We regularly seek input from a variety of perspectives, including through a question at the end of every one of our surveys about what respondents believe CEP can improve, research from CEP and others, advice from philanthropy-serving organizations, and individual conversations with hundreds of funders throughout the year. Each of these is helpful. But we know we also need a third-party to help us assess our work with a clear and unbiased approach that can create confidentiality and candor. So, for over a decade, we’ve also worked with Learning for Action (LFA) to regularly conduct confidential surveys of both CEP’s broad philanthropic stakeholders and users of CEP’s assessment and advisory services. At the end of 2021 we received the most recent set of results from these surveys, with responses from over 350 funders, including 65 who commissioned an engagement with us.

In particular, we wanted to understand funders’ experiences as users of CEP’s assessment and advisory services and explore the extent to which CEP’s resources have helped funders reflect on their efforts related to the COVID-19 pandemic and movement for racial justice.

Just as we encourage funders to share their assessments publicly, CEP is also committed to transparency — it’s in that spirit that we publish the full set of results of our 2021 LFA assessment on our website.

So, what did we hear and how are we using this valuable feedback? Overall, funders that responded:

  • Found CEP’s resources to be “somewhat to very useful” for reflecting on their efforts related to the movement for racial justice and COVID-19 (82 percent and 81 percent of respondents, respectively);
  • Are highly satisfied with their CEP engagement (rating a 6.4 on a 1-7 scale);
  • And are unanimously likely to recommend CEP’s assessments and advisory services (100 percent).

Perhaps most importantly, we also confirmed that funders use these results to make real change in their organizations, which were most frequently in the areas of communications, grantmaking processes, and organizational strategy.

Read the full article about listening, learning, and looking forward by Austin Long at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.