For more than two decades, the Hewlett Foundation has regularly commissioned a “Grantee Perception Report” (GPR) to get feedback from grantees on our performance and our relationship with their organizations. It’s a critical part of our commitment to learning and a method for ensuring that we’re building strong partnerships with the organizations we work with to help people, communities, and the planet flourish.
The survey is conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) and contains a mix of quantitative and qualitative responses. It is benchmarked against our own past performances and the results of our peer funders, who also work with CEP to administer the survey to their own grantees.
We’re grateful that so many of our grantees take the time to complete the survey. CEP’s report to us — which protects the anonymity of respondents to encourage candor — provides detailed information across a number of dimensions that we actively use to evaluate our work and make changes to our practices where necessary. Over the years, these surveys have led to practical shifts, such as greater streamlining of processes. Grantee ratings have risen in the latest survey, according to CEP, and “across measures from impact to process, are now often in the top quartile of hundreds of funders in CEP’s dataset.”
