At the William Grant Foundation we’ve always been clear that we are on an improvement journey and that we can always get better.

One of the main ways we learn about how we can do this is to ask our grant-holders and partners what they think about our approaches, processes and their experience of us as a funder. It helps us identify opportunities to improve our effectiveness.

Getting grant-holder feedback

In March 2021 we introduced our grantee feedback system – designed to help us understand if we’re doing well and to help us discover how we could do better as a philanthropic funder. It consists of five short anonymous surveys issued at the appropriate time to:

• Successful new grantees
• Successful repeat grantees
• Those who have not been successful in getting funding from us
• Those who have recently submitted a project report to us
• Those whose grant relationship with us has recently ended

We’ve reviewed these surveys recently (including running a couple of focus groups with grantees – getting feedback on our feedback!) and made a few changes to the questions we’re asking. We also decided to introduce a survey for those whose relationship with us has recently ended because we’re currently thinking about how to do this well and responsibly.

We look at the results every 6 months to see where we have made progress, where we still need to improve and to discuss what action we will take. Once we’ve done this, we put together a light touch update for our grant-holders to keep them in the loop.

One of the benefits of this continuous process of seeking feedback is that we can use it to identify opportunities to improve our practice as we go and monitor the impact of changes by seeing how results change over time.

You suggested, we did (and are doing)

Here are a few highlights of what we’ve learned and changed to date as a result of the feedback we’ve received over the last few years.

CONNECT US: We could use our knowledge to connect our grant-holders to each other, other organisations and opportunities.

We started holding Foundation Forums as a way to do this. These are quarterly online networking and peer learning events to which all or grant-holders are invited. We’re also trying to proactively make more direct introductions.

PROMOTE US: We could more widely share the lessons and experiences that our grant-holders share with us and proactively promote their work.

The Foundation Forums are a great mechanism for this. We now also have our website – one of the key drivers for its development has been sharing the work and learning of our grant-holders.

Our Spotlight Stories are one new way we are using the website to do this, and we’ll continue to do so.

BE CLEARER: A few things could be clearer when we make a new grant, including what reporting is for and how it is used and how our relationship will ‘work’.

We introduced grant set-up calls with organisations after a new grant is made.

On these calls, we discuss our shared expectations and interests for the grant, shape reporting plans, share how we will make use of reports, and address other questions about our relationship.

We are trying harder to be more consistent about offering light touch, but useful feedback when we get a report

BE MORE OPEN: People would like to understand our plans and strategies better and to have more opportunity to help us develop and shape them.

We are trying out working more in the open.

We’ve had some support on how to do this from Third Sector Lab.

We’re starting to publish blogs and social media posts to share more, in real time, about what we are doing and how we are developing our approaches and our work in response to what we learn from our grant-holders and others.

Keeping you in the loop

Click here for the highlights and results from our latest batch of feedback data – collected between December 2023 and May 2024. Including what this tells us we can do better and what we plan to do about this.

We’ll now be sharing every feedback report on our website for everyone to read. We hope that by showing that we reflect and act on what we hear, we’ll encourage people to be open with us about how we can improve

Keep sharing your feedback

The Foundation’s impact is generated through our interaction with applicants and grantees, and by the role we play as an independent funder in the wider system of policymakers, other funders, charities and operating organisations. And our development and growth and our journey to be a better funder cannot happen without you.

So if you are one of our grant-holders and you get a survey request from us, please do take a few minutes to complete it.  However, we welcome feedback at any time – so please feel free to share any comments or suggestions when they spring to mind, when you speak to us or when you are dropping us an email or an update.