Site visit

A funder visiting an applicant or recipient in person — before an award as part of due diligence, or during one as monitoring. On foundation programmes an invitation is usually a good sign; on federal awards it is routine oversight.

Part of the GrantTrove grant funding glossary — one entry for every field the catalogue stores.

Also called Funder visit · Due diligence visit

In detail

A pre-award visit is generally a shortlist signal: funders do not spend a day travelling to see applications they have already declined. Preparing for one is largely a matter of having the people who do the work in the room rather than only the people who wrote about it.

A monitoring visit during an award is scheduled and structured, and records rather than impressions are what it examines.

Against a review panel

A panel reads applications against criteria. A site visit looks at an organisation. They test different things — the plan and the capacity to carry it out — and a strong showing in one does not substitute for the other. Neither appears in any field here, because both happen after a submission we never see.

How GrantTrove stores it

  • We hold published opportunities and the funders that publish them, and nothing about applications in progress.
  • The tracker is where an organisation keeps its own notes on what it applied for; nothing in it is published or shared, and nothing about it appears in the public catalogue.

Common questions

Is a site visit a good sign?

Before an award, usually. During one, it is routine.

Can I ask for one?

You can invite a funder. Whether they come is theirs to decide.

Do you record them?

No. Nothing about an application is public data.