Listening to our grantees: How are we doing as a funder?

As a grant making organisation, we know that our partners are at the heart of everything we do and how we achieve our mission of delivering clean air for all. We support diverse organisations globally that are catalysing policy change, building public demand and generating evidence to inform action. As the world’s largest philanthropically-funded organisation dedicated to tackling air pollution, we’ve funded over 300 projects since we formed five years ago.

We wanted to find out how we can better support our partners. So we commissioned the Centre for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) to survey our grantees on how we support the clean air movement. CEP is an expert in philanthropic insights, with a benchmark of over 350 funders.

We heard from 62 of our 85 current grantees about what we’re doing well and what we can do better. We are pleased that our grantees think our work aligns well with their collective goals, and they appreciate our influencing and field building. We are determined to improve in the areas they think we should and are already taking steps in response.

Below are some key insights from our grantees. Our survey results were benchmarked against CEP’s other surveys with over 60,000 grantee responses, enabling us to understand the feedback in the context of other funders.

We affect public policy

Grantees recognised the important role we play in advocacy in the air quality space. Of 350 funders, we were ranked in the top 30% for affecting public policy in our grantees’ fields. As a regranter, we understand that the support we provide beyond funding is vital, including how we engage with decision makers and raise air pollution up political agendas.

Through its grants and support to advocacy work, Clean Air Fund helps shape policies and regulations related to air quality. Local partners are enabled and equipped to advocate with legislative bodies and regulatory agencies, creating a more conducive environment for other organizations to operate within.

Anonymous survey respondent

We advance knowledge and collaboration

Field building is vital to our approach of fostering an impactful clean air movement. 76% of grantees agree that we support insight and evidence generation for the clean air sector. 71% say we promote cross-sectoral collaboration.

Clean Air Fund exerts a significant influence on the field, community, and organization through various mechanisms: setting standards and best practices, using and applying innovative approaches and thus encourages the adoption of new technologies and methodologies.

Anonymous survey respondent

Clean Air Fund’s role of convening is very important as there are very few who could do this. Their efforts to bring together organizations working on the topic through various platforms has been very useful.

Anonymous survey respondent

Beyond funding, 77% of grantees reported receiving assistance in other areas, including communications, field building and programmes. This compares to 61% for the typical philanthropic funder.

We need to improve grant making and management

Alongside the strengths of our work as a regranter, respondents told us that they find our grant making processes to be more time consuming and less straight forward than other funders. Our grantees also reported that our approval requirements were not as clear and transparent as other funders. Similarly, our reporting processes are seen as more time consuming and less straightforward than the typical funder.

Respondents also didn’t fully understand how equity, diversity and inclusion fit into our work.

What are we doing to respond to grantees’ needs?

We want to thank our partners for taking the time to respond to the survey and share their views. We have heard their feedback and are actively working to adapt and enhance our grant making. In particular, we are focusing on two areas of improvement.

Firstly, we are assessing and streamlining our grant making and management processes, especially regarding project development, approval and reporting. We have been piloting a new payment and reporting approach this year, which we intend to refine and roll out in 2025 across our portfolios.

Secondly, we are developing how we communicate with grantees, including setting expectations around approval processes and the distinctive requirements of regranting organisations. We also recently published our vision for equity, diversity and inclusion in our work and will continue to update grantees about our approach.

We look forward to better supporting our partners in their vital work tackling air pollution around the world. Our team is always interested in feedback and ideas, so grantees are encouraged to talk to their contacts at the Clean Air Fund.