The Champlin Foundation, a Rhode Island-based funder focused on capital investments, worked with the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) on its first Grantee Perception Report in 2019. After making a number of changes based on the feedback they received from their grantees, they engaged CEP for a second time in 2024, working on modernizing their processes for impact.

The 2024 report showed marked improvement on a number of themes, including aspects of the Foundation’s understanding of their contexts, their funder-grantee relationships, and the Foundation’s reporting process. Following their engagement, the Foundation’s executive director, Nina Stack, kindly agreed to an interview with CEP to share how they used grantee feedback to modernize processes and significantly improve grantee experiences. Below is our conversation, edited for clarity and length.

Emily Radwin: In conversations, you described how the grantee perception report was one input in your process for “modernizing” the Foundation, which was a significant effort for the team. Can you share more with us about this process and what changed?

Nina Stack: The Champlin Foundation’s previous application and evaluation process was based on foundation practices crafted in the 1990s. The approach was quite simple. And, while there can be benefits to simplicity, we knew that the Foundation needed to evolve if we wanted to maximize our impact to meet contemporary needs.

By 2020, our application process had gone from a one-page letter that was mailed to the Foundation, to a more comprehensive online submission through our new grants management system. We began encouraging more active and streamlined communications with applicants via phone and direct email, rather than relying on the more passive letter correspondence that had been used in years past. Our grants management system also allowed us to transition to online grant reporting, as well as improving the ways in which we use and analyze our internal, historical data.

Perhaps most significantly, creating efficiencies in our systems and practices allowed us to move from having one grant cycle a year with roughly an eight-month turnaround for funding, to two cycles a year. This had reduced the time from submission to funding to roughly four and a half months, showing our effort to modernize for impact.

Read the full article about the Champlin Foundation by Emily Radwin and Nina Stack at The Center for Effective Philanthropy.