Why Do We Bother? The Tragedy of Foundation Reporting Requirements

Urban Farm DB summary

A blog post published on 10 November 2021 by the US grant-assessment body CEP. Grantees spend roughly 8 hours a year on reporting for a typical grant and often more than 30 hours across a grant's life, yet only about 60 per cent get to discuss the report they submitted with their funder. Around 70 per cent of nonprofits said funders relaxed or cancelled reporting requirements during COVID. The author argues that unless foundations genuinely engage with what is submitted and discuss it with grantees, reporting requirements should be eliminated or drastically reduced.

Only numbers and their conditions are stored, as structured data — never the source's own sentences. Metric and condition names stay in English, as coded.

• 8 hours

  grantee reporting hours per year(grant reporting burden)

  Economics

  region

  United States

  year

  2021

  method

  approximate hours a grantee spends per year reporting on a typical grant

• 60 %

  share discussing report with funder(grant reporting burden)

  Social

  region

  United States

  year

  2021

  method

  share of grantees who discussed the report they submitted with their funder

• 70 %

  share of funders relaxing requirements(grant reporting burden)

  Policy

  region

  United States

  year

  2020-2021

  method

  share of nonprofits reporting that funders relaxed or cancelled reporting requirements during COVID

Direction of conclusions

Each author conclusion is recorded only as a coded direction per topic. Read the original for the conclusion itself.

• Policy and governanceContradictsWith caveats