At CEP, we have many year-end traditions including our all-staff dinner, secret snowflake gift exchange, and a kitchen stocked with treats from CEP’s talented bakers. However, December at CEP would not be the same without our annual, year-end performance reviews. Admittedly, it’s a grueling process. The written review contains quantitative ratings on over forty dimensions, ranging from analytics to communication skills, and input from managers and colleagues I’ve worked with over the past year.
The written review itself is helpful for me. It highlights specific strengths, weaknesses, and areas of growth over the past year. But it only paints half the picture. When reading my most recent review, I found myself having many questions, desiring to clarify certain points, and wanting to know more about next steps. What really completes the picture is when I discuss my performance review with my manager. During this conversation, she provides more in-depth feedback, answers my questions, and together we chart out a path for my development in the coming months.
Knowing how helpful these kinds of discussions can be, I was alarmed when conducting the analysis for CEP’s newest report, Grantees Report Back: Helpful Reporting and Evaluation Processes, by this statistic: Only 51 percent of foundation grantees who report completing a report or evaluation have discussed it with their program officer or evaluator.
As part of the research project, I analyzed hundreds of comments from grantees about the reporting or evaluation process they underwent as part of their grant. We highlight a few quotes in the report, but I came across many more grantees who express a shared sentiment – discussing the report or evaluation would be immensely valuable to their work.
- “I would welcome some form of simple invitation from the Foundation’s staff to think about whether we have learned things – positive and negative – that were something of a surprise and have turned out to put us in a position to do our work better.”
–Anonymous Grantee - “We did not receive any follow-up after we submitted the report at the end of the grant term. It would have been nice to receive feedback on the contents of the report – suggestions on what could have been done better with our program (besides those improvements we cited in the report) and whether further clarification was needed on certain outcomes related to the program.” –Anonymous Grantee
- “It would have been nice to get feedback after submitting the final report. Not a word. No follow-up. They demonstrated absolutely no interest.” –Anonymous Grantee
There are many different reasons that grantees cite for suggesting that their funders discuss reports or evaluations with them. But most fundamentally, without a discussion of the report or evaluation, how does a grantee develop a thorough understanding of the foundation’s perspective on what worked, what didn’t work, and how they can improve?
When we spoke with Ken Thompson of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Amy Berman of the John A. Hartford Foundation, program officers who were highly rated by their grantees on the helpfulness of their reporting and evaluation process, they explained even more benefits of taking the time to discuss reports or evaluations. For Ken, these conversations allow him to “work with grantees who haven’t tried to put all of their data together in one place around the few most important outcomes they’re trying to achieve, so it becomes a learning process as much as a method of looking at progress versus originally anticipated goals.” Amy also uses these discussions to “share what other grantees are doing and give them ideas that perhaps they hadn’t thought about” or “foster new relationships for them.”
The learning can flow both ways. As Ken and Amy point out, these types of discussions benefit and shape their work as program officers, too. Ken notes, “Frequently, there’s an opportunity for me to improve my practice as a program officer by calling [grantees] back to learn a little more deeply how things are going in the project. And, if things aren’t quite on the track we thought they were at the beginning, why or why not?” Amy reflects, “I gain a tremendous renewed respect for the challenging work that these people are doing to create change.”
At CEP, the performance review process is resource-intensive and ongoing, but for me personally, the reviews and related discussions have been important catalysts for my professional growth. The same dynamic can exist for grantees. As one grantee commented, “The evaluation process conducted with the foundation was extremely helpful for our organization in redesigning programs and areas of focus. It would be great if there was a way to include a more extensive evaluation in the programs we are now being funded for to help us continue that level of information to inform our programs.”
Foundations have an enormous opportunity to strengthen the work of grantees through the reporting and evaluation process, and to learn from really listening to those they fund. Taking the time to discuss submitted reports and evaluations is one key and practical step in the right direction.
Grantees Report Back: Helpful Reporting and Evaluation Processes is available for free download in CEP’s Content Library.
Tim Chu is a senior research analyst at CEP.
