During 2019 the Social Services Grant Committee considered the outsourcing of the City of Topeka's Social Services Grant Program. The Committee discussed benefits of outsourcing including the reduction or elimination of political appeals from agencies not satisfied with their application score and/or funding allocations to the Governing Body. This element of the process is detrimental to an objective selection based on a data and performance driven process. Additional benefits discussed by the committee included cost savings in the form of staff time spent on the process each year. It is estimated that the Department of Neighborhood Relations expends approximately $56,000 in man hours on the grant process each year. This cost does not include the staff time spent by Finance staff, so the total cost to the organization is higher than $56,000. The estimated cost of outsourcing this process is between 2-5% of the total funding expended, or approximately $21,000 at a 5% rate.
The Committee has worked for the past several years to eliminate political selections of social services grant funding. Initially the Committee worked to improve the grant application and to create an objective scoring process that would result in selections based on superior applications for funding and performance of the agencies being provided funding. This work has resulted in a fair selection process and ensures that the City is receiving proof of the service provision for which the funding is being provided.
The 2019 Social Services Grant Committee recommends the outsourcing of the Social Services Grant process based on the belief that it will improve the process and save tax dollars expended on the provision of Social Services Grants.