What do grantees have to say about the Trust?
One of our core values at the Trust is listening to and learning from the people we serve. That’s why, earlier this year, we partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy to survey our grantees about their perceptions of us and our grantmaking.
Ninety-four Trust grantees completed the survey (a 65 percent response rate), and our results were compared to more than 300 foundations that have also surveyed their grantees on similar metrics.
We want to share the results and thank all of our grantees who participated. We believe that transparent grantee feedback helps us understand what’s working and learn more about where we need to adjust moving forward.
Because we believe the people closest to the communities Mrs. Reynolds asked us to serve are the experts on what they need to improve health and help their communities thrive, we have increased our funding to grassroots groups in recent years. We also believe it will take all of us to decrease disparities and achieve more equitable health, education, and economic outcomes, so we also continue to fund larger nonprofits and institutions in Forsyth County and across the state. To that end, you will see the results broken down by “Grassroots Organization” and “Not a Grassroots Organization.”
It is important to us that we are serving all of our grantees and adjusting our strategies to ensure organizations have what they need to do this critical work.
Read the Center for Effective Philanthropy Grantee Perception Report.
What we learned from the report
We were excited to see grantees ranked us highly on nearly all metrics and report that the Trust is having an impact on their work. We’ve included a summary of the findings below.
Key findings
- Grantees ranked the Trust near the 100th percentile for our impact on the field and gave the Trust high marks for affecting public policy.
- The Trust ranked in the 79th percentile for understanding the local communities in which we work, which underscores how important it is that our team spends time in community, working closely with grantees.
- Sixty-seven percent of Trust grantees reported receiving at least one type of non-monetary assistance, and they tell us this is a critical piece of increasing their capacity on the ground.
- The Trust received high marks for how we communicate with our grantees. We also ranked in the 99th percentile for how we have communicated about what racial equity means for the work.
- In recent years, the Trust has spent time simplifying and evolving our grant application and reporting process, so we were happy to see that more than 80 percent of grantees provided high ratings for the ease of this experience.
- Grantees told us that general operating support, as well as capacity building, convening, and non-monetary assistance for their work is needed and valued, so we will work to deepen those investments.
Moving forward
All of the feedback we received was immensely valuable, and we will use it to shape the way we invest in grantees and support the day-to-day work.
We will continue to bring our core values of listening to grantees and learning from the experts on the ground as we focus on equitable access to health care, equitable health outcomes, thriving residents, and thriving communities.
The Trust team will use this report as a baseline and look forward to surveying our grantees again down the road. Ensuring more equitable outcomes for everyone in our state will take all of us, and we thank our grantees for being on this journey together.