Dear Colleagues:
In 2004, The Duke Endowment engaged the Center for Effective Philanthropy to conduct a survey of our grantees and their perceptions of the Endowment. The Endowment was one of 120 foundations that participated in the Grantee Perception Survey, a confidential tool which helps foundations assess their overall performance and progress.
The Center surveyed 212 of our grantees and received responses from 163 of them, providing a 77 percent response rate. The survey provided us with the unique opportunity to receive feedback to affirm current practices, to inform future work and to ensure that we are honoring Mr. Duke's legacy.
The survey outlined grantee perceptions about the Endowment's performance on a variety of measures, including:
- overall satisfaction
- interaction with Endowment staff
- communication with the Endowment
- grantmaking process and administration
While the majority of the grantees' comments about the Endowment were positive, many grantees offered feedback including:
- develop a better understanding of the communities that grantees serve
- provide more non-monetary support for our grantees including seminars, peer group meetings, training and collaborations among grantees
- provide more active assistance to grantees in securing additional funding from other sources
We always are looking for ways to improve our grantmaking and have made efforts to address these areas.
- In an effort to best serve our grantees and their communities, in 2006, our program staff logged a total of nearly 150,000 miles on the road in the Carolinas visiting grantees.
- We hosted 21 meetings involving 1,300 grantees from our four program areas, providing opportunities for networking and sharing best-practices.
- We continue to strengthen our partnerships with other foundations bin order to more strategically serve the Carolinas, and to connect other funders with our grantees. For example, we have partnered with the Kate B. Reynolds Charitable Trust to fund an early childhood initiative. We also have collaborated with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America's Health to host an annual summit focused on childhood obesity.
We are committed to continuously improving our grantmaking and we appreciate the feedback of our grantees-both in this Grantee Perception Report and in our daily work. I welcome your comments.
Sincerely,
Eugene W. Cochrane Jr.
President
The Duke Endowment
Click here to view the Grantee Perception Report
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