It has often been noted that those of us who work at foundations never tell a bad joke, let alone hear direct criticism of our work or our methods. In an effort to provide foundations with constructive feedback on their strengths and weaknesses, The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) has surveyed grantees of several hundred foundations and reported back to those foundations on how they are perceived relative to their peers on a wide range of measures. The Trustees of the Dodge Foundation commissioned a Grantee Perception Report last spring, and two representatives from CEP presented the findings to them at their Trustee Retreat in September.
Dodge is grateful to our grantees who took the time to fill out the survey (we had an unusually high return rate of 82%), and we have already begun to act on some of the suggestions in the Report. In response to requests for new avenues of communication and interaction, for example, we have launched this blog. Reacting to the number of administrative hours it takes to apply for a Dodge grant, we have simplified the process of reporting back to Dodge by combining reports with new proposals. And noting that Dodge makes fewer multi-year grants than our peer foundations, we have reviewed our 2008 Education grants made in March and designated an additional fifteen of them renewable in 2009.
In the interest of transparency, we are making the final Report available in full here.