The process will not be hyper-competitive; we believe all food policy councils have the potential for doing great things with unrestricted financial support. This takes some of the pressure off the evaluation process.
We will not review all applications, but will instead draw applications at random and check them against Fund values and criteria lifted up by stakeholders. The Fund will use diverse selection committees and scoring rubrics to ensure consistency and fairness in checking applications for a good enough fit to ensure flow and alignment.
We are also looking for diversity across the cohort, and that will be a factor in whether a group is selected as a finalist.
The IAC will ask finalists to participate in group storytelling sessions with their members so that we can better discover how great these groups are, while verifying that what was in the application shows up in how the group works. The Fund will provide a skilled facilitator to elicit these stories, which will be recorded so all IAC members can review.
Afterwards, the IAC will be asked for consent to proceed with this slate of finalists as grantees. The IAC has experience using a consent-based decision-making process which will ensure concerns are heard.