In philanthropy, it’s often an unquestioned expectation that funders will ask grantees to assess the progress of their own work and to apply what they learn to improve. At Barr, we think it is equally important to ask our grantees to assess how we are doing as a funder, listen deeply to their responses, and close the loop by sharing back what we heard and taking action to improve our effectiveness. We have consistently found CEP’s Grantee Perception Report (GPR) to be a valuable listening tool for this endeavor.
In our most recent GPR results, we got positive feedback on the cumulative impact of changes we’ve made over the past six years. Alongside their feedback, our grantees also asked us to share what we’ve done and the positive impact the changes have had in an effort to encourage other funders to adopt similar practices.
Since Barr last conducted the GPR in 2017, we had made many changes based on what we heard. For instance, in 2017 our grantees shared that they were spending an average of 22 hours on their proposal, and we benchmarked quite low (in the 25th percentile of our peer group) for the usefulness of this process. Subsequently, going through our own application processes ourselves (what we called “walking a mile in our grantees’ shoes”) inspired us to streamline, be more personalized, and be clearer about our expectations. We reduced the number of application questions and custom forms, made use of public data wherever possible, and provided better guidance on how we intended to collaboratively assess progress and results.
We also learned, from our 2017 GPR feedback as well as from the field, about the high value grantees place on ‘beyond the grant supports,’ so we sought new opportunities to provide these.
These steps were a good beginning, but we had more work to do. In 2020, with support from foundation leadership and trustees, the urgency of the pandemic and racial justice uprisings motivated us to make further changes. Here’s what that looked like:
- We implemented more frequent and streamlined internal review processes to shorten the time from proposal to award.
- Our program teams adopted the practice of accepting proposals and reports prepared for other funders and offering a verbal report option in lieu of written narrative reports.
- In alignment with our values and the flexibility our partners needed, we offered more unrestricted funding and longer awards whenever possible.
Grantees told us they appreciated these changes, but we still felt it was important to invest in systematic, high-quality listening to ensure that we were in fact moving the needle, to understand what changes were most impactful, and to identify further opportunities for improvement, which is why we asked CEP to conduct another GPR this past year.
Much had changed since Barr last conducted the GPR in 2017: our organization had grown significantly, nearly doubling our staff and grantmaking; we had new grantees who would be providing Barr with feedback via the GPR for the first time; and this would be the first opportunity for many of our staff to participate in this process as well. We kept these considerations in mind as we planned our GPR process, using a variety of communications to ensure that staff and grantees were aware of our intentions and building in time and support for staff, leadership, and our trustees to listen, make sense of the feedback, and act on what we learned.
So, what did we learn?
Our efforts at streamlining had made a difference. Time spent on proposals had dropped by 25 percent and more grantees now rated our process as useful for strengthening their work (85th percentile). Our staff was rated as more responsive (a specific area for concern in our 2017 results), and grantees were significantly more likely to say that they are comfortable approaching us when problems arise. We saw these improvements as evidence that we had strengthened our grantee relationships which are an essential element of effective philanthropy.
With respect to Barr’s 2021 commitment to racial equity, our grantees reported that Barr has consistently demonstrated its commitment through actions, that our focus on racial equity is positively influencing the fields they work in, and that our support has positively contributed to changes their organizations had made related to racial equity. We also heard that we could do more to clearly and consistently communicate about our strategies and how our partner’s efforts fit into Barr’s goals and vision.
Grantees reported that our efforts to center their learning in our evaluation approach had improved its usefulness for their work, for building their capacity, and for field learning. We are now inspired to lean into even more collaborative and equity-centered evaluation approaches and to extend these benefits to more of our partners.
We also learned that our ‘beyond the grant supports’ were having an important impact. Our grantees shared that they particularly value supplemental funds for targeted purposes (especially for capacity building), as well as support for opportunities to learn together and gather, such as learning trips and convenings. In response, our program teams are exploring ways to expand access to those kinds of supports to more grantees.
Finally, a prevalent theme was a clear request to share what we’ve done and what we’ve learned to encourage more funders to adopt similar practices. Our grantees made it clear that the flexibility and trust that Barr extends to them increases their ability to achieve their mission. And they were equally clear that this experience is still not the norm for them across their funders. Barr’s grantees are by no means unusual in this respect — CEP’s recent analysis of the kinds of funder support that are most meaningful in times of uncertainty mirrors very closely what we heard from our grantees.
Funders must practice what we preach, assess our own effectiveness with honesty, listen with humility, and change our behavior and practices accordingly. Whether your organization is in the early stages of listening to grantees, or whether you have heard their feedback and have yet to act, we are confident from our experience that these changes are the key to the meaningful progress that we all seek.
Yvonne Belanger is director of Learning and Evaluation at Barr Foundation and co-chair of Fund for Shared Insight. Find her on LinkedIn.
