As a network organisation, input and feedback from our members is vital in guiding our work and helping us to understand how we can maximise our impact towards the goal we’re all striving towards: a better resourced, more effective environmental movement.
We conduct a survey of our members every couple of years to feed into our strategic planning, and with our current strategy due to be revised at the end of this year, our latest survey – conducted this May – was particularly timely.
We received 48 responses from funding organisations, individual donors and philanthropy advisors. While the responses were only a small subset of the total number of funders and advisors we support annually, the feedback gives us a valuable indication of how we’re doing, how we could do better, and where we might focus our efforts going forwards.
Below we summarise the five key learnings we’ll be taking on board.
1. We are doing well at achieving our goals…
We’re delighted to see that the survey responses were overwhelmingly positive, with many thoughtful comments on the quality of our work and how it has been helpful.
- Over half (61%) of funders told us their giving had increased in the last three years, of whom 57% said that EFN had contributed to this increase (11% significantly). This was primarily attributed to the networking and learning opportunities that we offer.
- Nearly all respondents (98%) agreed with the statement ‘EFN helps me learn about key environmental philanthropy issues, approaches and gaps’.
- Compared to the last survey in 2023, some of our key outputs received even higher ratings this time, such as our newsletter (100% positive), advice from network members (100%) and from staff (97%), our online events (97%) and research (95%).
‘EFN is excellent at convening and informing funders about trends and issues in environmental funding, then encourages collaboration.’
‘A wonderful welcoming space to learn, be inspired and challenged.’
2. …But there is room for improvement!
We asked respondents whether they agreed with various statements about our objectives. These were generally high, but there were slight declines since 2023, that we want to focus on going forward:
- 91% of respondents agreed that ‘EFN makes me feel welcome and as though I belong’, but it was 97% in 2023.
- 81% of respondents agreed that ‘EFN encourages me to share knowledge and information on my giving with other funders’, but it was 93% in 2023.
- Over 80% of participants in both 2023 and 2025 agreed that ‘EFN has helped me to develop relationships with other funders that are valuable to my environmental giving’. However, only 50% agreed that ‘EFN has helped me to join in collaborative funding initiatives’; this was significantly lower than the 71% in 2023.
3. There is appetite for more support for funder collaboration
Several respondents suggested that EFN could increase its impact by focusing more on supporting funders to collaborate around priority areas and leveraging our experience and wealth of connections across the environmental funding community.
We are currently considering future directions for a number of new and existing initiatives to support funder collaboration, such as the Rapid Response Fund, Earth Funding Lab, Funder Interest Groups on a range of topics, and our Member Directory.
We are also conducting research that builds on our recent report, Increasing the effectiveness of environmental funder-fundraiser relationships. This new research aims to explore funders’ experiences of implementing certain practices called for by fundraisers, including around funder collaboration.
Keep an eye on our newsletter for updates on how we implement this useful feedback.
‘I think there’s a need to complement the ‘on-ramping’ and educational type events (…) with some collective impact collaborations that do aligned and focused grant making.’
4. We could do better at clearly presenting everything we offer…
Many respondents told us that the survey had alerted them to areas of our work they didn’t know we do! They told us it was difficult to keep track of the range of different resources and programming that we offer. For example, 43% of respondents weren’t aware of our work to support fundraisers.
Going forward we will aim to keep our members and partners better informed and updated on all aspects of our work through our newsletter, events, social media and blog/website.
‘Filling in this form I realise I have limited knowledge about what’s actually available – and clearly there’s a lot. Perhaps EFN can put together a way of refreshing existing members or new joiners on all that’s available and how to get involved.’
5. …And communicating how our offerings align with our aims
We are acutely aware of the need to allocate the limited resources available for environmental action as strategically as possible, and this of course applies to our own work at EFN.
- Some respondents said that we could do better at communicating the rationale behind the areas we choose to focus on in our work.
- Other respondents had various good suggestions on where we should focus our efforts to maximise our impact, both in terms of issue areas and ways of working, including supporting funder collaborations as outlined above.
As we plan our ongoing activities and develop our next strategy, we will closely consider how we act as effectively and efficiently as possible.
‘Just focus on the activities you know will have the biggest impact on more and better environmental funding.’
Thank you to all of our members who completed the survey. Your insights are incredibly valuable in helping us improve and develop as a network. We are also conducting a survey with the Green Fundraisers Forum to discover how we can improve from their perspective as well – keep an eye out for those results!
You don’t have to wait until the next Members’ Survey to tell us what you think. Let us know your thoughts and feedback at any time by contacting us at info@greenfunders.org.