Foundation leaders think more needs to be done to assess overall foundation performance, but there isn’t nearly enough evidence that progress is being made on this front. That’s what I take away from a survey by LFA Associates that CEP commissioned, with support from the Hewlett Foundation, which we released this week.
As we note in our press release on the report, we have a long way to go. This is also clear from CEP’s own research. In our report of last year, Essentials of Foundation Strategy, just 26 percent of foundation leaders we surveyed indicated that they had performance indicators in place for all their strategies.
The LFA report contains much good news, too, about the degree to which CEP’s tools, research, and programming are influencing decision-making. But the fact remains, there is much work to do when it comes to foundation performance assessment.