Some 70% of Grant Makers Say Foundations Have Few Measures to Test Their Effectiveness

More than 70 percent of grant makers say not enough is being done to assess the performance of foundations, according to a survey conducted by the LFA Group for the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

The biggest barriers to measuring performance are the difficulty of establishing a causal relationship between a foundation’s support and creating change, and a lack of time to conduct an evaluation, respondents said. LFA Group polled more than 500 foundation executives and program officers in February.

Most foundation officials (70 percent) said the recession had not changed their views on performance assessment.

Meanwhile, foundations got relatively low marks from nonprofit groups in separate polling on grant makers’ response to the recession.

Thirty percent of grantees said the foundation that supports them had not communicated at all about its response to the economic crisis.

Of those charities that did receive some communication, 22 percent said the foundation’s response to the recession was unclear, nearly three times higher than the rate at which nonprofit groups say other foundation communications are unclear.

In addition, a third of grantees said their foundation had not helped them at all in weathering the recession. Just over half (51) percent said their grant maker had helped at least somewhat.

The reports are available on the Web site of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a group based in Cambridge, Mass., that helps grant makers measure their performance.