In order to continuously improve the services it provides to the many progressive projects that it serves, the Tides Center conducts an annual “customer” survey. This survey, conducted by LFA, provides the Tides Center with timely, relevant data on how its projects view the services they receive. It is used to set organizational priorities for the year.

Fiscal sponsors play an increasingly important role in the nonprofit infrastructure. These institutions create efficiencies within the sector by providing administrative services to charitable projects that, for a variety of reasons, do not have an official IRS 501(c)3 determination. LFA is working with the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors on a first-ever field scan to determine such basic information as how many fiscal sponsors are in the US, where they operate, what are their standards, what level of service they provide, and what organizational models they use. By better understanding the landscape, the National Network of Fiscal Sponsors will be better able to form a community of practice and elevate the effectiveness of the the fiscal sponsor model.

The Tides Network of Organizations includes the Tides Center, the Tides Foundation, Groundspring.org, the Community Clinics Initiative, and Tides Shared Spaces. LFA conducts an annual survey of employees across this family of organizations to assess morale, satisfaction, and the degree to which employees feel a sense of connection to the larger network in which they work. The survey also explores employee satisfaction with internal service departments (HR, IT, and Administration) on four key benchmarks—communication, responsiveness, accountability, and efficiency.