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Grantee Perception Introduction

The Woods Fund of Chicago is pleased to share the results of our Grantee Perception Report (GPR), based on a survey to determine our grantees’ perceptions of our grantmaking, processes, operations, and partnership with them. We commissioned the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct the survey in September and October of 2004, discussed the results with our Board in December of that year, and continue to use them to inform and refine our grantmaking.

Now we share the results with you in the spirit of transparency.

Why We Did It

We undertook this survey to learn and improve. But we also did so because we wanted to join a small but growing number of funders intent on responding to a long unmet need in our field to build a base of empirical data on performance and results. We join those who believe that, for the nonprofit sector, it is critically important to begin the conceptually challenging but needed development of metrics that can be practical and valid measures of the work we do – measures that can help us assess how effectively we are doing it. While there are some innovative and cutting edge efforts underway, such measures are not readily available from the current body of research or program evaluation library of methods and tools. As a field we have the obligation, and certainly the capacity, to develop these measures for ourselves in a manner that would be most useful to grantors and grantees alike. Sharing reports like the GPR is a good way to start us along this development process.

Moreover, the efforts of foundations in this regard will serve both grantors and grantees well as we respond to the growing accountability pressures we are facing from the public and Congress. As a sector much of our response has focused on establishing good principles and practices of stewardship and fiscal accountability. The Council on Foundations, the Independent Sector and many regional associations of grantmakers have made excellent strides in working within the sector to assist grantmakers to identify and implement practices that will ensure adherence to good stewardship standards. It is very important that we do our work in a way that meets high ethical standards and strong governance principles. But it is most important that we do our work in a way that results in the achievement of intended change objectives that we establish for ourselves.

Partnership Between Grantors and Grantees

This point is most important for us who believe that philanthropic effectiveness is a derivative of an optimal partnership between grantors and grantees. Our partnership with grantees can optimize our mutually desired social change objectives when we understand and respect our differentiated roles, listen to each other, and learn together how best to improve grantmaking and program management and implementation. In fact, the Woods Fund Success Equation (The Woods Fund Success Equation Strategies) is based on this premise.

It is here that the nonprofit and philanthropic sector in general faces one of our toughest challenges, which is how to measure change in a way that will yield useful information to improve our strategies and as partners reach our change objectives. There are a growing number of us in the foundation world that believes that philanthropic outcomes and impacts clearly cannot be realized by our efforts independent of our partnership with grantees. This partnership is indeed critical as it is the grantees who are the ground-level change drivers. As aptly put in the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s 2004 report Listening to Grantees: What Nonprofits Value in their Foundation Funders.

See Effective Philanthropy's website: effectivephilanthropy.org

“Although grantmaking foundations can create positive social impact in many ways beyond their relationship with grantees, they are ultimately reliant to a significant degree on grantees to advance their agendas. It is, therefore, crucial that grantee perceptions of the key attributes of successful foundation-grantee relationships be understood.”

This report suggests that the keys to effective foundation-grantee relationships lie in these three dimensions:

• QUALITY OF INTERACTIONS WITH THE FOUNDATION STAFF

• CLARITY OF COMMUNICATIONS OF THE FOUNDATION’S GOALS AND STRATEGY

• EXPERTISE AND EXTERNAL ORIENTATON OF THE FOUNDATION

These concepts were central to the Woods Fund of Chicago’s strategic planning efforts four years ago. It was our intent to practice our grantmaking in ways that meet these “effectiveness” criteria among others. In large part our commissioning of the GPR was intended to provide feedback on how well we were doing with the strategic plan after one year of implementation. The GPR is very useful in several ways. It:

• is an impartial third party progress report to share with our Board and other stakeholders

• provides useful data to continue monitoring our efforts

• is an extraordinary glimpse through the eyes of our grantees of our progress and shortcomings to date

• provides our Board with some measure of assurance that we might indeed be on the right track to effectively meet the goals and objectives of our mission statement

• is helping to develop a frame, language, and authentic indicators for strategies that are now in place.

What We Learned

Much of what we learned affirmed important priorities for the Woods Fund. We were seen more positively than are many other foundations on dimensions such as influence on public policy, the quality of interactions with our staff, and various types of assistance beyond the grant check that we provide. In addition, open-ended comments from grantees allowed us to see that our focus on trust and openness is seen and appreciated.

However, grantees viewed our evaluation and reporting requirements less positively. We know we have asked a lot of our grantees, in terms of reporting on outcomes, especially when viewed relative to the size of our grants. We take the feedback we received seriously, and it is influencing our efforts to improve our reporting processes and forms. We intend for what we ask of grantees to be helpful to them as well as to us. Until it is perceived that way by grantees, we will not be satisfied. You’ll be hearing more from us on this in the coming months. We welcome your review and feedback on this GPR and hope you find it as useful a reference as we have. To those of our grantees who responded to the survey, we thank you for your candor and appreciate your input.

The Grantee Perception Report

Grantee Perception Report