Are We Doing Things Right? Reflections from Our 2025 Partner Perception Report

Since our founding in 2020, we have sought to answer two questions to ensure that we stay focused on our mission:

Are we doing things right? Are we doing the right things?

This first question is informed by the breadth of evidence coming out of our ongoing developmental evaluation. This helps us understand where and how our partners are contributing to industry transitions and where  we might need to refine our own strategies.

The second question is a bit harder. Our role as a funder is to support our partners so they can do what they do best: deliver on their missions which, in turn, aligns with our own mission. But are we doing enough to supporting our partners? Do our requirements keep them from doing their good work? In short, do we add or subtract value?

After carefully reading what 145 of our partners told us in our Partner Perception Report 2025, the answer is mixed. Some things we do well and others we could do better.  

On the plus side, we improved significantly in areas that matter – to us and our partners. For example, our partners feel we are advancing the state of knowledge in their fields. We do this both by supporting research and sharing learning, but also by strengthening our partners to be more effective. One partner even said that “Laudes has nurtured – almost alone – the ecosystem of actors working in this field…” We rank highly on how we support partners “beyond the grant”, sitting in the 93rd percentile (with 87% of partners receiving organisational support of some kind).

Partners also recognise our broader, systems-level approach. As one said:

“Their focus on systemic change and ecosystem strengthening ensures a holistic approach, driving meaningful progress toward a more sustainable and equitable future.”

And by holistic, we are trying to tackle the root causes of the issues – climate breakdown, deepening inequality, nature degradation. This means that we partner with organisations who can address the rules and power dynamics, incentives and behaviours that perpetuate these challenges.

Yet, there is still room for improvement.

The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) offered four recommendations, which we are already acting on, that focus on four themes: 1) flexibility 2) organisational strengthening 3) true partnership and 4) simplification.

Recommendation #1: Provide an even greater proportion of partners, where appropriate, with more flexible grants

We agree and even outlined our ambition around offering more general operating support (GoS) in our last annual report (2024). Right now, however, only about 20% of our grantmaking is unrestricted. It is a little more than Europe-based peer funders but less than American funders (at 31% according to CEP). We have the evidence that unrestricted funding is good for partners – and for their impact – and will continue to increase the flexibility of our grantmaking.

Recommendation #2: Consider opportunities to provide more tailored beyond-the-grant support to partners, including additional fundraising support

While we ranked highly on our support “beyond the grant”, we recognise that the external context in which our partners operate continues to deteriorate. Those brave organisations on the frontlines of change need more support than ever before. We therefore launched a new Partner Resilience Framework to guide how we can strengthen our partners and the eco-system(s) in which they operate. This includes offering even more services through third party platforms as well as funding to support learning and well-being.

Recommendation #3: Drive deeper relationships and clearer alignment and expectations with the foundation

The urgency of the challenges we are tackling push us to act fast and sometimes change direction, which could challenge partnerships. To address this, we recently completed an organisational effectiveness review to assess whether our leadership, decision-making, processes and even structure can help us form strong, trust-based, and effective partnerships. In short, we’re not there yet, but we are taking steps – through a programme with the Presencing Institute – to build our teams’ strengths in generative listening and co-creation. And we will offer this same opportunity to many of our partners in 2026.

Recommendation #4: Continue to streamline and clarify application and reporting processes to right-size the burden of process with the size of the grant awarded

We try to balance our need for information (to feed into our systems-level measurements) with our partners’ need to focus on what they do best: their mission-driven work. Clearly, we have not yet found the right balance. To address this, we formed an internal working group to review our grant processes from application through to implementation and evaluation, identify pain points, and take action to simplify. We’ll share this will our partners in mid-2026.

As we look toward 2026, we continuously see our partners stepping up, being courageous, and doing what they do best, even in an increasingly challenging context. On our side, we remain deeply committed to doing everything we can to build their resilience. As we get ready to enter our second strategy cycle (2026-31), we are grateful to our partners who took the time to share thoughtful feedback with us that is helping us – and them – be stronger.