New Report Zeros In on What Grantees Say Makes Program Officers Great

Courtesy of the Center for Effective Philanthropy

Getting to know nonprofits and the context in which they operate. Understanding the needs of ultimate beneficiaries. Not pushing nonprofits to alter approaches or rejigger proposals just to secure financial support.

Those practices and behaviors by program officers are key predictors of a strong relationship between grant-making institutions and grantees, according to a new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy.

Also topping the list: transparency.

“One example would be a nonprofit feeling that a foundation funder was clear with them about what the process is for applying for a grant so that they have that understanding of what they will need to go through,” said Ellie Buteau, vice president for research at the Center for Effective Philanthropy and an author of the report. She also stressed “clarity about the timing — how long it would take between submitting an application and grantees having a sense if they were going to receive a grant.”

The strength of relationships between grant-making organizations and their grantees largely hinges on individual program officers, the report states; specifically, their understanding of and approaches to supporting nonprofits’ work.

As a result, there are inconsistencies in those relationships, even within a single foundation.

“At some foundations, grantees working with one program officer will rate their experience at the high end of our comparative data, while grantees working with another program officer will rate the foundation at the absolute bottom,” the report says. “Frequently, this comes as news to foundation leaders.”

Strong Relationships

Titled “Relationships Matter: Program Officers, Grantees, and the Keys to Success,” the report builds on a study published in 2010 focused on key qualities of strong foundation-grantee relationships and the practices of highly rated program officers.

The new report is based on survey responses collected from tens of thousands of nonprofit grantees in which they were asked about the practices of and working relationships with grant-making officers and their institutions.

Some of the survey data dates back to 2005. But Ms. Buteau said that in recent years she and her colleagues have added new survey questions, including several about transparency, that have enabled them to improve and update their analysis. In 2016 and 2017, they gathered new data from nearly 20,000 grantees on 86 foundations.

“We have been able to do a better job specifically in predicting what it takes to form a strong funder-grantee relationship than we were able to do back in 2010,” she said.

The findings are salient for foundation leaders in thinking about the influence that program officers have and how they can go about supporting those individuals within their organizations, she says.

“I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that the program officers do still work within the structures of the foundations,” Ms. Buteau said. “And so while the program officer can definitely have a lot of influence — and the analysis indicates they do in a number of areas — the foundation also still is shaping grantee experiences to a certain extent.”

The newly released report by the Center for Effective Philanthropy includes interviews with 11 program officers who earned top marks:

• Jamie Allison of the S.H. Cowell Foundation
• Caroline Altman Smith of the Kresge Foundation
• Irfan Hasan of the New York Community Trust
• Jackie Hausman of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation
• Sarah Lovan of the McKnight Foundation
• Elizabeth Love of the Houston Endowment
• Emiko Ono of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
• Stacy Parker-Fisher of the Oak Foundation
• Nicholas Randell of the Peter and Elizabeth C. Tower Foundation
• Teresa Rivero of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
• Graciela Selaimen of the Ford Foundation

Understanding Goals

In the survey, grantees are asked about seven ways grant makers can understand grantees, Ms. Buteau said, including how well a grant maker understands a nonprofit’s goals and strategies and the challenges the nonprofit encounters in carrying out its work.

“What we find in our data is that the higher grantees rate foundations on one type of understanding, the higher they are rating the foundation on other types,” Ms. Buteau said. “So, in sense, we find that if grantees feel the foundation understands, then they think the foundation understands. It is not that they feel they understand just a few elements of the work.”

Elizabeth Love, a senior program officer at the Houston Endowment, featured in the report as highly rated, said she always tries to approach her nonprofit grantees with what she described as “a learning mind-set.”

Philanthropies and nonprofits are working toward shared goals, she noted, and each bring something to the table. The foundations have the money. But that’s not all that is needed.

“What the grantee brings is knowledge, expertise, boots on the ground that can help advance those goals,” Ms. Love said. “I always try to acknowledge our respective roles and emphasize that we as the funder don’t have deep subject expertise that the grantee does.”

Her first year as an environmental program officer at the Houston Endowment was spent in the field with nonprofit leaders, public officials, and community members learning about the issues and the barriers to making change, as well as the players who might be positioned to move the needle, she said. It was a steep learning curve.

“I didn’t approach these conversations with specific grant in front of me. Or with a specific strategy in mind.”

That enabled her to build relationships with existing and potential grantees, she said, and ultimately helped shape a strategy for her institution.

“When foundations provide the time and the space for program officers to take on that kind of learning, it can, I believe, result in a really rich relationship between foundation and grantees and a rich strategy for the foundation going forward,” she said.