Case Study: UN Trust Fund's Annual Partner Survey Results

 

“Funding from the UN Trust Fund enabled our organization to close gaps that used to exist within our work and in the country concerning violence against women, gender-based violence, and girls and women with disabilities.” – UN Trust Fund grantee

The second anonymous annual partner survey of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund), conducted in December 2017, shows that grantees are highly satisfied with the UN Trust Fund’s service, advice and support. The survey collected 139 individual responses to 30 questions from 83 grantee organizations,[1] a highly representative cross section of the UN Trust Fund’s current portfolio.

From the grantees’ perspective, working with the UN Trust Fund:

• helps organizations raise much-needed funds;
• enhances the efforts of women’s organizations and helps sustain their initiatives; and
• fosters partnerships and facilitates knowledge exchange.

“[The UN Trust Fund] understands field realities and programming, [is] willing to understand challenges and incorporate them into learnings, [and is] extremely supportive and approachable.” – UN Trust Fund grantee

The overall satisfaction reported was encouragingly positive:

• 99 per cent of respondents said they would recommend the UN Trust Fund as a source of finance for organizations working to end violence against women.
• 86 per cent were confident that a UN Trust Fund grant would enable their organization to mobilize additional resources for their current or future projects.

More specifically, 46 per cent said they had already raised additional funding and that the UN Trust Fund grant was instrumental in securing further resources. Some 26 respondents said they had raised an additional $6.46 million during their grant period to scale up, replicate or sustain the results of the UN Trust Fund-supported project and 64 had mobilized a total of $33 million for other projects dedicated to preventing and ending violence against women after receiving the UN Trust Fund grant and capacity building support.

“The [new] funding obtained will make it possible to work in the same sites of the project funded by the UN Trust Fund, but with seven new schools.” – UN Trust Fund grantee

The UN Trust Fund incorporates the survey’s findings into its work. After the 2016 survey, it increased investment in building organizations’ capacity for reliable financial management to accompany increased financial reporting requirements. As a result, 89 per cent of respondents in 2017 expressed satisfaction with the financial management advice received by the UN Trust Fund, up from 81 per cent in the previous year.

Understanding the views and experiences of grantees is crucial for the UN Trust Fund’s evolving response and support to organizations worldwide that are standing on the frontline of efforts to end the human rights violation of violence against women and girls.

[1] Up to three staff members from each organization were encouraged to complete the survey to reflect different roles in the projects. Answers were provided anonymously online. The current UN Trust Fund portfolio at the time of submission of the survey was 110 projects, which makes the sample of 83 organizations highly representative.