What the Data Tells Us: You Need Staff to Do Certain Things Well
Submitted by Steve on September 15, 2015
From Phil Buchanan, writing for The Center for Effective Philanthropy:
CEP’s data and analysis confirm that foundations just can’t do certain things well without staff. This isn’t just a theory, and the story about Wilburforce Foundation I told in my last post isn’t some fluke. Analysis of CEP’s grantee survey demonstrates the link between foundation staffing and certain aspects of performance, as experienced by grantees.
For example, our analysis of the provision of assistance beyond the grant to nonprofits has shown that foundation staff with fewer active relationships with grantees to manage provide more of the most useful patterns of assistance beyond the grant. Those with too many relationships to manage — those whose foundations are “too lean” — are unable to do so. We reported those results back in 2008, but recently replicated them with our now much-larger dataset of surveys of tens of thousands of grantees of nearly 300 foundations.