Listen4Good Co-Funders: One Year In, 2016 Grantees

Listen for Good Co-Funders: One Year In

In September 2017, ORS Impact interviewed co-funders that had nominated at least one Listen4Good (L4G) grantee beginning in 2016, weren’t a Shared Insight Core Funder, and were part of a staffed foundation. ORS spoke with 16 (76% of those who met the criteria) about their experience with L4G and their foundation’s practices around feedback and listening to end beneficiaries. This memo provides a high-level overview of findings as an interim product. Ultimately, findings from these interviews will be included in a final report looking at Shared Insight’s work over its first three years.

Key findings

Overall, the interview findings are promising:

  • Almost all co-funders interviewed are very satisfied with their experience as a L4G co-funder
  • Almost all co-funders have heard from their grantees about what they are learning
  • A few co-funders have made some changes in their foundations based on their L4G participation
  • Most foundations try to access data from constituents to inform their work, but these efforts are typically indirect and often not systematic
  • A number of co-funders see their grantees as, fundamentally, their direct constituents; about half have ways to get feedback from their grantees
  • L4G has mostly re-affirmed interviewees’ thoughts or values related to how they think about feedback processes and nonprofits
  • There is greater intentionality around foundations continuing to support grantees’ use of constituent feedback in the next few years than for increasing the foundations’ own use of the feedback