Editor’s Note Monday, Nov. 15, 2010, 3:20 p.m. EST: NPQ published this post originally with the following sentence included: “We look forward to the results of the investigation and hope they will also be published.” See the post as it originally appeared here.  

Updated Friday, Nov. 12, 12:45 EST

As many of our readers know, the Nonprofit Quarterly ran a series of articles in August calling for transparency in the Social Innovation Fund (SIF) selection process. Read here, here, here, here, and here. This resulted in the publishing of some core documents, both by Corporation for National and Community Service where the SIF is housed, and by the grantees who collectively decided to publish their own applications.

Now NPQ has learned that the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) at the Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) will be interviewing some of the reviewers on the Social Innovation Fund process. In an e-mail written by Paul Carttar, the Director of the Fund, addressed to one of the 60 outside experts tasked with reviewing the original round of SIF proposals, Cartarr informed the reviewer that a call might be forthcoming from a representative of the OIG’s office aimed at evaluating “the fairness and consistency of the grant review procedures that we used earlier this year to award the inaugural set of grants from the Social Innovation Fund.”

Carttar goes on to say in his e-mail that, “The OIG will determine the reviewers to be interviewed, we do not know at this time who will be selected. Should you receive a call, we would greatly appreciate your participating in this process and answering their questions as thoroughly and candidly as possible.”

Update: NPQ talked with Bill Hilbert, Director of Communications at the Office of the Inspector General this morning . When asked about who prompted the review, he confirmed that it was requested by CNCS itself. He said the review would be an audit of the SIF selection process complete with recommendations and that it would be published on the OIG website. He could not give a date for completion but promised to notify NPQ as soon as OIG was ready to publish. 


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