Grantee Perception Report

Every funder can benefit from candid feedback about its performance, especially from the organizations and people it funds. But getting that feedback can be difficult. Building on our work with hundreds of funders of all different sizes and types, CEP can help you access this critical resource.

CEP’s assessment tools provide actionable insight from key stakeholders—including grantees, staff, and donors—about how your organization’s structure, strategies, and relationships enhance or impede your effectiveness.

Actionable, Comparative, Widely Used

The Grantee Perception Report® (GPR) provides funders with comparative, actionable feedback based on responses to a customizable online grantee survey. Through a mix of quantitative and qualitative data, the GPR answers critical questions every funder’s board and staff face daily. 

  • How much impact do grantees believe that your foundation is having in the fields and communities in which you work? How could it have more?
  • How do your relationships with grantees facilitate your ability to achieve philanthropic goals?
  • What do grantees find most helpful and frustrating about your application and reporting processes?
  • Are you communicating foundation goals and strategies effectively?

The GPR is the most widely used grantee survey, based on extensive research and analysis. More than 225 funders have commissioned the GPR, and more than 40,000 grantees have provided their honest perspectives through confidential surveys. It is the only grantee survey that provides comparative data. 

“At the Packard Foundation, we take grantee feedback seriously. We have engaged CEP five times over the past 9 years to survey our grantees and develop a Grantee Perception Report. It’s become a regular and important tool for checking in with our grantees and reflecting on what’s working and what could be improved with our grantmaking practices across the Foundation. The growing comparative data set and the historical data for our own performance are huge assets when it comes to interpreting results and setting priorities for improving our practice. In short, the GPR is has become an important part of how we make sense of how we’re doing across our diverse programs and portfolios and how we can get better.”

 -Diana Scearce, Evaluation and Learning Director at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation

 

Customized to Fit Your Work and Budget

The newly revised GPR is modern, intuitive, and customizable. Using the latest online survey methodology, CEP can do more than ever to gather and analyze results by categories of grantees you find most meaningful. And you can control and change the comparative data you display for each question through our new online reporting system. 

As a nonprofit, we also strive to keep the cost of the GPR as low as possible. The price of the GPR varies widely, depending on the options you select.

To learn more about our new online report, schedule a demo, or see how we can create a GPR that meets your needs and your budget, contact a CEP Tools manager.

GPR Leads to Change

Foundations from small local foundations to large international funders have all found the insights contained in the GPR critical to the management of their work. 

  • All of the foundations that commissioned a GPR in 2011 reported making changes in their work based on what they learned from their grantees. 
  • Our analyses show that foundations that use the GPR more than once tend to improve measurably in the eyes of those they fund, particularly on key measures like a funder’s impact on grantees’ organizations.
  • Many funders use the GPR every few years to measure their progress against long-term, nuanced changes.

You can review past reports from more than 30 funders who have made their GPR results public as an act of transparency. 

Also...

If you’re interested in receiving feedback from your declined applicants, CEP has a companion tool for you: The Applicant Perception Report.