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Grant Allocation Decision Rules

Expectations Versus Realities

National Academy of Public Administration

Kathryn E. Newcomer

George Washington University

Decision rules are at the heart of federal grant allocations that presume funds will go where the need is. Federal grant administrators are under mandates to do effective, efficient, and responsive "relative need" program benefit targeting, explicitly defined in justifiable decision rules. Using a case study of the Special Supplemental Feeding Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), we follow the definition of relative need to a final national funding strategy for state agency WICgrant allocations. Comparing the funding effects and the subsequent perceptions of stakeholders, we found that formulating decision rules to operationalize equity, responsiveness, and efficiency in a national funding formula is fraught with problems. These included data limitations, differing stakeholder views of the proper selection and weighting of need indicators, barriers to a smooth transition to a newfunding method, and raised expectations that "hard" data will result in truly rational allocations.

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