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Re: foundation contact Peter J. Dolce 13 May 1999 08:59 EST
There’s a classic management text by Chester I. Barnard called The
Functions of the Executive (1938) in which he says something like this:

No principle of executive conduct is better established in good
organizations than that orders will not be issued that cannot or will
not be obeyed.  Executives and persons who have thought about it know
that to do so destroys discipline, authority and morale.

So—

At our school clearance is “required,” but there is no mechanism for
preventing or discouraging a faculty member from making a phone call,
and it is difficult to imagine one that could be made effective, short
of turning down awards--an extraordinarly gutty decision in most
universities.

Clearance is required by the development office in our division of
institutional advancement; the chief thing they consider is, “Does the
college already have an application pending before this organization, or

is one planned soon?”

The decision is made by a mid-level exec in the development office and
takes a day or so.

We don’t share a data base with the development office;  we do have a
Council on Sponsored Programs which meets periodically at the call of
the VP for Sponsored Research.  It includes the directors of the pre,
post, and development offices.  Also, our school is small and those
three directors have a congenial relationship which means we share info
informally.  But we do need formal tracking, and the greatest pressure
is coming from the postaward office because of incidents like this:  a
foundation makes an award for a PIs work (after the PI has sought it
“legitimately” through the development office; and usually these
projects are service or training, not research), the development office
informs the PI, but the PI never sets up an account.  A year later the
sponsor asks  the postaward office to show how the funds were spent, and

the postaward office doesn’t even know an award was made.