Organizational and methodological support for the evaluation of initiative projects of non-governmental non-profit organizations by the Presidential Grants Fund in Russia

The article examines the organizational and methodological support for contests of social projects of non-governmental non–profit organizations, which have been organized since 2017  by Russia's largest grant-giver, the Presidential Grants Foundation. The elements of modern  methodology of social design, methods of analysis of scientific literature, statistical analysis,  included observation are used. 

Research results: the "bottlenecks" of the methodology of expertise, monitoring and evaluation  of social projects submitted to the Presidential Grants Fund competition are identified and characterized, including: failure to take into account the specifics of a non-profit organization, the level of its current financing when evaluating project applications; inaccuracies and "weak links" in the conceptual apparatus of social design; methodologically incorrect interpretation of the category "impact assessment"; a formal approach to its organization that does not correspond to the essence  of monitoring; lack of clear selection criteria and a mechanism for rotating the fund's experts  the unproductiveness of the evidence-based approach used to identify the best social projects;  the uneven organization of the distribution of grant funds across the regions of Russia. It is argued that the identified organizational and methodological shortcomings have a negative impact on  the quantitative and qualitative characteristics of social design of non-governmental non-profit  organizations with the support of the Presidential Grants Fund, causing problems of technologization of grant writing, formalization of reporting on grants received, contributing to the growth of imbalances in the distribution of funds between organizations and regions, replication of «twin projects».

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