Performance Measures, Grant Application and Follow-up Report Forms

jessicamacejessicamace Posts: 8 ✭✭
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edited November 2022 in Grants & Scholarships

Hello,

I am new to Foundant and I am interested in learning how other foundations structure their application and final report questions pertaining to results/performance measures to facilitate ease of grant monitoring and evaluation. I am wondering how best to structure application questions and final report follow up form questions to facilitate data export and analysis of performance measures, including comparison of anticipated results to actual results. I am curious if anyone's application or report follow up form uses question branching (or another strategy) to require applicants and grantees to provide performance measures individually (as opposed to multiple performance measures included in a single text box) or to list performance measures separately from targets (on the application) and actual results (on the report), so as to provide for separate fields for each measure and either the target or actual result. I would love to hear from others on what has worked best for you.

Comments

  • BettieStammerjohnBettieStammerjohn Posts: 98 ✭✭✭
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    @jessicamace

    I was wondering the same thing as I am in the process of developing our grant applications. We just have the Standard license for GLM so we do not have branching capability.

    I am putting in questions specific to #of persons to be served, geographic areas of service, and type of population served (children/youth/adult etc.)

    I have specific questions for goal, objectives and outcomes, but those are more text than integer based.

    I was told that I can move/share questions forward to the report forms so we/they can see the target and then add in the actual.

    I'd love to hear what others are doing.

    Bettie Stammerjohn

    Executive Director

    Community Foundation of Greene County, Pennsylvania

  • jessicamacejessicamace Posts: 8 ✭✭
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    Tom,

    Thank you very much for your comment and for sharing your thoughts, application and report form - all are much appreciated. I agree with your comments around outcomes. We are using Results-Based Accountability at our foundation and this is helping us and our grantees to focus on things we can track (in many cases outputs). Our grantees' performance measures tend to be number of clients served - sometimes by a client characteristic (How much did we do?); a client satisfaction measure (How well did we do it?); and measures around changes in knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, behavior, circumstance (Is anyone better off?).

    I really like your Applicant Feedback section on your application form. Three great questions. And also, I love food too! So, thank you again for sharing!

    Best regards,

    Jessica

  • jessicamacejessicamace Posts: 8 ✭✭
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    Thank you for sharing your thoughts and links.

  • BettieStammerjohnBettieStammerjohn Posts: 98 ✭✭✭
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    I fully agree.

    That's why I've included those (outcomes) in our application - and we'll be able to share it in the report side so they can see what they said they would do. And why I included examples of objectives and outcomes and links to a resource for more information.

    Most of our grants are small, but we still want to see some kind of impact. It doesn't take a big grant to have a big impact if a project is done thoughtfully. Like you said, @HeidiFindlay that often involves conversation before the application and during the project.

    Bettie Stammerjohn

    Executive Director

    Community Foundation of Greene County, Pennsylvania

  • KatyKellerKatyKeller Posts: 12
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    edited December 2022

    We have an Impact Dashboard that we complete using information that grantees submit in their Final Status Report/Follow Up.

    It is linked here: https://marillacmissionfund.org/application/files/5716/6386/6876/MMF_Impact_Dashboard_FY21_FINAL.pdf. We have a report in GLM that pulls in the relevant fields from the Follow Up form and I export it to CSV and build pivot tables/charts in Google Sheets.

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