We have a Council that are having difficulty in allocating donations to various groups/organizations within the municipality especially after their budget has been passed. Would anyone have a specific Policy regarding this issue or a guideline outling the criteria to be used to access such requests?
Donation Policy to various Groups and Organizations
In a past position, looked at a variety of what we call grant-in-aid policies. One that stood out was from the Village of Pemberton which includes: grant objectives, a priority ranking scheme, funding criteria and an application form. You can checkout the their policy by going to: http://www.pemberton.ca/media/138125/CEF%20-%202011%20Grant%20in%20Aid%20Policy%20-%20AMENDED%20%20FINAL-%20November%201%2011_FILLABLE.pdf
Our City auditors have made it pretty clear that City governments cannot give away taxpayer monies through donations. We place ads in local school programs for sporting events but we're getting something for our money. It's our way of supporting our school.
Our township in Illinois has two options - grants which can be given to youth, senior programs or community projects. We budget for these grants annually and never use contingent funds if we exceed the amount budgeted. We tell the requesting party that we are sorry funding is gone for this year but please put forth another request for next year. We always let them know our budget cycle so that the requests come to us in a timely fashion. The other option to allocate funds is through a contract for a specific service a group could be providing to a specific population group. We have entered into a contract with Senior Services for meals on wheels (for example).