Why anonymity plays an important role in collecting honest feedback from grantseekers: Reflections from Steve Morgan Foundation
As we approach one year following the re-launch of GrantAdvisor UK, we caught up with Steve Morgan Foundation to hear about their experience collecting anonymous feedback from grantseekers. Steve Morgan Foundation received 25 anonymous grantseeker reviews in the first four weeks of registering on GrantAdvisor UK in July 2023. CAST Programme Lead Ellen Smyth speaks to Liam Eaglestone, CEO at Steve Morgan Foundation to hear why it is important to collect genuine, and anonymous, feedback from grantseekers.
Do you want to improve communication between grantseekers and grantmakers? Read on to see how anonymous feedback makes a difference.
“It’s important to be honest and to be brave. Share things that you think we need to hear, because we recognise that traditionally, historically, there’s not been that feedback loop. It is time we change that.” Liam Eaglestone, CEO at Steve Morgan Foundation
Ellen Smyth (CAST): Welcome Liam! Tell us a bit about your experience using GrantAdvisor UK?
Liam Eaglestone (Steve Morgan Foundation): GrantAdvisor UK came at a really good time for us, it is a really useful way of collecting anonymous feedback from our grantees. We sort of jumped on it, you know, as early as we could. We are trying to refine our processes, including thinking about changes to our application forms, monitoring forms, and the types of funding we offer. GrantAdvisor UK helps us collect insight that can help us improve.
We’re very keen to try new ways to get genuine feedback, because we recognise in this field that it’s not very easy. There is understandably a lot of nervousness for grantees around telling funders what they’re not doing well, nobody wants to bite the hand that is, or might feed them in the future. The anonymity plays a really important role there.
The gold dust: We are grateful for the service. I think it still feels quite early for us but I think we’ve made a good start. The biggest thing we need is more data. We want to start collecting data from unsuccessful grantees too so that is one of our next steps. It’s more rounded data, isn’t it? We need genuine feedback from everyone. Together we can keep working to improve. That’s the point.
How do you invite grantees to share their experiences with you?
To encourage initial feedback we just emailed all of our current grantees and said look, we’ve signed up to this new service. We’re really keen to get genuine feedback, it is anonymous. Please could we ask you to jump on there and get the ball rolling and give us some feedback.
We got quite a good initial response from that process. I mean our sense is it still probably was only about 25% of grantees. So it’s not as high as we would like, but the quality of the feedback is really good.
The gold dust: Any time that a grant is given, we include a link to our funder page on GrantAdvisor UK in the T&Cs and we invite grantees to take the opportunity to share their feedback. We can’t follow that up or or insist on it, and we don’t look at who has or hasn’t done that, but we hope that putting it in there will signal to our grantees that we welcome and encourage their feedback.
How do you engage with the reviews you receive?
We have team meetings every week or so. And then I’d say at least once a month we pull up the GrantAdvisor UK website and read through the reviews together. It’s quite easy to navigate and get a sense of what we’re doing well and where we can improve.
So at the moment it is a collective approach. That’s partly because we’re trying to improve all of our systems and get whatever feedback we can. So it’s feeding into all of our ongoing conversations. It may be that into the future it is the responsibility of one person who brings that insight to the rest of the team, but the moment we look at it collectively.
“Steve Morgan Foundation obviously have a set criteria and process but they have always been open to new ideas and suggestions. They recognise potential grantees have knowledge in their respective fields and are keen to maximise that by funding work that has impact. It feels more of a partnership and not just a transactional relationship.” Anonymous grantseeker review September 2023, GrantAdvisor UK
So who reads the reviews?
We’re a small team of four, which includes myself — I look after mostly our larger partnership grants. Then we have a Regional Grants Manager who looks after the bulk of our regional grants, our Enable Grants Manager who looks after our specialist grants for people with disabilities and mobility issues for example, and our Office Manager who is responsible for our administration and makes sure our processes are efficient.
The gold dust: In fact we’ve got a Trustee meeting next week, and we’ll be sharing a summary of the feedback with them. It is genuinely really useful feedback. And actually, most of the time, because most of the feedback is quite positive, it is quite affirming and encouraging.
Where would you like to be in six months’ time?
I think we’d like to see a higher percentage of grantees sharing their feedback with us. It would be lovely if we could encourage at least 50% of our grantees to write us an anonymous review.
The gold dust: The feedback we receive on GrantAdvisor UK gives us evidence to help inform internal conversations about what needs changing. But currently the sample size is still quite small, isn’t it? And so we’re aware that one piece of feedback could skew things a little bit. We really want to encourage more grantees to share their genuine feedback with us so that we can build a bigger bank of data. It is a really useful bank of evidence to help us make strategic decisions.
What would you say to a funder considering signing up to GrantAdvisor UK?
I think we felt some nervousness before we signed up that we might be inundated with lots of negative reviews. I don’t think it was an overwhelming concern, but it was just there in the background. So what I would say to anyone considering signing up is: that wasn’t our experience. As a sector we need to be open to receiving constructive feedback and GrantAdvisor UK is a really positive way to do that.
It has helped us gather feedback in a way that perhaps we wouldn’t have done previously. Often the feedback we have is anecdotal, which has its place. But the reviews on GrantAdvisor UK feel more objective.
The gold dust: I would encourage all funders to sign up because I think it helps to open up the dialogue between grantees and funders, and I think there are huge potential blind spots for funders if we don’t open ourselves up to that sort of feedback.
What would you say to a grantseeker considering sharing their anonymous feedback with you?
I would say it’s important to be honest and to be brave. Share things that you think we need to hear, because we recognise that traditionally, historically, there’s not been that feedback loop. It is time we change that.
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 Liam Eaglestone, CEO at Steve Morgan Foundation on how anonymous feedback from grantseekers is supporting Steve Morgan Foundation explore more flexible funding, including using this feedback to evaluate their unrestricted funding trial.
