Nonprofit Builder · September 2026
What 423 grantee feedback reports tell us about what works, what doesn’t, and what comes next.
Every project on Nonprofit Builder ends the same way. The grantee fills in a feedback report: how it went, what changed, what they’d do differently, what they need next.
We read all 423 of them.
They come from 267 organisations in 49 countries, working with 196 consultants and coaches, funded by 15 foundations. Together they add up to about 1.67 million in capacity-building spend over 30 months. This is what they told us.
Projects by grantee region
Projects by budget band
Project budget band (EUR or USD), number of projects
Projects by planned length
Planned project length in months, number of projects
Projects per organisation
Number of projects done, number of organisations
The single most requested service is fundraising (64 projects). But group the 57 expertise tags into families and the picture shifts.
Share of projects by domain
Most requested expertise tags
Strategy and leadership together are 42% of everything. Fundraising is what gets an organisation to the door; once inside, it tends to discover the strategy gap that made fundraising hard in the first place.
One fundraising grantee put it plainly:
It forced the leadership team to reflect on what is working vs not and get to an agreement that the organization needed to make some hard decisions in terms of priorities.
And from a fundraising coaching client:
The most significant impact has been strategic clarity. We have decided to park speculative income streams and focus instead on core philanthropy as our anchor.
Coaching is a leadership product. Of 52 coaching packages, 38 are leadership coaching, almost all 1:1 with a director or senior manager stepping into a bigger role.
We read every impact narrative in the 371 consulting reports and coded the kinds of change grantees describe. They fall into three groups: change in people, change in the organisation, and results. None ranks above the others. A director who now leads with confidence has changed as much as an organisation that installs a CRM, and most reports describe two or three kinds of change at once.
Share of 371 consulting reports describing each kind of change at project close. Most reports describe two or three, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
The capacity building series explains how funders can use these types to measure nonprofit capacity building impact.
New clarity and new skills are the most common changes grantees name. Leadership and coaching work shows up here first: its impact is personal before it is organisational.
One of my biggest learnings was that leadership has to evolve as the organisation grows. What may work when an organisation is small and founder-led does not always work as the team expands.
At the end of the coaching, I was a totally new person and had adopted a different way of working.
58% of projects leave a new tool, plan or system in place at handover, something the organisation didn’t have before. For a project of around 3,000, that is a solid return.
We started with zero experience on safeguarding within our organization, having no clear idea what it entails. We now have a draft for a safeguarding policy, a clear roadmap for next steps, a draft for an implementation plan.
We did not have an M&E plan, all we had were project logical frames. As I write this, we now have an organization M&E plan which outlines all our activities, outcomes, outputs and indicators.
Previously, we set salaries based on informal inquiries about positions at other organizations or in the public sector; now we have a useful tool that we can constantly update and that allows us to set salaries in a practical and fair manner.
18% already describe a new way of working at handover, before the tools have had much time to settle in. Some describe better relationships inside the team or the board.
We were significantly lacking in expertise, with the person responsible for fundraising and the person in charge of finances working in silos. This has now changed and we are meeting regularly and have linked the systems up.
The main change is the creation of a directors committee with a real mission and role, which was completely new. Before the project it was more a coordination committee between directors.
Feedback is increasingly becoming a normal and expected part of how we work together, rather than something that people may perceive as criticism or a threat. Team members now are more open to receiving it without becoming defensive.
Results take longer, so few appear in a report written at handover. 7% already describe a result for the organisation, most often after fundraising and financial management projects.
Our greatest achievement during our work was being invited to apply for funding from a major foundation, something we have been working towards for several years.
As a result of the successful engagement we have hired the technical partner the consultant brought in as a part-time accountant with a 1-year contract. He is already redesigning the chart of accounts.
I’m grateful to mention that we’re currently recruiting a functioning board for the first time. Apart from the board formation, we’re also inspired to have a formal organizational structure, which is something we had always wished to.
We no longer have to pay for our email accounts, as now with the nonprofit account it’s free, saving us from an unnecessary financial burden.
Results for the mission include more people reached, an advocacy or policy win, or a new method or technique in use. Not every nonprofit serves a community directly, so mission results look different from one organisation to the next. They appear in 3% of reports. This edition coded them under a narrower label, change for the people served, and most of them come after the reporting window, so treat that figure as a floor.
Grantees recommend their consultant at a mean of 9.07 out of 10. 79% are promoters. 5% are detractors. That’s an NPS of 74, and the trend is up: 62 in the first year of data, 76 in the second, 81 in the last 12 months.
Recommendation scores
Would you recommend this consultant? (0 to 10), number of reports
Satisfaction scores
Satisfaction with the project (1 to 7), number of reports
Consultant NPS by half-year
We read all 333 promoter explanations and coded what grantees name.
What promoters name
Expertise is the entry ticket. What turns an 8 into a 10 is the second and third row.
She did not come in with a fixed mindset or try to apply a standard template. Instead, she took time to understand the people, the context and the dynamics within the organisation, and adjusts her approach accordingly.
He was willing to listen to us, understand our needs and give us the support we needed. He was willing to co-create with us rather than giving us generic solutions.
We recommend them because they work more as an ally than a mere consultant.
She is honest and always pays attention to your goals. She guides you through every step and encourages you not to give up.
We also read all 25 reports that scored 6 or below. Almost none of them complain about a lack of expertise. They complain about fit.
The biggest single cause of an unhappy grantee is a consultant who knew the discipline but not the world. A safeguarding specialist whose sector was the wrong one. A grant writer without the grantee’s field experience. A coach whose method didn’t travel.
Her specialization is with international charities and she is unfamiliar with how organisations in our sector operate.
I feel that our contexts are very different and thus relating and building trust and understanding is difficult. My suggestion would be to enroll more diverse coaches onto the database.
Some local designers can work well compared to some international firms. That was the lesson learned from this project.
The numbers agree. Where consultant and grantee are on the same continent, NPS is 77. Across continents it drops to 71. For African grantees the gap is wider: African consultants score 74, while the handful of European consultants working with African grantees score 12.
Consultant NPS by grantee region
Consultant NPS by matching
Consultant NPS by budget band
The second cause is project management: delays, unclear status, tasks closed without a word.
On several occasions, tasks had apparently been completed but this had not been clearly communicated, leading to confusion and unnecessary follow-up discussions.
And a small third cause, the one that says the most about a consultant: how they handle pushback.
When we tried to provide our feedback, the consultant side became quite defensive and we decided to let him move so that we close the project.
No report complained about price.
Ask grantees what could have been better and 18% say nothing. Among the rest, one ask comes back again and again: a check-in a few months later, when the strategy meets reality.
One area for improvement would be to include a follow-up session after the project is completed. For example, meeting with the client after a month to review the progress made, discuss any challenges, and assess the impact of the recommendations.
What grantees would improve
If we had one small suggestion, it would be to offer optional follow-up sessions a few months down the line. That way, we could get support during the implementation phase.
The main challenge is that leadership development takes time, and some of the changes require continued reinforcement before they become consistently embedded in day-to-day practice. Under pressure, teams can revert to familiar behaviours.
For NPB to consider adding time/fees for consultants to provide coaching and mentoring sessions after trainings.
11% of grantees name follow-up or continuity. Another 15% say the project was too short, usually adding that the budget set the length. 13% wanted clearer scoping at the start.
Part of this is already in place. Six months after every project, we send a short email asking about longer-term change and next steps. Some grantees reply and many don’t, and as a service provider we can’t make it compulsory. What grantees ask for here is more personal: a short session with their consultant once the plan meets reality. It costs little, and it is the most direct way to support what happens after handover.
The dataset doesn’t record organisation size, so we read stage from the narratives. Three groups emerge.
African organisations, mostly funded at 1,500 to 2,000 per project. Their first project is usually a fundraising plan, a strategy or a first policy. Because the baseline is low, they report hard results faster than anyone: first board, first hire, first strategic plan.
This was our first time using one of your consultants. You made the process quick and easy, and we are so grateful that you connected us with a skilled expert.
We have a financial plan: my organization did not have this until this consultation. We usually plan along the way, but now we have this tool to project what we have and, most importantly, what we need.
What they want next: fundraising again, then strategy, then MEL. And the funding environment shows up in their own words.
Our next steps are to formalize our internal resource mobilization procedures, strengthen our monitoring and evaluation skills, diversify our funding sources, and digitize our coordination tools.
Mostly climate and campaigning NGOs, mostly Global North, with the highest budgets (4,000 to 7,000). They buy leadership coaching, team development, HR and structure. Their impact is behavioural.
As a start-up growing rapidly it is challenging to build processes and drive the car at the same time. The frameworks and toolkits have now become part of our processes.
We have learnt a great deal, most notably how to ensure a smooth transition from a founder-led nonprofit to a nonprofit led by the board of directors.
Our priority is to strengthen collective leadership and reduce over-reliance on the founder or senior leadership for decisions that can be owned elsewhere in the organisation.
What they want next: more leadership (43%), then HR and structure (28%). One layer at a time.
European campaigning organisations and coalitions, funded at 2,000 to 6,000. Many are membership bodies. They’re updating what exists: a comms refresh, a safeguarding policy across members, a governance redesign for a growing federation.
The process, with our members, has allowed us to put on paper what we already do, and learn about what best practices must be put in place to prevent harm.
For the first time, we have a professional governance design at a high level, which is essential for our organizational development for our regional programmes.
This group asks for follow-up and longer engagements more than any other. They also score their consultants highest among the large groups (NPS 78).
What grantees name as their next need
Across all 357 grantees who answered, the next needs are strategy (40%), fundraising (34%), embedding this project’s work (34%), leadership (28%) and communications (20%). Technology and AI is at 16% and climbing.
The paths are consistent. Fundraising leads to more fundraising and then strategy. Communications leads to fundraising. Leadership deepens into HR. MEL leads back to strategy, once the framework exists and needs somewhere to plug in.
In 2024, no report mentioned AI. By September 2026, 14 do, and they cut both ways.
Some grantees learned to use it and are grateful.
I have learnt about the foundational stages of M&E: creating a theory of change, logframe, measurement framework, data cleaning, data analysis and reporting, all with the support of AI, using clear and precise prompts for best results.
AI can significantly reduce reporting time when integrated intentionally. AI works best when layered onto strong MEL foundations, not as a replacement.
Others caught their consultant using it badly.
The final deliverable had a lot of strengths, but unfortunately included a fair number of sentences that seemed to be generated by an AI tool. It cheapens the final deliverable.
Reduce the overconfidence in AI. Respect our data-sharing security.
Initial discussion and disclosure with clients about AI policy and privacy.
Four of the 25 unhappy reports raise AI, all from the last 18 months. The consultants grantees praise are the ones who taught the tool and showed their judgement. The ones they penalise let the tool write the report.
That is why we wrote AI guidelines for our consultants. In short: agree any use of AI with the grantee before the work starts, keep their data out of AI tools unless they consent, check every output, and stay the author. The ideas, judgement and recommendations must be the consultant's own, with AI as a tool they guide.
Budget for the deliverable, and a little more for the follow-up. A project of around 3,000 reliably leaves a new tool, plan or system in place. A 2-hour check-in at 3 months helps it take root, and tells you more about lasting change than a report at handover.
Match on context as well as discipline. Sector knowledge and regional fit are the difference between a 10 and a 3. Local consultants for local organisations, and international consultants only where the expertise doesn’t exist locally.
Expect the second project. 30% of grantees come back, and their second ask is predictable from their first. Fundraising grantees will want strategy. Leadership grantees will want structure. Plan multi-year support around those paths rather than one-off grants.
Treat leadership work on its own terms. It won’t produce a document. It produces a director who delegates, a team that gives feedback, a board that governs. Measure it that way.
Ask consultants about AI up front. Disclosure in the scope of work, and a shared view on what it should and shouldn’t touch.
Data: 423 published grantee feedback reports on Nonprofit Builder, submitted between March 2024 and September 2026. 371 consulting projects and 52 coaching packages. Ratings are self-reported by the grantee at project close. Kinds of change were coded from free-text narratives; coaching packages use a shorter form without impact fields, so figures on kinds of change cover consulting projects only. Quotes are lightly edited for length and to remove names of individuals and organisations, and any detail that would identify a grantee. Attributions give only the project type and the grantee’s broad region; organisation names, types and countries have been removed so that no grantee can be identified.
NPS is calculated on the 0 to 10 ”would you recommend this consultant” question: promoters (9 to 10) minus detractors (0 to 6).