Aiming for Excellence at the Wallace Foundation (2008): January 2008: Christine DeVita, president of The Wallace Foundation was frustrated – yet resolute. She and her senior colleagues had just received the results of the Foundation’s third Grantee Perception Report^® (GPR) and, though heartened by steady progress in several important areas, she was disappointed that the Foundation had not made more progress on two crucial fronts: clarity of communications of goals and strategy, and interactions with grantees.

Despite Wallace’s efforts to improve the clarity of its communications of goals and strategy, grantees gave it comparatively low ratings on that dimension, citing the lack of consistency among Wallace’s communications as one of their greatest challenges in working with the Foundation. And although there had been some improvement in grantees’ ratings of interactions with foundation staff, DeVita wanted to see more dramatic change.

This case study examines a foundation working to improve its performance in response to comparative assessment data. The case illustrates the need for continuous feedback loops to inform decision making.

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