Day 11: How can we simplify?
Today I approved two reviews on GrantAdvisorUK bringing us to 450 reviews!
GrantAdvisorUK is an online service that facilitates honest communication between grantseekers and grantmakers. Grantseekers can leave anonymous reviews sharing their experience working with any UK funder, sharing responses to questions such as — what was the overall relationship like with this funder? Imagine a colleague is approaching this funder, what advice would you give?
We are starting to gather some really useful insight which we can use to support individual funders to refine their grantmaking behaviours and practices. Here is an example from an anonymous review shared today:
Listen and advise grantees — they have offered to have open conversations, read through strategic plans and offer really helpful advice on our strategic direction, which feels very much tailored to our needs
This qualitative feedback can also help us spot trends emerging across the 26 funders signed up to the service so far. Currently there is an emerging trend around the benefits of relational grantmaking.
Complex things
There is huge potential for the data to create real impact for the sector, and I have been thinking about what support digital could play to help funders make the best use of the feedback they receive. Understanding the data from 5 reviews and creating your action plan to respond feels relatively simple. But what about when you have collected 50, 500, 5000 reviews? Suddenly it feels quite complex. I want to explore how digital tools could help me create and share reports. I would also like to find out what kind of features funders would find useful — for example one funder shared last week that it would be helpful to see a word cloud of that summarises some of the common words grantseekers use in their reviews.
Simple things
I created a mock up report using a tool I am very familiar with, Miro. It’s not pretty, and it’s not in our brand colours. But it was good enough to bring something tangible to a stand up with our developers. It meant I could get some key ideas down on (virtual) paper quickly and easily. It helped to have a visual aid to lean on during the stand up, alongside the more detailed reporting brief that outlines the must haves, would like to haves and user needs. There is a great briefing template I used by registering for Dovetail.
The mock up also prompted some useful conversations about how benchmarking against other funders could be a useful feature to test. And what tools might help us create reports at scale (we are exploring Looker Studio.)
I would love to hear how others are testing the simplest version of their ideas to help them progress.
Hello! I am running a 30 day experiment in open working to help me understand the benefits and challenges, so I can get better at supporting social impact organisations to work in the open. I would love to hear your comments, ideas and feedback! Thank you, Ellen
