Report back on Client Satisfaction in 2022

For the past several years, we have sent out a survey to current and recent clients to learn how well we are doing as a small business in supporting our clients’ needs for resource development in their grants efforts. The survey is sent in Q4, and results are analyzed in Q1 of the following year. Today I’d like to share with you the 2022  results and what we learned from the survey.

The survey was sent to 89 recipients and had 32 respondents. Our survey took people an average of 10 minutes to complete, and if they chose, they could email for a 15% reduction from their next invoice. We asked respondents how often they utilize our services (ranging from a daily basis to just a few times a year), and roughly the 2022 survey includes an appropriate representation of our clients.

Things we are doing well

I’m happy to report that our mean client satisfaction score was 9.2 on a 10-point scale. This represents an increase of 37% over 2021, when our mean satisfaction score was 8.6.

It comes as no surprise to me that almost all of our respondents rated our Effort as “exceptional” (n= 30). We definitely have a team of hard workers! 

And we sighed with relief when we saw that the service in which we received the most ratings as “vital” was Grant Writing & Proposal Development. We’re good at making the case and telling the story. The next highest-ranked vital service was Preparation of Non-Grant Documents or Materials. So we’re also just good at writing and getting ideas on paper in clear, concise, and compelling ways.

One service we have been beefing up is assisting clients with Support in Setting Up Grant Delivery (management and reporting), and that also appears to be floating to the top of our most vital services. The longer we’ve done grant seeking, the better we’ve gotten at applying for the grant with the delivery in mind. It’s good to see that this expertise and longevity is valued by our clients.

When asked the top 3 words that come to mind when thinking of how working with TGP made respondents feel, it was Confident, Supported, and Secure. 

Aw, thank you!

“Our grant writer is super helpful with follow through on grants that are technical in nature.  We are very happy with her attention to detail and follow through.”

Things we can improve

In general, we try to be as generous as possible in knowledge sharing. Our philosophy is to share knowledge freely but to sell the actual product or service. We had two respondents select “dissatisfied” with our Knowledge Sharing (the rest were exceptional — 27 — or satisfied — 3). Comments indicated that there is room to build relationships between our clients and funders. This makes sense because we are in the basket of grant writers, so people think of us as the “money connection people.” This is an area we can explore improving and contemplate how we can offer more support here. Any ideas, please let us know! 

I say this in almost any conversation that I have with a new client or when explaining the role of grant professionals — grant writing is so much more than writing. Here’s the graphic I use to explain (and there are more — engineers, economists, budget/finance experts…). One area that our survey indicated we could develop our skills is Program Design; it has emerged as something our clients need. 
Finally, there were scattered indicators throughout the survey that we can more thoroughly onboard clients to the way we work, and do more to learn about the intricacies of how they work. 

“TGP never disappoints. They get results.”

Things we should offer

A few people asked for alerts or a service that makes them aware of grants that are released. Since we monitor this anyway, it wasn’t hard to create a subscription service and pull them into a weekly blog post. If you’d like to receive alerts, you can sign up for that here. 

The highest-rated for requested services fell into the realm of capacity building (training, coaching). This was expected because our sister organization, Pivotal NM (which we started as The Grants Collective in 2015), discontinued services in 2022. We are working internally on how we might be able to reabsorb some of those services. If you’d be interested in capacity building services, please feel welcome to reach out and we would love to get your input and keep you updated on our progress.

Other services that were of interest are evaluation services and risk planning for high stakes grant awards. We currently offer these services (see descriptions in links), but have not actively marketed them — feel free to inquire, and please stay tuned as we refine these services.

Takeaways

The responses were validating of the hard work that everyone here is doing. We were able to get good ideas for meeting the needs of our clientele and the communities they serve. All of the ratings were as good as or slightly better than our 2021 survey. We appreciate being included in the work that our amazing clients are doing!

Thank you to our survey respondents for sending us attaboys. Since the survey is anonymous, we can’t thank you by name, but we sure appreciate the boosts of confidence!

“TGP helped my small business navigate support opportunities during the pandemic closures. Our business would not have survived without that support.”

Contact: Tara Gohr, President/CEO, tara@thegrantplantnm.com

This post was filed under: Inside TGP