is a prerequisite for taking any proposal to ballot.) Projects will be put to secret ballot, and members will be encouraged to vote "no" without guilt if they think a project is ill-conceived for any reason. Allocation of dollars to grant projects is the Board's responsibility. The Chair, with advice and counsel from the Grant Cycle Director and the newly identified Project Leads, crafts a balanced budget to recommend to the Board for swift action.