Grantee Perception Report
Conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy
June 2016 Update

In 2015, the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) surveyed the Medina Foundation’s grantees, using the Grantee Perception Report (GPR). The GPR asks about 50 questions related to a foundation’s effectiveness, impact, responsiveness, and processes. This survey is widely used, and is based on extensive research and analysis. Nearly 300 funders have commissioned the GPR, and 50,000 grantees have provided their candid, anonymous perspectives.
The responses from the 130 Medina grantees that completed the survey were compared to all of those results. By seeing how Medina ranks against other funders, we can really identify where we are doing well and where we could improve.
We are so grateful to our grantees for providing such valuable feedback about their experiences with Medina. Our staff and board take these results seriously. We reviewed the results and discussed next steps in Trustee Meetings and with CEP staff. Below are the key findings and how we are responding to them:
Those are the high-level results, and the Key Findings and Recommendations from CEP can be found here.
Again, we are thankful to everyone who completed the survey, and we welcome feedback at any time. If you have any comments, questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact any Medina staff member.
View Jennifer Teunon's blog post on the benefits of the CEP's Grantee Perception Report here.
The responses from the 130 Medina grantees that completed the survey were compared to all of those results. By seeing how Medina ranks against other funders, we can really identify where we are doing well and where we could improve.
We are so grateful to our grantees for providing such valuable feedback about their experiences with Medina. Our staff and board take these results seriously. We reviewed the results and discussed next steps in Trustee Meetings and with CEP staff. Below are the key findings and how we are responding to them:
- Impact and Relationships: We are most proud of the fact that we ranked in the 86th percentile for having a positive impact on grantees’ fields and the 89th percentile for positive funder-grantee relationships. It’s very important to us to be responsive and accessible, and this will continue to be an area in which we strive to excel.
- Types of Grants: We heard how much our grantees value general operating support. According to CEP’s research, general operating support only makes up 20% of the average funder’s grantmaking. In 2015, 73% of Medina’s dollars were committed to unrestricted support. Knowing how essential this support is to organizations, we want to do more to help promote its importance. We have talked on panels about this subject, and our executive director, Jennifer Teunon, wrote a blog post that was originally published by the National Center for Family Philanthropy and re-posted and shared on over a dozen other sites.
- Clarity: We heard that clarity of our processes could be improved. In response, we updated our guidelines to more accurately reflect our grantmaking and redesigned our website to be more informative and user-friendly. In response to hearing that our reporting/evaluation process could be improved, we revised our status report to be less onerous. In an effort to continue improving our processes in the future, we have added feedback questions into our letter of inquiry, application, and final report forms.
- Assistance beyond the grant: This is an area where Medina ranked lower than the average foundation, but it also corresponds with the fact that we have a much higher caseload than the average foundation. We have 85 active grants per program officer compared to 33 active grants per program officer at the typical foundation. These caseloads don’t allow our staff much time to meet with grantees (beyond site visits), attend nonprofit events, etc. This is something that is on our radar but, since we are currently not planning on making fewer grants, it may not be an area where there is a lot of immediate change. However, our staff strives to be accessible and is happy to discuss any questions or talk about issues of concern with our grantees at any time. Staff contact information is listed on our website.
- Multi-year grants: Since the recession, Medina has made very few multi-year grants, and we were asked us to consider increasing this. Although we know that giving larger, multi-year grants is a best practice, the challenge is getting the balance right. We don’t want to commit too much of our grants budget and not be able to respond to new organizations or emerging needs. With that said, this April our Trustees approved allowing up to 15% of our grantmaking budget to be committed in multi-year grants.
Those are the high-level results, and the Key Findings and Recommendations from CEP can be found here.
Again, we are thankful to everyone who completed the survey, and we welcome feedback at any time. If you have any comments, questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact any Medina staff member.
View Jennifer Teunon's blog post on the benefits of the CEP's Grantee Perception Report here.