Posted on 17 September 2024
The results of the first HCT funding survey have been published
Earlier this year, we carried out our first Hyde Charitable Trust (HCT) Annual Survey for our community partners. The survey aimed to understand how HCT is performing as a funder, and what improvements can be considered for the future. The survey focused on areas such as our partners’ experience of applying for a grant and accessing support and assistance.
In 2022, HCT signed up to eight commitments to funding charities in an open and trusting way. This survey was the first check to assess how well we’re meeting these commitments:
The results
The overall survey results (PDF, 380KB) were very positive, and key findings included:
- 84% of respondents said their experience of engaging with HCT and the wider team was good or very good
- 84% of respondents found our recommendations or feedback very/helpful at the notification stage
- 89% of respondents felt that the quality of support/resources was good or very good.
Survey recommendations
A list of eight recommendations have now been put to HCT with some clear action points. These include:
- Exploring why some community partners are not accessing multi-year funding
- Creating more face-to-face opportunities to meet partners, for example visiting projects
- Improving signposting for our customers to projects funded by HCT.
Hyde’s Communities and Social Impact Director, Felicity Hunt, said:
“We carried out this survey to understand where we’re at as a funder, what we’re doing well and what improvements we should consider in the future. We also wanted to give our applicants a platform, so they could give us honest and anonymous feedback.
“We’re also committed to openness and transparency, that’s why we said we’d publish the survey results even without knowing what scores we would get.”
Feedback from our partners included:
“The funding makes a huge difference to the community. It helps address local issues, and enables partners to support vulnerable residents.”
“The ongoing support we have had from the team has been invaluable both pre, during and post project. Without this, the whole process would have been so much more challenging and really helped us as a small community based charity. [They] have always gone over and above and understand exactly the challenges being faced locally.”
We’re now planning to conduct this survey annually and share our findings both internally and externally.