IMPORTANT DEADLINE! July 3 is the last day to inquire about the next round of CEP's assessment tools – including the Grantee Perception Report® (GPR), Comparative Board Report (CBR), Staff Perception Report (SPR), Stakeholder Perception Report (STAR), Operational Benchmarking Report (OBR), and Multidimensional Assessment Process (MAP).
To join this round, contact: Romero Hayman at (617) 492-0800 ext. 211, or Travis Manzione at (617) 492-0800 ext. 218.
 A new case study published by CEP focuses on 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.
Aiming for Excellence at The Wallace Foundation, by CEP's Judith Ross, describes how leaders at Wallace have responded to results of CEP's Grantee Perception Report ® (GPR), which the Foundation has repeated three times. Each successive GPR has enabled the Foundation's leaders to more sharply hone their performance improvement efforts as they respond to the data. The case documents what has worked and what has not as the Foundation has pushed to improve its performance.
Wallace President Christine DeVita emphasizes the value of the feedback. "What we need is honest assessment. Because unless we have it, we can't brainstorm about how to fix problems, about what course corrections there are to make, about whether we need to change our strategy."
The case study is the second in a series by CEP that provides practical examples of how foundations have moved from assessment to action, thereby improving their performance in key areas.
Download (free) or order Aiming for Excellence at The Wallace Foundation and the first case study in the series, Improving the Grantee Experience at the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, by clicking here.
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 Staff members at almost any organization can be reluctant to share candid feedback about their workplace with upper management. But thoughtful leaders understand the importance of hearing the unvarnished views of staff. CEP's staff survey process allows foundation staff members to share their perceptions of foundation effectiveness and job satisfaction anonymously. The Staff Perception Report (SPR) provides foundation leaders with comparative data that show how their staff members' perceptions compare with those of their peers at other foundations.
Doug Kridler, CEO of the Columbus Foundation, recently spoke with CEP Senior Research Writer Judith Ross to explain why he commissioned CEP's SPR and how the process has helped "create a compact among all levels of the organization."
JR: Why did you decide to engage the SPR?
DK: There were four main reasons: To get the absolute rating so that we know what areas to target for improvement; to see how we compare with others so that we can learn from our fellow foundations; for the exercise itself, which helps create co-ownership on building a better workplace; and finally, to make an investment in the field of foundations by helping to populate the comparative data set.
So we saw it not only as a value to us but also as a value to the field. It is an investment in the field that we are proud to make through CEP.
JR: Had you surveyed your staff before?
DK: Yes. Years ago we developed a strategy map with a learning and growth component where we list goals to help us build a great organization. Among those goals is a priority to foster a work environment that encourages organizational learning and initiative, that instills accountability for organizational growth and improvement, and that directs us to recruit, develop, and retain top performers.
One of the ways that we evaluated progress against that priority was to survey our staff to tally the number of people who rated the Columbus Foundation as a highly effective organization. We found that answers to that simple question, while helpful to us, only created more questions. A large number of staff rated us as a highly performing organization, but we realized that there was so much more that we needed to know. And if we were to be serious about targeting areas for improvement, for example, we realized that a more robust survey, such as the one that CEP has developed, would provide a state-of-the-art assessment of the organization.
JR: What were some of the questions raised by the single-question assessment process?
DK: For instance we didn't define the dimensions of "high performing," allowing everybody to bring a different and therefore limited and unshared universe of metrics or parameters for what defines a high-performing organization. The CEP survey indirectly defines the array of dimensions of what it means to be a high-performing culture and organization.
JR: What value did you hope to gain by engaging the SPR?
DK: That it would help us improve our effectiveness as an organization. We also saw a value to support staff. In most organizations, there is a natural skepticism about whether upper management values support staff's sense of the reality of the organization and their suggestions about ways it can improve.
Engaging a survey like this one creates a compact among all levels of the organization, but particularly between upper management and support staff. It demonstrates that leadership has both the humility and the willingness to listen and to heed. It shows the respect that management has for those who make the organization work effectively day in, day out, minute in, minute out. And it provides support staff with a level playing field on which they can provide input and advice, eliminating the strict verticality of an organizational chart. It empowers them and builds trust. Ultimately that's a real gift, a wonderful opportunity that comes out of a study like this that few other tools give you.
JR: What was the process like for you?
DK: Any CEO would love for the results of this survey to indicate that they have the highest performing foundation in the world and that there is complete agreement on every aspect of the work – but that's not reality. So while I certainly enjoy reading the areas where we are in the top quartile, I am also thankful for the opportunity to learn where our relative weaknesses are and to know where we can efficiently focus our efforts to improve.
That feedback might be threatening if you aren't willing to listen and change, but in our case, we committed up front to act upon the findings wherever we could, and to be thoughtful in those responses. That will be the test for me as CEO and for department heads: how do we respond to those areas where we agree we need to improve?
JR: What did your staff think of the process?
DK: It came at a particularly busy time. It may have been a challenge for the staff to fit in at this particular moment of peak activity on other initiatives, but I didn't hear any complaints about fitting it in. I think the value of being listened to overcame the time that was consumed by filling out the survey.
JR: How do you expect the information garnered from the report will help you make decisions going forward?
DK: We have a very clear action plan for each dimension of areas for improvement, with timetables associated with each. I will be recommending that my performance review take delivery of those into account.
JR: Can you share any details about what you learned from the SPR?
DK: Over the last five years, we've been making a lot of changes and moving rapidly in a number of directions. As CEO, one of the things that I took away from the SPR is that as teams are working on key initiatives, it is crucial that the leader of those initiatives and I define the goal and make sure that it's commonly understood up front, so that we don't have mission creep or a misunderstanding of goals.
The SPR also alerted me to the need for more frequent and earlier check-ins with initiative leaders to prevent teams from going too far down the road before an adjustment is needed. The net result of waiting too long for that weigh-in is that if the course changes, team members become discouraged about their involvement and the work that they've done to date. By communicating with each other more frequently, we can lessen the chances of that happening and prevent unnecessary frustration.
JR: Do you have any suggestions for others thinking about engaging in this process?
DK: I highly recommend it for building a strong work culture and a clear roadmap for improvement. Foundations should also consider doing it as an investment in enhancing the performance of foundations across the country that can benefit from the anonymous data we share.
Doug Kridler is a member of CEP's advisory board. His foundation also has engaged CEP's Grantee Perception Report® (GPR), Applicant Perception Report (APR), and a pilot version of the Comparative Board Report (CBR).
 Jim Collins, author of bestsellers Good to Great and Built to Last as well as the 2005 monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors has joined the growing roster of speakers at CEP's upcoming conference, Aligning for Impact: Connecting the Dots. Conference participants will hear from Collins and have the opportunity to interact with him in a question-and-answer session.
Cosponsored by Southern California Grantmakers, Aligning for Impact will be held March 31 to April 1, 2009, at the Beverly Hilton in Los Angeles. The program will feature new CEP research on foundation strategy and assistance beyond the grant. In addition, presenters at the conference will be tackling issues on the minds of many foundation leaders such as: 
- The promises and pitfalls of taking successful nonprofits to scale
- How business thinking helps or hinders philanthropy
- Collaborative/big-ticket foundation funding
- CEO assessment
Along with Collins, confirmed speakers include:
- Father Gregory Boyle, Founder, Homeboy Industries
- Mike Edwards, Director of Governance and Civil Society Unit, Ford Foundation
- Carla Javits, President, REDF (formerly Roberts Enterprise Development Fund)
- Gara LaMarche, President and CEO, Atlantic Philanthropies
- Carol Larson, President and CEO, David and Lucile Packard Foundation
- Nancy Roob, President, Edna McConnell Clark Foundation
- Robert K. Ross, President and CEO, California Endowment
A special pre-conference seminar open only to users of CEP assessment tools will be held March 30.
Registration for the conference will open in October. If you would like to receive updates on the conference and its agenda, please contact Kathryn Sherman at (617) 492-0800 ext. 230.
Foundation leaders who want feedback about their organization's performance from as many sources as possible can take advantage of CEP's Multidimensional Assessment Process (MAP) — the most comprehensive view of an organization's performance available today. The MAP provides an integrated assessment of performance, assimilating results and data from all of CEP's assessment tools into key findings, implications, and recommended action steps for improvement.
According to Kevin Bolduc, vice president—assessment tools, surveying a variety of constituents helps foundation leaders identify patterns that reveal both strengths and weaknesses. "We designed each of CEP's assessment tools to work together. By analyzing feedback from so many key foundation stakeholder groups, foundation leaders can gain added insight into powerful strengths and areas for improvement. The comprehensive nature of the MAP makes it the perfect process to kick off a strategic planning initiative, help orient new leaders, or set a baseline for ongoing foundation performance measurement."
The MAP has the capacity to draw on data from CEP's five main assessment tools – Grantee Perception Report® (GPR), Applicant Perception Report (APR), Comparative Board Report (CBR), Staff Perception Report (SPR) and Stakeholder Perception Report (STAR). Depending upon the funder's needs, it commonly includes data from at least three of these.
For more information about the MAP, contact Kevin Bolduc at (617) 492-0800, ext. 202.
 CEP has just released its 2007 annual report, highlighting progress in research, assessment tools, and programming and communications. "2007 was a year of significant accomplishments," says CEP President Phil Buchanan. "We released a major study on foundation strategy, grew the number of assessment tool users, enjoyed unprecedented attention in the press, and organized a successful conference. In addition, our financial position remains quite strong. We are pleased to share these achievements through our annual report and to acknowledge the many foundations and individuals who have supported our efforts."
To download a copy of CEP's annual report, From Data to Impact, click here.
Effective Matters is a quarterly newsletter
published by the Center
for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), a nonprofit organization
focused on the development of comparative data to enable higher-performing
foundations. CEP's mission is to
provide data and create insight so philanthropic funders can
better define, assess, and improve their effectiveness and impact.
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