Most charities receiving funding from a foundation or grant-maker do not “totally understand” what their funders want them to do with the money, according to a survey published today.

The survey, published by Foundational Thinking, is based on only 59 responses. Only seven were "totally" confident they understood their funders, while 41 said they "more or less" understand.

One in four respondents said their relationship with funders was "dependent, begging or abusive".

The results, which came out on Tuesday, also reveal that 21 respondents said they pretend what they do is innovative “in order to secure funding when it isn’t really”. Although another 22 respondents said they do not do this.

Foundational Thinking is a Flip Finance project, which is funded by the Centre for Innovation in Voluntary Action.

Other key findings:

• A significant majority (40 respondents) of those receiving funding said that funders should take more risks. 

• Some 24 respondents reported that they got nothing in addition to money from their funders.

• A significant majority (35 respondents) of those receiving funding said they believed that grant-makers generally operate in their own narrow interest rather than in the wider interest. A further 12 respondents said they act in the wider public interest.

• Nearly one in three of those receiving funding (19 respondents) said the relationship with their funders was transactional and one in four (15 respondents) described it as either dependent, begging or abusive.

• The majority of those receiving funding rarely or never tell grant-makers if they have a problem with their funding practice.

• Just one in seven of those receiving funding report that communication with their funder is generally initiated by the grant-maker.

Foundational Thinking acknowledged that limited sample size, and that its networks would lead them to a “particular corner of the social sector so this is unlikely to be a representative cross section of the sector”.

It added that “95 per cent of respondents had applied for funds and had either sometimes or mostly been successful. Indeed 3 out of 5 were mostly successful applicants so these are far from disgruntled survey respondents.”

The survey was open to respondents from 4 March until the end of the month. It included 25 questions under five headings: communication, trusts and understanding, conditions and costs, innovation and risk, co-operating and the wider interest.

Foundational Thinking said it had been set up to explore the ways in which grant-making foundations – both public and private – can innovate and adapt to better serve the needs of the organisations they support and ultimately communities and beneficiaries.

The organisation has also conducted a literature review ahead of an event it is holding next week in Oxford. The review, which looked at the evidence of the practice of grant-making trusts and foundations’ in the UK, found that more open communication, more feedback and greater transparency could improve the practice of grant-making.