by Elysa Gordon and Kate Szczerbacki
If you’ve ever wondered how the Greater Hartford Gives Foundation learns from you, not just through reports and forms, but through the candid, day‑to‑day feedback you share along the way, this post is for you.
We’re Elysa Gordon, Vice President of Community Impact, and Kate Szczerbacki, Director of Learning, Evaluation, and Capacity Building. We work alongside a Community Impact team that includes grantmakers, nonprofit capacity‑builders, and learning and evaluation staff. One thing we care deeply about is making sure the Foundation’s processes and practices are actually supporting the work of community partners, not getting in the way of it.
Some of the listening and learning described here began in 2024 and continued into early 2025. Rather than waiting to pull everything together into a single reflection, we intentionally shared key materials earlier as they became available. As reflected in the three resources discussed below, these documents were shared publicly and distributed directly to grantees by email so they could be used in real time. This post brings that learning together in one place and explains how we have been using what we heard.
We hope this edition of our Community Impact Notebook blog can be an additional path for communication, a way to return what we’ve learned to grantee partners, and a way to share a bit more behind the curtain about what we pay attention to as we strive to center equity as a grantmaker.
Why We Listen
Listening to our grantees and acting on what we hear is a critical part of our work as a funder. This feels especially important right now, as information about the effects of policies and funding decisions continues to emerge. We want to understand what is working well, what is not, and how we can respond where we are able.
At the core of this work is our commitment to being a values‑driven foundation. This means that our organization’s core values guide how we make decisions and build relationships. Listening directly to grantees supports our core values of leadership, advances equity and inclusion, deepens collaboration, and fuels learning, innovation and responsiveness.
We also ground our listening in culturally responsive and equitable evaluation practices. As practitioners of the Marco de evaluación equitativa™ , we view equity as both a goal and a process. That means examining not only outcomes in the community, but also our own systems, practices, and relationships, and being open to doing things differently when feedback tells us we should.
Our Threefold Grantee Learning Effort
In 2024, we undertook three connected learning efforts to better understand grantee experience and to find where we could do better.
- We partnered with the Center for Effective Philanthropy on a Grantee Perception Report, our first since 2017. We heard from 173 grantee partners, representing a 58 percent response rate (on track with the field), which gave us strong comparative and trend data. You can find the interactive results and findings summary here: 2024 Grantee Perception Report
- We refreshed our real‑time, anonymous post‑grant application survey, informed by direct input from 15 grantee organizations and working with evaluation scholar and consultant Vanessa Segundo, PhD. This tool helps us gather immediate feedback and make ongoing adjustments to our grants process. You can view a summary of the Post-Application Survey findings here: Post-Application Survey Infographic
- We also conducted a three‑year look‑back at our grants portfolio, analyzing data from 2021 to 2023 and disaggregating by grant type, organization size, and leadership demographics, with support from consultant Maddie Nguyen, MPH. You can read the full retrospective analysis here: 2021-2023 Grants Portfolio Review
Together, these efforts gave us both depth and breadth, combining candid perception data, real‑time feedback, and a longer‑term view of our grantmaking patterns.
What We Heard
Across these efforts, we saw clear signs of progress since 2017. Grantees reported stronger perceptions of the Foundation’s impact on their organizations, their communities, and their fields. Ratings related to the Foundation’s understanding of grantee and community work (and the realities shaping it) improved significantly, with our score on understanding community needs moving from the bottom 30 percent of funders in 2017 to the top 25 percent in 2024.
Grantees also shared that our grants process is easier to navigate and less time‑intensive. The average reported time to complete an application decreased from 25 hours in 2017 to 10 hours in 2024.
Many grantees identified our approach to diversity, equity, and inclusion as a strength. Sixty‑six percent of survey respondents reported making at least one change related to racial equity as a result of their work with the Foundation. Grantees also highlighted the value of nonprofit capacity‑building support, with those receiving technical assistance or capacity‑building resources reporting significantly more positive experiences overall.
We also heard areas where we can improve:
- Grantees want even stronger relationships with Foundation staff, including more opportunities to talk through progress, challenges, and lessons learned. We know that relationship‑building varies by grant type (e.g. longer-term core support vs. short-term RFPs) so we are giving more attention to Community Impact Officers’ grant load, creating more intentional check‑ins, and finding opportunities for shared learning.
- Grantees encouraged greater flexibility, particularly general operating support and adaptive use of funds. Our portfolio analysis showed that 37 percent of grant dollars during the review period were unrestricted, and we continue to look for ways to thoughtfully embed flexibility while reducing unnecessary burden.
- Grantees that received resources from our Nonprofit Support Program generally had more positive perceptions of their experience with the Foundation, which suggests the importance of continued capacity-building investment. We have begun to refine and expand expanding these offerings – including offering lower barrier strategic advising and evaluative coaching supports. reinforcing that seeking capacity‑building support strengthens partnership rather than limits opportunity.
- Grantees asked for clearer tools and guides. In response, we’ve revised our website design, incorporated more guides and tools in our information sessions, and expanded our Outcomes and Measurement for grantseekers and current grantees.
What Comes Next
We are committed to staying in the learning loop and continuing to make feedback actionable. Some of the ways that we’re acting on this commitment include:
- The post‑application survey will remain open year‑round and will continue to be sent to us immediately after application submission so feedback can inform real‑time improvements. We will conduct regular reviews of grantmaking data to identify patterns, surface equity considerations, and share key learning.
- We plan to field the CEP Grantee Perception Survey on a more regular schedule so we can track progress over time and hold ourselves accountable to what grantees share. The next iteration will launch in 2027.
- We will also continue engaging grantees and partners in shaping and evaluating Foundation strategy. This includes refining strategic logic models, incorporating grantee, partner, and resident participation in evaluation efforts, and learning alongside our partners. A comprehensive evaluation of our Nonprofit Support Program is currently underway, and we look forward to sharing what we learn and what changes follow.
In the months ahead, we’ll use this space to share more about how we work and what we’re learning, including reflections on voting and civic education grantmaking, the small business ecosystem, long-term evaluation partnerships in community development, and how we collaborate with grantees to develop strong, feasible goals and measures. You won’t just hear from us (Kate and Elysa). We will be bringing in the perspectives of our colleagues, grantees, and the learning and evaluation consultants who partner with us. We hope you will follow along and continue to share your insights, reflections, and experiences.