Nonprofit Diaries
The stories that don't make the newsletter.
Nonprofit Diaries
"The grant experience nightmare..." with Jacob Adams
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'Twas the grant with so many strings it might as well been a puppet show. Jacob shares the laundry list of conditions he was required to meet... and how he would revamp the grant reporting process to show REAL impact, not just numbers on a page.
Learn about Inner Spark Learning Lab's innovative approach to education here 👉 https://www.innersparklab.org/
Got your own story to tell? Submit a diary entry to be featured on the podcast 👉 https://bit.ly/4tXt0d6
Connect with our community on LinkedIn 👉 https://www.linkedin.com/company/nonprofit-diaries/
Hi everyone, welcome to the Nonprofit Diaries, where we share the stories that don't make the newsletter. I'm your host, Kimberly Bottom, and this week's guest is an accomplished nonprofit professional who I absolutely ambushed on LinkedIn. His content about being like an ethical and accountable leader was just so insightful that I reached out to him. I scheduled a call and just point blank asked him to come on the podcast, which um I'm so thankful he's a kind human, and he agreed. So everyone, please welcome seasoned educator, thought leader, and the founder and executive director of the Inner Spark Learning Lab, Jacob Adams. Jacob, thank you for being here.
SPEAKER_01Thank you for the invite. Yeah, I mean, um, I was excited when you reached out, so I'm definitely excited to chat.
SPEAKER_00Well, thank you for being a kind human. I know with LinkedIn sometimes nowadays we're like, is this a robot? And I swear I'm not. Like, I just find cool people online. I'm like, hi, do you want to be my friend? So thank you for being my friend.
SPEAKER_01No, for sure. I definitely had to do a little back end research.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, totally fair. That's fine. You can absolutely do the profile creep. It's expected. I would hope that you do. So, anyway, before we jump into your diary entry, I want everybody on the podcast to know all about InnerSpark Learning Lab. So tell me about it. What prompted you to start this incredible nonprofit?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. Uh so InnerSpark Learning Lab, uh, like to say our mission is to um transform uh education from the inside out by making schools a place that kids want to be. Um, I feel like fundamentally, uh, you know, schools should be a place where we like like to learn at a minimum, let alone, you know, I feel like we should love to learn there. Uh, but for most kids right now, like out of all the places they spend a substantial amount of time, like the most, they're the most dissatisfied with school. Um, you know, I saw that firsthand as a first grade teacher in Brownsville, Brooklyn. I was teaching at a school where like on paper, you would think it was one of the like quote unquote best schools in the state in terms of test scores, but place ran like a prison. You know, kids had to sit with their hands together, there was no recess, they couldn't talk at lunch. Um, like everything was so controlled. I think with the in education, we're not even asking the right questions because the schools that are often deemed as like models of success are not schools that are creating people that uh, you know, kids who know who they are, who know what they care about, and feel like they could use what they're learning to make themselves and make their community um, you know, the people in the places that they wanted to be.
SPEAKER_00What a great reason to just say, I don't see the solution, I'm gonna make it. So props to you for that. Um love what you're doing. Love that you've been at this almost 10 years, right?
SPEAKER_01It's been a minute. I did not have any of this gray hair then, but no, I do I didn't have hair then though, so at least I didn't have, you know, I couldn't lose that. It was already gone.
SPEAKER_00Well, the hundreds, if not thousands, of students that you have benefited, that little bit of gray hair is just an ode to them. That's like a reminder of what you've done. So I think that it's uh it's a good thing that you look in the mirror and you say, Yeah, I did that.
SPEAKER_01So I thank you. I like it.
SPEAKER_00Very nice. All right, let's set the stage for your diary entry because I know that one of the revenue streams that you guys have for InnerSpark is grant funding, but you recently discovered that not every grant is created equal. Is that right?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so this is a few years ago at this point. Um it's a grant through LA County, I think, County City, one of the two. It's can get confusing out here. Um, but at the time, a relatively like large grant for us, and it was like a three-year grant. And they were saying apply for all of them that you feel like you're um eligible for. So one I I I asked for the most in the budget, like the max, maybe like 750k, and the budget reflected it. And then the other one, I asked for a smaller amount, like 250, I think, over three years. Um, and that's all based off strategy, based off what they told us. So the way it all started, even then, when we found out that we we got the smaller grant, which was cool, um, but they never say anything about the big one. So when I talked to what my what they call over there, a grant advocate, which is the opposite of what they should call them, um like they are not advocating, for me at least. Uh and I remember asking her, like, yo, what's up? When are we gonna hear back about the other grant? And she was like, Oh, you can't get two. So from the very she's like, Yeah, you can only get one. So from the very beginning, I was frustrated because had I known that, I wouldn't have even we I wouldn't have like used that strategy uh when applying, but you know, that was just the beginning.
SPEAKER_00Right, only apply for the bigger one, right?
SPEAKER_01Right, exactly.
SPEAKER_00Right. Oh, that's a bummer.
SPEAKER_01Exactly. Yeah, so then after we got the grant, they're like, okay, you have to create these milestones, which you gotta make some for every quarter, which is like, all right, like now we gotta make some stuff up. Um I mean we're gonna do it, but you know, you gotta make it up. Uh and we create the milestones, and then and none of this you know beforehand. So we create the milestones, and it's like right before winter break. Uh, we send it to them, and they're like, Oh, we need to have a meeting to go over them. I was like, okay, fine. So we're having a meeting, and someone from their team is legitimately in the milestone document, just like retyping the goals as we're talking about it, which is whatever. They could do, they could do that, and then so we submit them, and then the day, this may have been like three, four days before Christmas, maybe. Um, the grant advocate, again, bad title, calls me, was like, hey, we need to meet tomorrow to go over the milestones. I was like, no, we're not doing that. Like, I'm on break. Uh y'all, I mean, y'all don't have to go on break, but I'm not here, so email me whatever feedback y'all have from the document that you typed into, and then I'll look at it and I'll let you know. Um, like I'll get back to y'all. So then she's like, uh, okay, fine. They never get back to me, and then like, you know, three weeks later, maybe after break, um, I think they call me again. They're like, hey, we need to meet tomorrow at this time to go over the stuff. I was like, yo, we don't my team doesn't even talk to each other like this. Like, we don't call somebody and tell them they gotta meet the next day, and like we work together. I barely know you. With this grant in particular, there's weekly reporting, monthly reporting, and quarterly reporting. And then if you're late on your quarterly reports, they withhold your grant, and then and then they have site visits, they do quarterly. The last site visit, whoever our grant we've had four different grant advocates at this point over three years, so clearly something ain't going right over there. Um, the last one, like I walked into the class and there's some random man in there. I was like, Who's this? Clearly, it was her husband or her boyfriend or something. Um, but he don't work there, nevertheless. He had no business being at the thing, so just mad, unprofessional. And now they just added this thing where you have to meet with their accountant once a quarter, too. So like they just continually continuously continue to add things you have to do. Um, and I thought we were done with the grant, and then they these people have been advocating behind the scenes and they extended it, and it was just enough money where we didn't want to say no, but now we have to deal with them for another year.
SPEAKER_00So, wait, what what quarterly, monthly, and weekly reports, what's the difference between what you're reporting on a weekly basis versus a quarterly basis?
SPEAKER_01Uh nothing. Okay, I mean I say that like that way because like what's changing? We you know, we just taught a different lesson, it's the same kids, but nothing is happening in a week. On our end, yes, but the stuff that we have to report to them, like it's no different. And you know, this is for less than a half a million dollars. So, you know, we've gotten way larger grants that came with hardly no reporting. Um, whereas this thing is, you know, uh we're being monitored.
SPEAKER_00So, Jacob, how many employees do you have over there, like full-time staffers at InnerSpark?
SPEAKER_01Uh, seven.
SPEAKER_00Okay, seven people. Now, for one of your grants, you're expected to spin up reports every week, every month, and every quarter. Like, I feel like all the nonprofit professionals listening to this podcast are gonna go, like, I have 15 other hats to wear. Now I've got these reports on top of it. Like, tell me if if you were the one designing the grant, what would be a reasonable expectation for like obviously people I get it, right? They're giving you money, they want to know what it's spent on. There is a level of accountability. What would make this like reasonable?
SPEAKER_01Honestly, if I was a foundation, the way I would set up grant reporting, even from the grant all the way to the reporting, would be like way more scientific. Like it would be less about trying to get people to report back on like outcomes, like you know, 90-90% of kids did XYZ or whatever, whatever. Um, and more like what's your hypothesis for this year? Like, how are you gonna test it? What do you want to learn? And then I would structure the grant in a way where um the grantees are like the reports are the grantees coming together to share what they're learning. Um about about their process, like about their program, but also about the people that their program impacts. Because I think that is um how you create a system where um basically you create you create a system that's in that incentivizes learning and evolving and adapting, um, and it allows other nonprofits to be able to, and just organizations to be able to share what they're doing, what's working, what's not working, like what's going on in the neighborhood, what's going on in the community, uh, as opposed to now where like we just give them some percentages and they don't do anything with it.
SPEAKER_00And it sounds like your approach, which spoken like a true educator, seems like more of a relationship where like the person or the organization providing the funds truly cares about the growth and the impact of that nonprofit, and sometimes just like like you said, numbers on a page don't tell that story.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, for sure. Even if attendance was one, you know, if you were saying you're trying to get like 90% of uh kids come to school regularly, uh like and that's all you report back. Certain things we didn't learn. We didn't learn um what makes kids want to come to school, we didn't learn what's getting in the way of kids coming to school. We didn't even learn if not of the 90% of kids that are here, how many of them actually want to be here and are like mentally present um and not checked out. So, you know, and you and you could do that for every single outcome, but I feel like the way in which that foundation and most like want us to report back, it's like it just le it just lacks any level of um it's not scientific. Like you can't really learn, you can't really take too much from the from the data, and it just yeah.
SPEAKER_00And also, like, I feel like you have kind of given us an example that it's okay sometimes to push back, you know. Sometimes maybe we can feel a little bit maybe bullied is a strong word, right? But like we're like, oh gosh, you know, I've got this person breathing down my neck and I've got 15 other things to do. It's okay sometimes to call it out and be like, is this necessary? Or like, could you give me a little more time or context? Like, what would your thoughts around like speaking your piece be?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, do that. Do that. I you know, I do that a lot. Um I do that a whole lot now because I see like it's such an important part of the work. Like our relationship with philanthropy, it really dictates the work, even what the work is. Um, and so unless enough of us are gonna speak out about what we need and what the community actually saying they want, and you know, what's helpful, what gets in the way, you know, even if we do do that, philanthropy might never change. But if we don't do that, they're for sure never gonna change. Uh so some of us have to start to speak out and and and take those risks and stop feeling like, you know, I did that and we're still suffering with these people, but like we're still getting the checks too. Um and if and I I feel confident speaking up. Um, so you know, we have more of us have to take on that burden. Um, so I would say please do that.
SPEAKER_00Right. Stand up, be confident, have the audacity. That's my word for 2026. Like, right? Embrace the audacity and just do what you know you need to do. Because again, all the nonprofit professionals listening to this podcast are gonna know that, like, I have enough to do and I know what's valuable, right? Like, I know what's gonna move the needle for the community and the people that I'm serving. For your kids, you know, that's your priority, not creating reports for the sake of creating reports. So I applaud your audacity, Jacob. Keep it up.
SPEAKER_01For sure. Thank you. Yeah, and your point, no one, those people hadn't even seen what you do. How can how can they tell you what's important or not?
SPEAKER_00Right, exactly. Exactly. Well, I appreciate you sharing your story. I appreciate you doing the good work and like speaking up when you feel like, you know, this just isn't something that needs to continue because the more that we as a community do that, like you said, that's when change happens. So I appreciate you being here today. And for all the nonprofit professionals who are listening out there, here's your reminder to hydrate, practice self care. And if it helps, please submit your own diary entry by clicking on the link below. We would love to have you on the podcast. Thank you again, Jacob, and we'll see everybody next time.
SPEAKER_01For sure. Thank you, Kimberly.