July 14, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
The former head of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, one of the largest grant makers in the country, is raising concerns about a growing effort to survey grant beneficiaries about their views of foundations.
Edward E. Penhoet, who led the Moore foundation, in San Francisco, from 2004 to 2007, questioned the surveys conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a Cambridge, Mass., nonprofit research organization.
During a recent conversation with Matthew Bishop, co-author of Philanthrocapitalism, Mr. Penhoet said the center’s grantee-perception report “doesn’t measure effective philanthropy. It measures a foundation’s popularity with those it gives grants.”
Mr. Penhoet said Moore received mixed grades on its survey because “many of our grantees didn’t like us, because we asked them tough questions about the impact they were having and whether they were using our money to achieve our goals.”
Other foundations would disagree with this assessment, writes the center’s vice president, Kevin Bolduc.
In a comment on Mr. Bishop’s blog, Mr. Bolduc says that most foundations that have surveyed their grant recipients say they value the service and that they have used the findings to improve their grant making.
He also interprets Moore’s survey results, which are public, differently than Mr. Penhoet.
“Grantees’ words and ratings paint a picture of a funder striving to create real impact through its focused efforts,” he writes. “But they also show a funder that has struggled to find a consistent focus, message, and the right amount of measurement that doesn’t overwhelm grantees, but helps them and Moore do their work better.”
What do you think? Are grantee surveys an important tool to measure foundation effectiveness or are they so much navel gazing?
