College Futures Foundation works to ensure that more students who reflect California’s diversity complete a B.A. and access the opportunity for a better life. Realizing this future for our students is a collective project—one in which we rely on deep partnership with our grantees as we learn and grow together on the path to catalyzing systemic change in our higher education system.

To assist us in that journey, we regularly partner with the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to better understand our relationship with and impact on the work of our grantees, and how we can improve to advance our shared mission. CEP is highly regarded for the rigor and quality of its assessment tools, as well as for the breadth of their comparative data.

To honor the candor of our partners, and practice our own commitment to transparency and curiosity, we are sharing the final report of our Grantee Perception Survey here. This report contains:

• the survey methodology;
• aggregate scores of responses to the full survey instrument;
• comparative information for CEP’s full database, a more targeted subset of similar funders, and past College Futures surveys; and
• a selection of anonymous narrative responses.

Some highlights of the feedback include:

• College Futures rates in the top 10% of funders for the Foundation’s understanding of beneficiaries’ needs and the extent to which its funding priorities reflect those needs.
• We are the highest rated funder in the dataset in terms of our impact on public policy.
• Grantees value their relationships with College Futures staff—they report high quality, frequent, and reciprocal interactions.
• Comments that inspired us to consider: 1) increasing the number of longer, unrestricted grants we make to provide more flexible, stable support to our grantee partners, 2) streamlining our reporting process to align better to peer funders and focus grantee staff time on “big picture conversations,” 3) doing more to affirm with partners that our funding relationships support their strategic visions and goals.

We are sincerely grateful to our grantees for participating in the most recent survey, conducted in February and March of this year. Your candid feedback about our strengths and how we can be better partners is deeply appreciated.

Download the full report >