People & HR

How to run a performance review cycle as Foundation and Nonprofit Ops Teams

People & HRFor Foundation and Nonprofit Ops Teams4 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Your foundation runs annual performance reviews for 4–8 staff across program, grants, and operations functions. The process lives in a Google Form someone built three years ago, a shared Google Sheet with color-coded ratings that three people have edited without version control, and a folder of self-assessments in Google Drive that your ED has to manually read and summarize before 1:1s. HR platforms like BambooHR or Lattice are designed for companies with dedicated People teams. You don't have one. You have an ops manager who also handles compliance, an ED who is also the lead program officer, and a board that expects a tidy talent narrative in the annual report. The review cycle takes six weeks and generates almost no usable data afterward.

Build this on Starch → See the apps used

People & HRFor Foundation and Nonprofit Ops Teams4 apps12 steps~24 min to set up

Outcome

What you'll set up

A structured review workspace that collects self-assessments, manager notes, and peer feedback in one place — searchable, version-controlled, and readable before every 1:1

An automated review-cycle timeline with task assignments, due-date reminders, and a live completion tracker so nothing slips into week seven

A summary layer that drafts narrative performance notes from raw inputs, ready for the ED to edit and use in board talent updates or grant-funded staff reports

The Starch recipe

Apps, data, and prompts

The combination of Starch apps, the data sources they pull from, and the prompts you use to drive them.

Apps used

Knowledge Management Task Manager Meeting Notes Project Management

Data sources & config

Knowledge Management and Project Management apps are built from Starch's App Store starter templates and customized with natural-language prompts. Meeting Notes connects to Zoom or Google Meet through Starch's integration catalog (live query). Notion is connected via Starch's scheduled sync so any existing staff documentation or prior-year review notes are pulled in automatically. Google Drive and Google Sheets are connected from Starch's integration catalog so the agent can query last year's goal spreadsheet and existing self-assessment forms live. No browser automation required for this workflow, though Starch can automate any web-based HR portal through your browser if your review forms live on a third-party site.

Prompts to copy

Build me a performance review workspace for our 2025 annual cycle. We have 6 staff: 2 program officers, 1 grants manager, 1 comms coordinator, 1 finance associate, and me (ops). Each person needs a self-assessment section (goals from last year, what they delivered, where they want to grow), a manager section, and a rating on 4 competencies: mission alignment, execution, collaboration, and learning. Make it searchable and lock each section after submission.

Create a task list for our Q4 2025 performance review cycle. Tasks: self-assessments due Nov 14, manager drafts due Nov 21, 1:1 conversations Nov 25–Dec 6, final ratings submitted Dec 9, ED summary to board Dec 16. Assign self-assessment tasks to each staff member by name. Assign manager draft tasks to me and the ED. Set overdue alerts.

After each 1:1 review meeting, transcribe the conversation, pull out the key decisions (rating agreed, development goal committed, any comp or title change discussed), and save a summary to that employee's review record in the knowledge base.

Draft a 150-word narrative performance summary for each staff member using their self-assessment responses and my manager notes. Flag any competency where the self-rating and manager rating differ by more than one level so I can review before finalizing.

Run these in Starch → or paste them into your favorite agent

Walkthrough

Step-by-step

1 Connect Notion via Starch's scheduled sync so prior-year performance notes, staff profiles, and organizational documentation are available as context. Connect Google Sheets and Google Drive from Starch's integration catalog so the agent can pull last year's goals and any existing review templates.

2 Install the Knowledge Management app from the Starch App Store and prompt it to create a structured review workspace: one section per staff member, with subsections for self-assessment, manager input, peer notes, and final ratings on your four competencies (mission alignment, execution, collaboration, learning).

3 Prompt Starch to pre-populate each employee's section with their goals from last year, pulled from your connected Google Sheet, so staff aren't starting from a blank page.

4 Install the Task Manager app and prompt it to build the full review-cycle task list: self-assessment deadlines, manager draft deadlines, 1:1 windows, final submission date, and ED board summary date — with each task assigned to the right person and overdue alerts turned on.

5 Send staff a link to their individual section in the Knowledge Management workspace and ask them to complete self-assessments by the deadline. Starch tracks completion status; the Task Manager flags anyone who hasn't submitted.

6 As ED and ops lead read self-assessments, they add manager notes directly in the same workspace section. Starch surfaces a side-by-side view of self-rating vs. manager rating for each competency so discrepancies are visible before the 1:1.

7 Install the Meeting Notes app and connect it to your video call platform from Starch's integration catalog. For each 1:1 review conversation, Meeting Notes transcribes in real time, generates a summary of key decisions (final ratings, development commitments, any comp discussions), and saves it to that employee's review record.

8 After all 1:1s are complete, prompt Starch to draft a 150-word narrative performance summary for each staff member using the self-assessment responses, manager notes, and 1:1 decisions. Flag any competency where self-rating and manager rating diverged by more than one level for ED review.

9 Prompt Starch to compile a one-page talent summary for the board: headcount, average rating by competency, number of staff with documented development goals, and any promotions or role changes. This feeds directly into the December board packet.

10 For grant-funded positions, prompt Starch to extract the relevant performance data and draft the staff narrative section required by funders in annual progress reports — mapping your competency ratings to the programmatic outcomes language in the grant agreement.

11 Once ratings are finalized, prompt Starch to archive the full cycle to the Knowledge Management knowledge base with a searchable tag (e.g., 'Annual Review 2025') so next year's manager can pull prior-year context before writing their notes.

12 Run a retrospective: prompt Starch to summarize where the cycle ran behind schedule (which tasks were overdue, which 1:1s were rescheduled) and suggest deadline adjustments for the 2026 cycle.

See this running on Starch

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Worked example

November–December 2025 Annual Review Cycle, Whitmore Family Foundation

Sample numbers from a real run

Staff covered	6
Self-assessments collected	6
Competencies rated per person	4
1:1 meetings transcribed by Meeting Notes	6
Grant-funded positions requiring funder narrative	3
Days from kickoff to board summary	28

The Whitmore Family Foundation's ops manager kicked off the 2025 annual review on November 7 by prompting Starch to build a review workspace in the Knowledge Management app: six staff sections, four competency ratings each, self-assessment and manager fields pre-populated with goals pulled live from last year's Google Sheet. Task Manager sent automated reminders to all six staff; by November 14 all self-assessments were in, with one overdue alert sent to the comms coordinator on day 12. The ED used the side-by-side competency view to spot that the grants manager self-rated 'execution' a 4 while the manager draft read 3 — they adjusted their 1:1 agenda before the call. Meeting Notes transcribed all six 1:1 conversations and saved decision summaries (ratings, one promotion discussed for the finance associate, three documented development goals) directly to each employee's workspace record. Starch then drafted six 150-word narrative summaries; the ED edited two of them before finalizing. For the three grant-funded positions, Starch mapped the performance notes to the programmatic language in each funder's progress report template — saving roughly four hours of manual reformatting. The board received a one-page talent summary on December 16 showing a foundation-wide average of 3.6 on mission alignment, 3.2 on execution, and 100% of staff with a documented development goal. Total ops-manager time invested: approximately 11 hours across 28 days, compared to 22 hours the prior year.

Measurement

How you'll know it's working

Review cycle completion rate: percentage of staff with finalized ratings by the board summary deadline

Self-assessment submission rate and on-time rate by deadline

Competency rating distribution across the team (used in board talent narrative and funder reports)

Number of documented development goals per staff member, tracked into the following year

Hours of ops-manager time spent administering the cycle, compared year-over-year

Comparison

What this replaces

The other ways teams handle this today, and how the Starch version compares.

Lattice or 15Five

Purpose-built for performance reviews but priced for companies with dedicated HR staff; starts at $4–$11 per person per month and requires setup time your ops team doesn't have — Starch builds the same structured review process on top of tools you already use.

Google Forms + Google Sheets (current state)

Free and familiar, but self-assessments are disconnected from manager notes, there's no version control, and producing a board-ready summary requires two to three hours of manual copy-paste every cycle.

BambooHR

Solid mid-market HR platform with performance modules, but assumes a dedicated HR administrator and doesn't connect to the grants, finance, or program data that gives your foundation's performance reviews their actual context.

Notion (standalone)

Flexible enough to build a review template, but you'd be manually assembling the task tracking, deadline reminders, and board summary export that Starch generates from a single natural-language prompt.

On Starch RECOMMENDED

One platform — knowledge management, task manager, meeting notes all running on connected data. Setup in plain English; numbers stay current via scheduled syncs and live agent queries.

Try it on Starch →

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

We already have staff files in Notion and goals in a Google Sheet. Does Starch replace those or connect to them?

Starch connects to them. Notion syncs on a schedule so prior-year notes and staff documentation are available as context inside Starch. Google Sheets is connected from Starch's integration catalog and queried live when the agent needs to pull last year's goals. You don't migrate anything — Starch builds the review workspace on top of what you already have.

Our ED is skeptical of AI touching sensitive performance conversations. How much of this is automated vs. human-controlled?

Everything AI-generated is a draft for a human to review and edit — not a final output. Starch drafts narrative summaries from self-assessments and manager notes; the ED edits them before they go anywhere. Meeting Notes transcribes 1:1 conversations, but the transcript stays in your workspace and only what you choose to save gets used downstream. The ED is still the decision-maker; Starch handles the prep work.

We have three grant-funded positions. Funders require annual staff performance documentation. Can Starch help with that?

Yes. Once you have finalized ratings and narrative notes for grant-funded staff, you can prompt Starch to draft the performance narrative section of a funder progress report, mapping your competency language to the outcome language in the grant agreement. You'll need to paste in the relevant grant requirements or connect the grant document from Google Drive so the agent has the funder's specific framing.

Is Starch SOC 2 certified? Performance data is sensitive.

Starch is not SOC 2 Type II certified today. If your foundation has strict data-handling requirements — which is common when foundation staff handle grant applicant or grantee information — that's worth knowing before you put sensitive performance records in any new platform. We'd rather you make that call with accurate information.

What if some of our staff use Outlook and some use Gmail for their work email?

Both are supported. Starch connects directly to Gmail and syncs Outlook messages on a schedule. For the performance review workflow specifically, email integration is used for deadline reminders and follow-ups — the review content itself lives in the Knowledge Management workspace.

We're a small team. Is this overkill for six staff?

The setup takes one to two hours the first time. After that, you're running next year's cycle by duplicating the workspace and updating dates — maybe 30 minutes of configuration. The payoff isn't complexity; it's having a searchable, consistent record of every review conversation that your ED can reference when writing board reports, funder narratives, or making promotion decisions — instead of digging through a folder of PDFs.