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At Comic Relief we’re continuously reviewing our funding practice to make sure its intentional and less burdensome for partners. Every two years we gather anonymous feedback from the organisations we fund and work alongside. This feedback helps us reflect, adapt and strengthen the way we support them and their sectors.
Earlier this year we commissioned nfpResearch(opens in new window), who benchmark results against 17 other UK-based funders, to conduct a survey of our funded partners to gather feedback on our funding practice. Over 219 partners were contacted as part of the survey and 65% responded. We wanted to share back some of the key findings from the survey. Over the summer we’ll be using these findings to reflect on our broader funding strategy. But for now, we wanted to share what we know so far.
An overview of findings
When comparing results from our survey in 2023, we can see our funded partner perception continued to be positive in lots of areas and also showed strong improvements in our relationship and contact with funded partners. Funded partners told us that they feel Comic Relief is a highly trusting, flexible and collaborative funder. Staff support is a major strength. Funded partners highlight the helpfulness, responsiveness and understanding of grant managers, describing relationships as open, honest and genuinely partnership-based.
“Our Portfolio Manager has been incredible to work with - communicative, understanding, flexible, and responsive to our needs. We always feel comfortable being open and honest about challenges, which we feel is reflected by equal levels of honesty from the Comic Relief team.”
Our partners describe us as empowering organisations to deliver in ways that work best for them – and some highlighted that we were a sector leader in grant management practice. We are proud to have outperformed nfpResearch’s UK sector benchmark across many of the elements of grantee experience.
Compared to our last survey, the frequency of our contact with partners has increased and there has been less change of the key grant manager contact. 96% of partners feel very or quite comfortable approaching us when a problem arises, and 89% confirmed that they don’t feel pressured to adjust their organisational priorities.
Our application process is rated very positively and outperforms the nfpResearch benchmark. Almost all partners feel the process is proportionate for the size of grant.
“Overall, the application process is clear and well structured, and the guidance provided helps organisations understand expectations and assessment criteria. We value Comic Relief's commitment to transparency and fairness in decision-making.”
We saw an increase in the additional support we make available to our funded partners, or Funderplus. This is valued by the vast majority of our partners, who feel it was a worthwhile use of their time and has helped them to be more impactful with their work. We are continuing to seek more qualitative insight into the value of our Funderplus work to help us decide how best we continue to such provide additional support.
Things to improve
Despite the positive results we received overall, our partners also shared areas we could continue to improve. There is room to further streamline application and reporting requirements. Smaller organisations especially showed that the process is more of a burden for them and some partners shared that they experience duplication of requests, detailed reporting requests and tight turnaround times. Our Grant Management System works for the majority, but around one in five find it somewhat difficult, citing navigation challenges, upload issues and a desire for offline templates or refresher support.
Our funded partners also want to see greater transparency around funding cycles and longer-term funding are recurring requests. Some partners shared that we could provide clearer information about open calls and funding priorities.
What’s next
We are continuing to bring together feedback from our partners and reflect on how it can inform our future funding strategy and our grant operations. We are so grateful for all our funded partners who took the time to share their thoughts with us. We look forward to sharing an update later in the year.
