Grantee Perception Report

At the Walter & Elise Haas Fund, we invite feedback from our grantees in order to understand our impact and effectiveness. In 2022 we partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) an independent nonprofit organization focused on the development of data and insight to enable higher-performing funders. CEP helped us survey grantees anonymously about quality of their interactions with us, the effectiveness of our grantmaking practices, and grantee perspectives on our knowledge of the issues and communities in which they work, and our response to the global pandemic and racial justice reckoning. CEP received 206 responses to the survey sent out this spring, a 63% response rate. Over the three months that followed, CEP analyzed survey results and gave us detailed insights on the feedback they received from the Fund’s grantees. 

As part of our commitment to transparency, we invite you consider our key learnings, and browse through our results at the CEP site, where you can explore the data and cohort comparisons. 

Highlights of Our Learnings

Streamlining Makes Sense 

Since 2020, our emergency shifts to make our grantmaking processes flexible, increase our grant size, and extend the duration of our support were welcomed by our grantees. Many of those shifts are permanent, and our commitment to the trust-based principles behind them is strong.

We are Prioritizing Community Needs 

A large majority of grantees felt that the Fund’s relationship with the community is strong and that our work supports historically disadvantaged communities well. Through our COVID grantmaking, we responded to community needs swiftly, our small part in supporting the impact grantees had in the lives of community members.  

We are Rooted in the Bay

Several grantees felt that the Fund’s work, rooted in the Bay Area, has helped to improve the well-being of the Bay Area community. A majority of our grantmaking serves San Francisco and Oakland, and we have built relationships with several nonprofits and community leaders in the area to ground our understanding of the Bay Area’s needs.  

Our Commitment to JEDI Work Resonates

Many grantees strongly expressed that they felt confident discussing topics around Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) with the Fund. The Fund is committed to this work. We are deepening our JEDI lens for our grantmaking and ourselves. 

 

The Fund also received some feedback on areas of improvement. We acknowledge these insights and are working to improve.  

Communications with Grantees 

Grantees felt that the Fund’s communication with grantees were not happening as frequently as they would like. They also felt that responses to queries and requests need to be sent out as quickly as they have in the past. Many grantees felt that they were unaware of the Fund’s programmatic priorities. With our staffing settled, we will prioritize communicating with grantees quickly and more frequently, and ensure they are connected to our thinking.  

The Data

As part of our commitment to transparency, we invite you to browse through the full data at the CEP site.
The platform allows you to explore the data in different contexts, and compare the Fund to different cohorts of grantmakers.

Click to download the full 2022 Grantee Perception Report and Memo of Key Findings. As well, our Grantee Perception Reports from 2017, 2012, and 2007 are available on this site.

Key Findings

Full Report

Past Reports

2017 2012 2007

Transparency

Next Steps

We know when we listen to the people closest to the issues and structure frictionless support for work that meets the moment, grantees can fully realize their mission. We are inspired by this feedback to continue practices that mean the most to grantees, and we reaffirm our commitment to clear and routine communication. Our community can expect more time spent discussing strategy and learning with grantees, and more substantial communications from us.  

As we hope this report and our presentation of it here demonstrates, we are always open to feedback. For your collaboration in this work, we are grateful.

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