The George Washington University has released the final report of a faculty and staff task force that evaluated GW’s institutional policies governing the acceptance and transparency of grants and gifts.
The Transparency in Funding Task Force was convened by Provost Christopher Alan Bracey in June 2024 and charged with conducting an assessment of GW’s practices, policies and procedures as well as benchmarking GW’s approach against peer institutions.
The report found that GW employs appropriate measures to review incoming funding and that university policies are in line with other academic institutions while also acknowledging that more can be done to clarify and communicate the considerations that go into decision-making.
“I want to thank the members of the task force for their diligent work and thoughtful review,” Bracey said. “As an institution, we must regularly assess if we are striking the right balance between values that are critical to the scholarly enterprise. Academic freedom is a bedrock principle of academic pursuit, and we also strive for transparency to the fullest extent possible.”
The report noted the university has instituted checks and balances to review the appropriateness of funding. Every gift or research grant is scrutinized to ensure it aligns with university policies on academic freedom and undue influence.
An analysis undertaken by the task force found that more than 80 percent of GW’s sponsored projects are from sponsors who publicly display their awards and encourage publication of results (e.g., the federal government) and that fewer than 0.1 percent of gifts received at GW have a request for donor anonymity. As a result of this analysis, the group found significantly low risk of individual donors exerting influence over GW’s mission.
“Our work was informed in large part by GW’s long tradition of encouraging free expression, protecting academic freedom and the ethical conduct of scholarship,” said Gina Lohr, senior vice provost for research and chair of the task force. “We can do more to demonstrate how our policies and procedures put those values into action.”
The task force recommended strengthening the balance between maintaining appropriate transparency and protecting academic freedom by:
- creating a centralized GW webpage that highlights the university’s guiding principles for the acceptance of external funds and presenting all relevant policies and processes in one location;
- regularly reviewing and updating policies relevant to the negotiation and acceptance of external funds;
- updating GW’s Gift Acceptance Policy and procedures to add language that refines and clarifies the guiding principles underpinning the acceptance of external funding;
- creating a simple, streamlined process for individuals to request data about funding and developing guidelines and parameters for sharing that data; and
- developing GW-specific resources for scholars experiencing hostility or harassment as a result of their research areas, sources of funding or research findings.
The full task force report can be found on the Office of the Provost website.