In philanthropic relationships, we talk a lot about power dynamics, and there’s perhaps no moment where that becomes more visible than during the reporting process. Traditionally, grantees are required to justify their work, impact, and often even their existence on terms set entirely by the institutions that hold decision-making power over their funding. Funders decide what counts as success, and grantees must tailor their stories to match those expectations, as opposed to co-designing reporting processes.

Over the past five years, we at CEP have chronicled improvements to these dynamics in the reporting process. Specifically, in a report released in late 2021, CEP found that more than three-quarters of 247 foundation respondents  who were repeat Grantee Perception Report users reported making changes to reduce the burden on grantees. A 2023 study comparing grantee experiences with 61 funders both before and after the pandemic found that grantees, too, reported a change: in aggregate, nonprofits reported spending fewer hours on reporting and evaluation than they were before the pandemic — dropping from eight hours for a single funder’s requirements to six hours.

Tellingly, a third-party evaluation of CEP’s own work revealed that more than two-thirds of GPR users report that they’ve made changes to their processes based on their assessment results.

Beyond the hours, we know that reporting isn’t just about the time and effort required, but the opportunity for learning and reflection. In our work with individual funders, we spend more time discussing mechanisms of reporting that encourage shared learning and relationship-building than in the past.

In our recent research on how funders and nonprofits listen to communities, we find that over 90 percent of funders leverage the expertise of funded nonprofits to shape their work (though the report also reveals that there are continued opportunities for funders to support nonprofits to collect feedback from the people and communities they serve). This is also clearly a topic of interest in the broader field — it’s rare these days to attend a conference that doesn’t include at least one session about how to center mutual learning between funders and grantees in reporting processes, or how to co-design reporting processes.

Read the full article about co-designing grantee reporting processes by Alice Mei and Nina Groleger at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.