We wanted to know if our communications program added value to the work of grantees.

We employ several tools to track the effectiveness of our communications program:

Grantee Survey – Every three years, we work with a consultant to survey grantees and those declined for funding to gauge their perception of the Foundation’s grantmaking and communications program as well as to receive feedback on how they were treated by Foundation staff. This has resulted in a wealth of information that we use to refine or revamp our published and electronic information. Examples of feedback (provided in parentheses) from the most recent survey spawned the following changes:

• We adopted more accessible language (“make it more user-friendly”).
• The Foundation refined its signature design (“you look like an HMO”).
• Our website was redesigned (“it takes too many clicks to find the information”).
• We created documents to fill voids of information, such as adapting the website’s “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) section to create our first-ever published FAQ sheet for those without Internet access, which significantly reduced calls to our Foundation’s main telephone line (“what do you fund?”).

The questionnaire and an unedited executive summary, including both positive and negative feedback from the most recent survey, can be found on our website. We placed it on the Internet because we believed it was important to share the feedback with those who participated, as well as with the field of philanthropy and general public.

Postcard & Website Surveys – Once a year, we mail postcards to update our mailing list, encourage more individuals to access our documents online, and announce opportunities to receive e-mail alerts on our grantmaking programs. We also provide a space on the postcard to ask for open-ended feedback on our published and electronic materials. The information is assessed and, where possible, modifications or refinements are made to better serve our audiences. Likewise, we have a general e-mail address for people to provide us with comments. A more formal website survey is being designed for implementation in the near future.

Evaluation of Communications Program – We are considering the possibility of conducting a formal evaluation of our communications program to calculate the overall impact of our strategic communications efforts. We plan to look beyond measuring the column inches of newspaper articles or gross impressions of our advertisements. We want to know the following: Has our communications program added value to the work of grantees? Helped them secure greater attention from the public and media to the issues they address? Helped them attract more resources for their programs?