Free Lunch

Perhaps I should not post this but I am going to—I don’t know why but I feel a bit angry—not a lot just a bit, because to be a lot angry would presume that I care.

I have just finished my “home work” for the weekend. I was tasked, by an official looking large brown envelope, which arrived earlier last week at my office, to read the enclosed twenty (20) plus “Letters of Intent”, “ grade them” and submit the results to host group. We then well have a meeting on Thursday where we will decide who, of the group, will be asked for a full blown grant proposal which we will meet again in a couple of months and award money to the best grants submitted. What has irked me over the years is that just a few people end up getting the money each year. Its not always the same group but enough that I have noticed a pattern and specifically those who don’t get any money. So some tend to always get bucks and some never get anything—their ideas are never considered.

I have a been sitting on this committee for nearly twenty years now almost as long as I have m lived in Utah. I got on he committee because I was asked, and the job I had at the time saw participation in such groups a vital part of the job. I don’t think my current boss thinks so, especially since this committee has never acted favorable on the grant requests she has submitted. But, I put down every year that my activity with this project, and other projects I was involved in as the time of the new executive director, is a vital part of my job description so I continue to attend and best of all eat their lunches. I have to admit one of the reasons I have stayed involved with this project as long as I have is they provide a Class A, usually hot lunch, Usually catered. Even when they have down graded to a cold lunch—the sandwiches have been excellent.

So, I spent my morning reading letters of intent and trying not to grind my teeth. The same old players submitting the same old letters probably getting the same old money. I am just a small cog in a larger wheel looking for a free lunch.