National Dance Project Production Grant Review Process

NDP Advisors & Grant Review Process 

As NEFA strives to be more transparent about our grantmaking practices, we hope that the information shared below supports a deeper understanding of the decision-making process. We pride ourselves in creating a space/facilitating a process that diminishes biases and offers opportunities to learn, grow, appreciate, and better serve artists and the communities they live and work in. 

Each year, the two-stage NDP Production Grant application review and selection process is guided by a rotating group of 12 Advisors who are leaders in the dance field as well as their home communities. Collectively, they are responsible for selecting the projects that will receive the NDP Production Grant and serve as a policy and accountability council for NDP’s overall process. 

Immediately following the preliminary application deadline, the NDP Team works diligently to assess and confirm eligibility status for all NDP Production Grant submissions. Though a tedious part of the process, it is critical to supporting NDP Advisors in their first-round independent review and assessment of the applications in which they submit initial scores and written feedback via our online portal system. This advance work by the NDP Advisors serves as a starting place to determine those applications that will be more deeply discussed during the panel meetings, and also supports NEFA’s practice to provide feedback from the panel’s review to those applicants who do not advance to the next round of any grant process. It is our intention that those feedback conversations help strengthen an applicant’s grant writing skills and work sample selections, which can be used for other funding opportunities and even future NDP grant application submissions. 

During the NDP grant panel review process, NDP Advisors engaged in rich dialogue that will assess applications based on funding criteria, NEFA’s values, and needs within the field. Application discussions** are timed and adhered to the following format: 

• Each Advisor is assigned applications where they take turns serving as lead and/or second reader. The lead reader is responsible for starting the conversation by highlighting the application’s strengths and opportunities from both the written narrative and work sample submissions. 
• The second reader then provides any additional observations that may not have been uplifted by the lead reader. 
• After the second reader shares their thoughts, other NDP Advisors join and expand the dialogue by offering new perspectives.   
• Following each discussed application, NDP Advisors have time to make note of their scores for the application based on its merit as it relates to the funding criteria and overall goals of the NDP program. 

All scores are then entered anonymously into Qualtrics, a web-based statistical survey platform, to provide an average score for each discussed application. The Advisors then use those scores as a guide for final deliberations that will result in the selection of projects that will move forward as NDP Finalists. 

**Given that the Advisors are all active members of the dance field, there are possibilities where conflicts could arise. Though NEFA defines conflict of interest for an Advisor as one that directly supports them personally in a financial way, if an Advisor feels their conflict would prevent them from providing an objective assessment of the project, we accept their desire to be recused from all discussions and voting related to that application. Scores are still aggregated and averaged accordingly. 

While the NDP Team provides various levels of support to the process, we do not influence how each Advisor chooses to score an application. It is our role to provide guidance on the process, make sure the discussions stay focused on the funding criteria, listen for and address any biases that may emerge, and identify larger policy and field-wide topics for future discussion. The NDP Finalist cohort is reached only after several robust conversations, multiple rounds of voting, and group consensus about the projects the Advisors wish to advance forward.  

In addition, we provide NDP Advisors with tools that support our multi-tier process and our best efforts to equitably distribute funds that reflect the various diversities within the dance field. With this, it is also important to note that the integrity and rigor of this process does not support a quota approach to the allotment of funds based on race, gender, disability, sexual orientation, culture, language, forms & aesthetics, geography, and/or career stage. We support a process that reduces tokenism and amplifies the cultural and aesthetic diversities of today’s dance field. 

The National Dance Project Final Grant Review Process

Similar to the preliminary grant review process, full proposal discussions are timed and adhere to the following format: 

• An introduction of the full proposal acknowledging the artist or company name, location, current title, and description of work. 
• NDP Advisors then collectively watch all work samples related to the full proposal to be discussed. 
• The lead reader (who was also the NDP Finalist’s Advisor) begins the conversation by highlighting strengths and opportunities based on program funding criteria, as well as underscore direct responses to inquiries/interests that the NDP Advisor cohort may have uplifted during the preliminary stage. 
• The second reader then provides any additional observations that may not have been shared by the lead reader. 
• After the second reader shares their thoughts, other NDP Advisors join and expand the dialogue by offering new perspectives.   
• Following each discussed application, NDP Advisors have time to make note of their scores for the application based on its merit as it relates to the funding criteria and overall goals of the NDP program. 

All scores are then entered anonymously into Qualtrics, a web-based statistical survey platform, to provide an average score for each discussed application. The Advisors then use those scores as a guide for final deliberations that will result in the selection of projects that will become NDP Production Grantees and those that will remain NDP Finalists. 

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