How anonymous feedback from grantseekers helped City Bridge Foundation improve their learning visits programme
City Bridge Foundation has received 73 anonymous grantseeker reviews on GrantAdvisor UK. CAST Programme Lead Ellen Smyth speaks to Sam Grimmett-Batt, Funding Director at City Bridge Foundation to reflect on how collecting genuine feedback from grantseekers has helped them build stronger relationships throughout the grantmaking process, including making changes to their learning visits programme.
“Our intention for the learning visits was for it to be a really lovely moment between us and the organisations we fund. We wanted it to be an opportunity to learn and build relationships. But in reality that wasn’t what was happening. We know from funded organisation feedback that it felt more like we were checking up on the organisations we were funding — checking that the money was being spent on what we thought it was being spent on. And although that wasn’t what we had intended, we realised that the way that we were approaching organising these learning visits was preventing us from creating an opportunity to build relationships.” Sam Grimmett-Batt, Funding Director at City Bridge Foundation
Do you want to improve relationships between grantseekers and funders? Read on to see how anonymous feedback is making a difference
Ellen Smyth (CAST): Congratulations on reaching over 70 anonymous grantseeker reviews! Tell us a bit about how you are encouraging grantseekers to share their honest feedback with you?
Sam Grimmett-Batt (City Bridge Foundation): We ask for feedback all the time. We invite feedback when we send our grant offer letter, we mention it in our monitoring and impact form annually, we include a link to GrantAdvisor UK on our website, and when a funded organisation submits an an application we have a link, saying we’d love them to tell us about their experience.
We also encourage our Funding Managers to mention to grantseekers that they can leave us an anonymous review — that is particularly useful if they’re having more difficult discussions with applicants, or if applicants aren’t happy with decisions. We’ll say, you know, one of the things that you can do is you can leave an anonymous review, and that’s really helpful to us because it means we get honest feedback. We can say — look, you don’t have to share your feedback with us. And you don’t have to send anything with your name on it. But we can continue this conversation in a constructive way.
The gold dust: Anonymous feedback can influence the way that we do things. From my perspective as a leader in this organisation, this is really useful. We do have a complaint process, but if what people actually want to do is talk about why our process isn’t working for them, then we have the ability to change that. GrantAdvisor UK gives us another way to continue the conversation.
We noticed that City Bridge Foundation replies to all the feedback grantseekers share on GrantAdvisor UK. The responses are always very personalised, which is lovely to see. Why is responding to feedback important to you?
This was a big part of the relational approach we wanted to take. Our Impact and Learning team have been really intentional about reading and responding to each review. It helps that we have a dedicated Impact and Learning team so we have capacity to read and respond to all reviews, it has become part of our process for gathering feedback.
Your relational approach has been something grantseekers mention often in their reviews — many reviews refer to City Bridge Foundation as a listening organisation. Tell us more about that?
I’m really pleased with the feedback around being a listening organisation and being relational. We’ve grown a huge amount over the last few years, and so there’s always a concern that becoming more structured, which we’ve had to do as we grow, would change our relationships with funded organisations.
“As well as a written application, assessment included an over 2 hour discussion with [Team Member] who has since been allocated as my grants manager, she was very good at putting me at ease and it was really clear she was not just doing a job, but was genuinely interested in social justice/ equality agendas. Her write up of our programme when I later looked at the case she presented to the committee to make decisions on funding showed me she fully absorbed our conversation and the issues that racially minoritised leaders delivering to their communities can face. I found this part of the process — a face to face conversation — to be so important, it was all about creating human connection and respect for the work.” Anonymous grantseeker review July 2023, GrantAdvisor UK
Have you made any changes based on the feedback in your anonymous GrantAdvisor UK reviews?
Absolutely, the feedback we receive on GrantAdvisor UK has played a huge part in helping us make changes. For example, we received some feedback that our learning visits programme felt like a tick box exercise, so we reviewed this to explore how we can make this a useful moment for applications as well as for the funder.
What changes have you made to the learning visits programme?
Our intention for the learning visits was for it to be a really lovely moment between us and the organisations we fund. We wanted it to be an opportunity to learn and build relationships. But in reality that wasn’t what was happening. We know from funded organisation feedback that if felt more like we were checking up on the organisations we were funding — checking that the money was being spent on what we thought it was being spent on. And although that wasn’t what we had intended, we realised that the way that we were approaching organising these learning visits was preventing us from creating an opportunity to build relationships. We haven’t really deliberately sat down and thought about how to design this moment. Now we have some very specific guidance for Funding Managers around the way that you frame the ask for the learning visits, so we are intentionally designing for opportunities to build relationships. We make it clear that learning visits are optional and that it’s about sharing learning and being on a journey together to deliver our shared goals around reducing poverty and inequality.
The gold dust: We also coupled this with some really good training sessions for our Funding Managers. We wanted to help raise awareness of the power dynamics between funding organisations and funded organisations. We know that appearing to demand to come and visit a project, and then turning up in droves, in suits — that doesn’t really set the tone for what we’re trying to do. We sometimes invite our Trustees to go along to the learning visits as it is a really good way to expose them to the work in a more meaningful way.
The training sessions have been helpful to be more intentional about how we share power during our learning visits.
“They are a flexible funder taking the time to relate to small grassroots charities and have insight on our nuanced needs. [Team Member Name] visited us, and to be frank we were quite nervous as we saw they are a multi professional. They was so supportive, empathetic, flexible and we called them a Wikipedia of knowledge, which he was so happy to share and explain on layman level. Whatever our grant outcome will be, this was worth everything. We have the direction we need to mobilize and scale [Service Name]” Anonymous grantseeker review, Feb 2024, GrantAdvisor UK
It sounds like there’s so much good work underway. Where would you like to be in six months’ time?
We are about to implement some changes to our grantmaking over the next couple of years so we will be changing the way that we do things a bit. So I think we’ll definitely be wanting to use this as a tool to track how we’re doing and how grantseekers are feeling throughout that process.
Join the conversation:
- Share your anonymous feedback with funders: Are you a grantseeker interested in sharing your experience working with UK grantmakers? Funders are listening. It takes 5 minutes to share your anonymous feedback. You can also browse almost 500 anonymous grantseeker reviews — this is the kind of peer-peer insight that can help you with your funding applications.
- Register for free on GrantAdvisor UK: Are you a funder interested in hearing what grantseekers have to say? Want to gather in-depth insight — for free — on what you are doing well and how you can improve? Register here.
- Questions? We’d love to hear from grantseekers and grantmakers. Share your reflections, questions and ideas so we can create more impact together. If you are a funder — what support do you need to start gathering feedback from grantees? If you are a grantseeker — how do you feel about the changes funders have made, so far, in response to grantseeker feedback? How can we make it easier for you to share your experiences? Contact us at grantadvisor@wearecast.org.uk
You can also read more reflections from Sam Grimmett-Batt, Director at City Bridge Foundation, including how anonymous feedback from grantseekers helps City Bridge Foundation influence senior decision makers.
