agency customer service lacking Molly Daniel 13 Oct 2006 15:42 EST

RESADM-Lers --

Our organization does a small number of grants each year, and one of of
current projects is a sizable federally funded cooperative agreement. The
project director and assistant project manager at our end are doing a good
job, but this is their first time in managing a grant project. They
naturally have some questions for their program officer and program manager,
but to date we have been disappointed in the non-response received from
agency personnel. For example, at the required annual grantees' meeting the
program officer, with whom they had a scheduled meeting, failed to show. No
explanation, no follow-up. Just didn't arrive. There are other examples that
I won't go into. Though the funding agency has billed the program as one
which will have "frequent interaction" with program staff, let's just say we
have been underwhelmed with the customer service. (No, I will not name the
agency.)

To date, this has not been a serious problem for us, but I am frustrated for
the sake of our project people, who occasionally need answers and responses
but have to continually prod for them, and responses that we do receive are
sometimes accompanied with an irritated tone.

What advice would you give your project directors in this situation?

----------------------------------------------------
Molly Daniel
Grants Specialist
Planning Department
Sarah Bush Lincoln Health Center
1000 Health Center Drive
Mattoon, IL  61938
tel. 217.258.2195
fax 217.258.4135
email: xxxxxx@sblhs.org
http://www.sarahbush.org

======================================================================
 Instructions on how to use the RESADM-L Mailing List, including
 subscription information and a web-searchable archive, are available
 via our web site at http://www.hrinet.org (click on "Listserv Lists")
======================================================================