May 10, 2011 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Center for Effective Philanthropy released a survey at its conference in Boston today that injects some new data into the debate about whether foundations are doing enough—or too much, in the eyes of some—to measure their performance.
Seventy-two percent of 173* foundation chief executives surveyed said that assessing their organization’s performance is a high priority, and 68 percent believe grant makers have made great progress in measuring their performance over the past decade.
Just 19 percent said they agreed with the argument that foundations have shifted too far in the direction of measurement and performance assessment, according to the survey from the Cambridge, Mass., group, which helps grant makers determine their effectiveness.
But other results from the survey underscore just how challenging performance assessment can be.
Sixty-one percent of foundation leaders said that too few grant makers have a sense of how they are performing overall, and 58 percent agreed that as foundations focus more on measuring the results of their work, they sometimes lose the freedom to take risks.
One foundation chief executive who rated performance assessment as a low priority explained his rationale this way: “Following up to measure impact or effectiveness of a grant is a fool’s game.”
In assessing their operations and finances, foundations were most likely to look at investment performance (93 percent) and administrative costs (92 percent). Somewhat surprisingly, they were least likely to look at their own staff members: just 39 percent examined the diversity of their staff, 34 percent looked at how well they did in keeping employees on the job over several years, and 31 percent conducted employee surveys.
To understand how well their grant-making programs work, foundations look most often at anecdotal feedback (94 percent) and written reports (92 percent). But it seems they rarely rely on feedback from grantees. Just 19 percent conducted focus groups with their beneficiaries to assess their performance, and an even smaller share used surveys of their beneficiaries.
Many foundation leaders (51 percent) also said they wanted their board members to be more involved in performance assessment. Nineteen percent said they would like their board to be more involved than their board members wanted to be.
Phil Buchanan, president of the Center for Effective Philanthropy, said that a board’s lack of interest in performance assessment can severely constrain a foundation’s ability to measure its success.
“How do they assess the performance of the CEO without assessing the performance of the foundation?” he said. “Foundations are often too free to be ineffective unless the board really insists that some steps be taken to understand foundation effectiveness.”
* This corrects an earlier version of this article, which originally stated that 537 foundation CEOs were surveyed. Surveys were sent to 537 foundation leaders but the study was based on information from the 173 people who provided a response.
