Prioritizing Learning Over Reporting
By Vanessa Samuelson
At the McGregor Fund, we prioritize learning with and from grant partners. Two years ago, we changed an important learning practice: our grant reports. We stopped asking for narrative reports by default and began asking grant partners if they would like to check in with us and, if so, how. Since then, almost all grant partners have enthusiastically asked for in-person or Zoom check-ins and have overwhelmingly preferred conversations over written reports.
We stopped asking for narrative reports by default and began asking grant partners if they would like to check in with us and, if so, how.
This way of connecting has accelerated and deepened our learning through free-form conversations about what’s on their minds and ours. Often, we talk less about specific programs or services and more about our interpretation of current dynamics in the fields in which we work—the funding environment, state of practice, pain points, and new and interesting ideas.
Last year, many of our grant partners wanted to talk about how and why they intentionally build trust and belonging with the communities and people they support. We learned about healing circles, governance structures that center people with lived expertise, and practices that support individual development of self-knowledge, cultural history, and heritage. We learned about intentional hiring practices that value lived expertise and cultural alignment. We also learned that these ways of working are foundational—they aren’t simply nice-to-have or optional but, in fact, are essential for effective services and programs. They also aren’t often valued or resourced by public and private funding and can sometimes create tension with funding requirements.
As a private funder focused on the social safety net and its myriad programs and services, what we learned from our grant check-ins led to a series of questions that we are now asking about our own work. For example, scale and impact are often default premises in philanthropy, but what room do they leave for honoring the necessary work of creating trust, community, and belonging? What might it look like for us to move towards something that recognizes the reach, depth, and transformational power of this relational work?
These insights and questions, among others, were shared in our first-ever learning brief for staff and board members. This brief documented our learnings over the past year and the lines of inquiry that have opened up for us as a result. This year, we will prioritize learning over reporting products as we continue these conversations; follow the ideas and insights our grant partners so generously share with us; share our learning with them; and, together, consider how our collective learning can be shared more broadly.
Vanessa Samuelson (she, her, hers) is the director of learning and reporting at the McGregor Fund.
This article was originally published in PEAK Grantmaking Journal: Learn, Share, Evolve.
